There is not much that links Donald Trump Jr., son of the wispy-haired real-estate mogul, with Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States. Yet the two men do share a home state, an Ivy League pedigree, and one other notable distinction: they both shot an elephant.

Roosevelt was a famously swash-buckling big-game hunter who killed or trapped more than 11,000 animals during a 1909 safari through Central Africa financed by Andrew Carnegie. The younger Trump bagged his kill last year on a trip to Zimbabwe with his brother Eric. The pair earned the ire of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently when photos surfaced of Donald Jr. hoisting severed elephant parts in the air, an ammo belt hanging slack around his waist

The Trump boys, both employees of their father, are hardly alone in pursuing the masculine ideal Roosevelt so stirringly embodied.

There’s something very basic, particularly in the masculine psyche, that requires the killing of large animals,” says Roosevelt bio-grapher.