The sheer size of these vehicles means that they are incompatible with the ecosphere of a park. Consider that there may be 20-30 of these trucks driving around the park each day of the hunt. There are no limits on the number of hunters or vehicles in the park on any hunt day.
Written by: Heather Clemenceau
Photos by: Short Hills Wildlife Alliance
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Nothing like putting things in perspective.
Throughout the 2015 Short Hills Park deer slaughter, hunt supporters collectively jumped on the martyrdom bandwagon. Spurious claims of racism and abuse of hunt supporters are all ridiculous and cannot stand the barest scrutiny. The complainants, who include Brock University students, native hunt supporters, Food Not Bombs, HALT (Hamilton/Halton Animal Liberation Team), and Christian Peacemaker Teams, are consistently unable to support a single slanderous claim of their own making with a photograph or video of abuse or misbehaviour by the hunt protesters. At the start of the hunt several of them finally decided to go for the whole loaf and slandered us on CFBU Brock University Student Radio. And when confronted about the accusations, the student radio organizers hastily yanked the program.
Evidently not one of these counter protesters can grasp the significance of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote above. There is no person or culture that is or should be immune to critique – the charge of racism against those who are opposed to the hunt is just an updated, politically correct version of the cry of blasphemy – a fashionable position for those who want to mask their role as censors. My view is that criticism of the deer hunt or the hunters can never be off limits. In addition, this particular issue invites scrutiny because the counter protesters make claims that are put before the public that they urge the public to accept, via the student radio program and various social media channels. Left unchecked, these false claims equate the anti-hunting position with racism, while the narratives of others are hushed, creating an unmanageable template for the future. To our knowledge, no organizers of the student radio program asked for proof from these students, nor did they attempt to contact anyone from the Short Hills Wildlife Alliance for a rebuttal. The original broadcast is gone, but a copy is presented here and annotated with the most objectional statements:
Listen to the CFBU Brock University Student Radio Show:
1:34 – “It’s a spiritual hunt, they use every part of the deer.” (this does not explain the bag of deer skins nor the deer heart and other body parts found in the park immediately after the 2014 hunt. And they certainly don’t use the deer who have been injured and escaped to die a lingering death).
2:50 – “It’s a bit of a mixed bag of protesters.” (The most unintentionally ironic and laughable sound bite of each hunt. Lather, rinse, and repeat).
3:48 – “Their [anti-hunt] signs read all sorts of derogatory comments, derogatory language, quite a hostile and intense experience last year.” (Amazingly, no one supporting the hunt has presented any photographic or video evidence of derogatory comments or language at any hunt at Short Hills – because they never happened and don’t exist. Mouths open, lies come out).
4:19 – “It was a very aggressive time, folks would jump into the backs of the vehicles, people were spat on, antennas were broken, people opened the doors to get into the cars, children were intimidated.” (Once again, where is the evidence? Why did the police not remove or charge any of the anti-hunt protesters? Everything at the hunt is videotaped by the OPP/Niagara Regional Police, and this is the age of smart phones – evidence, if it exists, is easy enough to capture. Have any of these infantile, flower-child idealists noticed that the demonstrators they refer to are virtually all middle-aged and well-educated professional people, mostly women, who would never consider leaping into a truck bed, snapping off an antenna, or yanking open a door with two or more hunters inside the vehicle with unencased weapons? (personally, my Ninja days are long over – it’s been several years since I could leap into the bed of a truck and wrestle hunters with my bare hands, while ripping off an antenna with my teeth). Spitting is an assault, and such records, if they actually existed, would be trivially easy to source through FOIA requests. I have never even seen children at either of the protests I’ve attended (if you’re old enough to smoke, you are not a child). This particular segment of the audio is the most fanciful invention yet. One can only wonder what inaccurate generalizations will be made next year if there is a hunt).
5:26 – “The more supporters were there, the more the protest would de-escalate.” (Of course, when you make shit up, the reality that you actually see at the hunt gives the impression that the peacemakers have actually accomplished something when they have in fact done nothing).
