For the record I have hunted…

For the record I have hunted in Ontario for over 60 years and as an avid outdoors person find the thought of the Spring Bear Hunt unethical to say the least. Hunting over a slop pail is not hunting to my mind. The return of this hunt is not justified by the small overall financial impact on the Northern economy.

The current hunting seasons for Black Bear leaves nursing young vulnerable as the pilot project season along with the extended fall season starting Aug 15 in many WMU’s puts bears ‘under the gun or bow’ for much of their time out of the den.

The Harris Government cancelled the Spring Bear Hunt based on facts and science compiled over decades that was provided by its own research biologists.

No other game animals are hunted when they are nursing their young offspring so why would this make sense for our Black Bears.

Most hunters want to be ‘ethical’ but it is difficult to know even hunting over hung baits that a female may have stashed her cubs nearby while she comes to a bait pail. This is not hunting but rather just shooting and why it is illegal to bait for other wildlife.

The last year of Spring Hunt there were over 200 orphaned cubs turned in to the 3 wildlife rescues in Ontario (Aspen Valley, Bear With Us & Lakeland Lodge east of Sudbury) These of course represented only a fraction of orphans. So it is likely that hundreds of others were left to die a lingering painful death by starvation.

Apart the ethical reasons for not killing bears in the Spring many lodges and outfitters were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to refocus and transition their businesses into other areas such as Ecotourism after the hunt was cancelled. So many took the cash and want the hunt back too.

Tourists from all over the world look forward to viewing our wildlife and bears in particular as many of their countries no longer have the diversity of wildlife we have here in Ontario.

The 2003 Nuisance Bear Committee having a broad membership including hunters and tourist operators definitively agreed that the Spring Hunt had little or no impact on the amount of so called nuisance bear activity in Ontario.

The OFAH where I ended a 30 year plus membership over this issue has used the new credo of Fake News to try to convince the government and Ontarians that a return of the hunt would be a good thing for Ontario.

I strongly oppose any return of a Spring Hunt and would like to see the Fall hunt period put back from August into September where it was previously in those WMU's.