Warning: graphic content

To help hunters combat boredom during Covid 19 isolation the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development declared hunting an essential service and issued more than 4,800 black bear tags for the spring season of 2020.

Hunter training can be accomplished online. Licenses can be obtained online as well.

Early in June 2020 hikers were near Atluck Lake on Vancouver Island to enjoy what the wilderness has to offer all British Columbians, as claimed by our government, when they came across this distressing scene and took the following photo. To protect the safety of the photographer I am not revealing their name.

The hunters were nearby and took the bear down as soon as they realized they had been seen, one of them saying they were returning to Victoria. The hikers were traumatized and don’t remember much about what the hunters looked like, and said they were sad to see that a young boy was with the hunters.

Hunters are publicly advising each other to post so-called tasteful photos, to clean up the blood and show the world that hunting is an honourable past-time. This “amusing” set-up will have found its way to a closed hunting group for their peers to snicker at.

The fact is more hunters than anyone is willing to admit have no respect for their victims and do not care about population numbers, age or gender of the animals they kill.

The 4,800 (a rounded down number) bear tags issued by MFLNRORD for the spring 2020 hunt is shocking when you realize that in the spring of 2019 the number of tags sold was 1,600. The funds from hunting tags do not go into any kind of “conservation” effort, but into general revenue. The number sold this spring indicates that we have a ministry that also has no regard for bear population numbers, age or gender. It was a free-for-all this spring. What will fall bring to our wildlife?