Hunting is still legal on the island
I had no idea that it’s legal to hunt on the island of Montreal until reading this Gazette piece on efforts to put an end to it. We don’t have all that much remaining parkland, and residential streets are often close enough to the parks to make stray bullets – or crossbow bolts – dangerous to passersby, or to other users of the parks. Although municipal bylaws ban it, these are overruled by Quebec laws that say it’s perfectly fine.
John B 12:06 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
Interesting!
On one hand, banning hunting in the urban area is a good idea. On the other hand, someone running a farm on the west island should probably have the right to pull out a shotgun or .22 and get rid of some nuisance birds or rodents.
It does seem like some people may be exaggerating the danger, or the ability to do something. For example, the Federation of Hunters & Anglers that nobody other than a hunter has been hit by a projectile, the only accidents where other people have been hit are by poachers, and hunters are not poachers. Paola Hawa calls the distinction between hunters & poachers “semantics”, but poaching is already illegal. I suspect making legal hunting illegal will simply provide more animals, and thus more incentive, for poachers to hunt. It’s not like someone who’s out poaching in the off-season is going to say “well, now the whole season is the off-season so I’m going to stop my harvest.”
There’s also some extreme rhetoric with statements like David Fletcher’s statement “shooting at any movement, and mistaking the movement of a person for the movement of an animal.” My understanding is that one of the main rules of hunting, if not the absolute main rule, is to make sure you know what you’re shooting at. Hunters don’t want to kill people any more than you or I do.
The argument for hunting that it controls populations is valid as well – especially in areas where human activity prevents the presence of predators. For example, Longueuil wouldn’t be dealing with an overpopulation of deer in their park if there was some amount of hunting allowed, (not that hunting in parks is a great idea). Unless we’re comfortable with foxes, wolves, coyotes, and bears in town we should be ready to control the populations of prey species by other methods.
Overall, hunting “in town” seems like an accident waiting to happen, but it feels like a total ban might not really be needed. I wonder if Montreal could require a Montreal hunting license to hunt on its territory, which would have education obligations, and maybe could restrict some hunting methods, (like rifles).
Blork 13:30 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
I went for a walk in the Boisé du Tremblay in Longueuil recently, where deer hunting is allowed for a few weeks in the fall. Sort of blew my mind, because we’re walking along an area where just a few weeks earlier there could have been hunters with high-powered rifles and we can see houses through the trees. How is that allowed?
John B., above, said “My understanding is that one of the main rules of hunting, if not the absolute main rule, is to make sure you know what you’re shooting at.” Very true. And one of the main rules of driving is you don’t drive drunk, and we all know how well that works out.
A few true stories: when I was a teenager I had a friend who loved guns and hunting, and a few times I went partridge hunting with him. When you’re walking through the woods with a loaded 12-guage, there are two safety things you always do, and even as a 17-year-old I was very aware of this. (1) point the barrel at the ground, (2) keep your finger off the trigger until you’re lined up and ready to shoot. So there we are, walking through the woods, tripping over roots and all, and I notice that he’s to my right with the barrel of the shotgun pointed right at me, and he’s walking with the gun cocked and his finger on the trigger. FFS! I gave him shit for it, but he insisted it was fine because he’d never accidentally shot the gun before and therefore it couldn’t happen. I never went hunting with him again.
Another story about the same guy. We’re walking around his neighbourhood (density is somewhere between suburban and countryside) where the day before, at dusk, he had taken a shot at a deer and missed. So I’m looking at where he’s pointing; the deer had been about 100 meters away, at the top of a small hill. And what do you think was beyond that? HOUSES! Probably six or seven houses right behind where he’s pointing. So that bullet that missed the deer probably landed in a tree or maybe the ground, but could just as easily have penetrated one of those houses. Bear in mind this is a guy who loved guns and hunting, subscribed to the magazines, hung around with and was mentored by older hunters, etc. As far as I know he’s still hunting.
I also know an old guy with bad eyesight who took a shot at something moving in the bushes when he was out hunting with his (then) 12-year-old son. This guy was another gun nut, with all the gun stuff and the books and magazines and whatnot. That day he shot the zipper clasp off his son’s jacket. As in, the thing moving in the bushes was his kid, in profile, and if the shot had been a couple of inches to the left it would have penetrated both lungs and probably his heart.
So yeah, rules of hunting. Rules of the road. Etc. etc. etc. None of which account for the very high level of stupidity that permeates the human species.
Kate 14:45 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen mention of bullets whizzing into Lasalle from across the river in and around Kahnawake, so I don’t know whether hunting was banned over there or what. But it used to come up from time to time.
John B, how many working farms do you think remain on the West Island?
MarcG 17:22 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
Carya, Santropol has one, and Macdonald farm at the school come to mind. There are 6 on this map and it doesn’t seem to include the larger ones that are visible in satellite view. https://goo.gl/maps/vXhUh8nN26keagdQ8
Kate 21:12 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
Thank you, MarcG.
John B 22:48 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
I was thinking it might just be 2 or 3 farms, I’m actually surprised there are so many. I know driving out west there are some fields that are part of the Macdonald campus, I knew about Santropol, and I used to order seedlings from a farm out there.
@Blork: Stupidity is the problem, everywhere. Despite all my “people know about guns…” above, I had a great-grandfather that got tired of his grandson making noise so popped off a few shotgun shots in his direction… People can be idiots. I’m surprised there haven’t been accidents if there is that much hunting, but the article came across as pretty alarmist.
Kate 11:18 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
Are they real farms, or sort of cute kid-visiting petting farms? For example, inside Cap St‑Jacques park there’s a sort of demonstration organic farm – you can buy veg in season – but it’s not a farm in the traditional sense of a family or other group of people living on the land while working it.
John B 14:38 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
That kind of depends on what you mean by “real” farms. If you’re looking for hundreds of acres of soybeans or a cattle feedlot, I don’t think so. I think they’re mostly smaller-scale vegetable farms – the kind that you can order a CSA basked from for a bunch of the season. I met a guy who grew a bunch of quinoa out there one year, but I don’t think grain production is something that happens much.
MarcG 17:39 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
There are some large tracts on the map that look like corn or soy but I doubt the owners live on the land and chew on wheat stalks. The traditional self-sufficient family farm with crops and livestock is mostly dead as far as I know. There’s been a small comeback of families or co-ops doing small/medium scale organic vegetable production (e.g. Jardins D’Arlington in Bedford who have a stand at the Atwater Market). I went to volunteer on a diversified organic farm in Ontario and they bought a lot of their groceries at the supermarket.