Wolf Hunting

Charlie Smith writes for the midnorth monitor in Espanola and his outdoor articles are appreciated by many outdoor enthusiast including OntORA , of which he is a member

WOLVES IN TOWN

I was informed at the last council meeting that a pair of timber wolves have been seen several times cruising around in Massey.  Does this please anyone? The MNR that forces us to buy a license to hunt wolves, does this make them happy? Does a CO say to the biologist, “Well, they are getting nice and thick on the ground now, eh!”?

What do you suppose the wolves are doing in town? Let me tell you, they are hunting your dogs and cats. Maybe they have pushed the deer into town too. It is a common thing to see deer come around man when pressed by the wolves. (I can’t say I blame them, being eaten alive by wolves is horrid fate).

Just now, (6:00 am),  I was relieved to hear my collie bark to be let in the house. He spent the night out guarding the other livestock from nighttime marauders, but I worry about him. Each time I hear him bark in the night, I think that could be his last night on earth. I don’t want him to die horribly on duty. Given enough time, the wolves will slip up and I will see them in daylight. This isn’t town and I am not some town man. I have lost track of how many wolves I have shot right here on the farm, but the number is way over a dozen, maybe a couple of score if you count coyotes, hybrids and brush wolves.

The question that has to be asked is why the MNR is discouraging the hunting of wolves. I can remember when there was a bounty on them. There were still lots of them around even though there was the equivalent of a day’s wages riding on each of their heads, but they weren’t so thick and bold as to show up in town, not in the days of my youth.

If you want to see why the MNR has evolved the wolf into a game animal instead of a varmint all you have to do is look at the outfitter’s ads in outdoor magazines. There are pictures of Yanks with frozen wolves. Someone has found a way to fill their pockets guiding tourists and if that means it is unsafe for us, our children, our pets, cattle dogs, and livestock in the winter night, well that is too bad for us! This is the same reason that the MNR is closing so many roads and lakes to us locals. There is no profit in us hunting and fishing up the road, not if that same game can be sold to an outsider that pays big money to be flown into some artificial “wilderness” to harvest our birthright.

How long are we going to put up with this crap? We have been sold out, degraded, devalued and reduced to a peasant class, next to these new lords of the “wilderness”! We should all be reared up on our back legs bellowing. Maybe we should be marching and blockading, but we are not. Why? Because we have been brainwashed! I will not go into all the ways that propaganda has been pumped into our heads but it starts when we are children and it never ends. I remember one time I showed up in town with two dead timber wolves in the back of my truck. (I was on the way to give them to a trapper friend of mine.) I stopped for a coffee at the local morning restaurant. Some of the  boys were impressed and pleased, but others said things like, “Why did you shoot them?” or sarcastically “Are you going to eat them?”  Of course the answer to that is, “No, they were going to eat me or mine!” These questions were not being asked by children all dewy-eyed from watching Walt Disney or simpering tree huggers from the Godless South. These were northern men in a northern town. I was shocked.

I just got a letter from OntORA, addressing  the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, (OFAH);

“Although the OFAH has promoted “increased access” to its members, it has actually been involved in setting the original access parameters with the MNR and NOTO many years ago. We also know that they have a close relationship with the government and remote tourism industry, as our letter below details, and that their OFAH-owned Ontario Out of Doors Magazine receives a good deal of advertising revenue from remote tourism.”

I no longer belong to the OFAH, (I am not a dog, I will not lick the hand that beats me), so I don’t receive the Ontario Out of Doors Magazine, so I can not for sure say that they are in favour of the wolf being treated like a big game animal, but I am guessing that they are for the same reason that Mike Boudreau, President of OntORA listed above. I suppose a fair question to me might be, “Why are you not still a member and fighting from the inside?” Mrs. Smith didn’t raise no fool. One of the most important of Murphy’s Golden Rule is “The guy with the gold makes the rules!” As long as the OFAH is hand in hand with tourist outfitters, (the guys with the gold), the people who live here and want to hunt like first class citizens or want to drive where the roads take us and not have wolves and bear cruising through our yards are going to be disappointed. Oh you can sit over your morning coffee and complain, but talk is cheap. Money talks! If you want to make a difference, you have to belong to a different organization, not one of the ones that are hand in hand with the remote tourist outfitters. They have already sold you out.

Charlie Smith