6:40 – “The peace food table will be provided by community members.” (Yes, and they ask for the public’s donations in order to feed themselves).
The hunters and their supporters all use Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook to convince the public that the anti-hunt demonstrators are hostile and violent. Of course, anyone with critical thinking skills would start to wonder why the scant photos they do provide do not support the subtext.
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- How are these vehicles a public safety risk yet hunting in a park boundaried by private homes is not. Also note, these vehicles are not stalled – a cop is waving them in. There are no protesters standing in front of them – they are actually turning into the park.
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- Yes, this really looks like “settler aggression” doesn’t it? Someone is holding – GASP – a notepad! The image stubbornly suggests that the subtext is just wrong. And please keep up the singing – it carries into the park and no doubt serves as a warning for the deer to move away from the area.
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- Stalls are used by First Nations people, and we will likely see similar stalls (if not a complete blockade) used by the Natives themselves when the Ontario government moves ahead with its plan to widen Highway 69.
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- If you stand on my toes, does that mean I’m shoving my sign in your face? Not controversial, just juvenile.
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- Veganism is racist? So do the CPT think Food Not Bombs have been racist all this time for serving vegan food?
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- If there is a safety risk, it comes from people with weapons, not middle-aged professionals who are protesting.
Food Not Bombs, the organizers of the “peace food table,” carries with it a profound history of social unrest. The group may even be on the FBI’s domestic terrorist watch. Food Not Bombs serves almost exclusively vegan food (no meat, dairy or other animal products (at least when it’s convenient), in an attempt to show their stance towards nonviolence against animals. However, they seem to have little difficulty with the serving of venison at the “peace food table.”
As it turns out, the “peacemakers” charged with protecting the hunters from the protesters might not be so peaceable after all. The Christian Peacemaker Teams’ Twitter feed about the protest also perpetuated numerous overtly false or misleading statements about the protesters. A religious extremist group with
Poaching is now a regular occurrence on the outskirts of the park. Drive by the perimeter and you can easily see trucks parked, and sometimes you can see the hunters in full camo emerging. Does hunting in the park contribute to poaching by others? Does it create a sense of entitlement in non-First Nations hunters?
Mennonite roots (they preach non-violence, but lying is apparently OK), they are best known for offering themselves as human shields for Saddam Hussain in 2005 after the invasion of Iraq. Their purpose was to disable the US military – what they accomplished was something entirely different. About a half-dozen of the Peacemakers ended-up getting kidnapped by guerilla Iraqi soldiers – one was eventually killed, because war is a serious business best left to professional soldiers. They had to be rescued, putting soldiers at-risk with a dangerous mission. They were also accused of not initially expressing gratitude towards the soldiers who freed them (I guess they’re so anti-war, they resent being rescued). So, are the Christian Peacemakers, a group whose funding comes in part from the Mennonites, a religious or a political group? The Canada Revenue Agency warned the Mennonite church about their political activities back in 2012 when they reminded them that it’s not acceptable for a charitable organization to engage in political activities. Aside from this, the Mennonites themselves are hardly known for compassion towards animals – they, along with the Amish, are big time puppymillers and some work as kill buyers, supplying horses for the cruel equine slaughter industry.
Damage to the park is proof positive that the hunting activity does not preserve the area and is hardly low impact. Anyone who engages in unethical hunting practices, which includes leaving huge six inch ruts where none previously existed, undoubtedly merits opprobrium. Indeed, it was Paleo-Indians who helped hunt mega-fauna like the mammoth to extinction, the Maori in New Zealand who exterminated the flightless moa, and pre-historic Pacific Islanders who extirpated more than a thousand species of birds. These are not racist statements but statements of fact. Neither is this statement meant to detract from the thousands of species extinctions caused by all of us collectively. As human beings, this is a reflection on all of us as a species; it’s one of our defining, less endearing traits. And this makes our determination to preserve the park all that more urgent.
If our objections to the hunt reflect a skewed world-view, should it not be possible to critique our philosophy without going to the trouble of lying?
“We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.”
~ Rachel Carson ~
heatherclemenceau 