James Hetfield hunting brown bear picture – Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A photo of a man alleged to be Metallica musician James Hetfield behind the presumably dead body of a large brown bear is circulating social media.

The photo is spreading alongside a message imploring readers to boycott Metallica and push for their removal from the Glastonbury 2014 festival in the UK, where they were due to headline at the time this photo began spreading online.

However the man in the photo is NOT James Hetfield and the message has likely arisen due to confusion regarding the musicians apparent impending appearance on a History Channel documentary about hunting bears in Alaska’s Kodiak Island.


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The man in the photo is actually Doug Giles, author of the book RISE, KILL AND EAT: A Theology of Hunting from Genesis to Revelation. Giles’ website ClashDaily.com posted an article about Hetfield’s impending narration on the bear hunting documentary and alongside the article they published an image (the photo at the top of this article) of two photos side by side, the left being a promotional shot of James Hetfield and the other – according to the caption – being the controversial photo of Doug Giles himself standing behind the body of the bear.

It is likely that many readers inaccurately came to the conclusion that James Hetfield was in both photos, and thus it began to circulate on social media as such.

A photo of Doug Giles can be seen below, making it abundantly clear that it is actually him in the photo, not James Hetfield.

You can see another photo of Giles with the bear below.

Amidst the confusion, James Hetfield has indeed received staunch criticism over his support of big game hunting over the years and many have called for the removal of Metallica because of his support, but alas this does not justify spreading an inaccurately captioned photo across the Internet.

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