More than just meat

“Hunting grizzly bears is the best thing you can do for grizzly bears,” said wildlife artist and outdoorsman Casey Braam. That’s a controversial opinion in B.C., where a recent poll says that 84 percent of the province is in favour of the current ban on grizzly hunting. Braam gets it. He didn’t always think this way either.

“I kind of thought about hunters in a way that didn’t line up to be actually true, when I started doing it,” Braam told Christian Courier, acknowledging his own stigma. When Braam, a member of Terrace Christian Reformed Church (CRC), started hunting more seriously later in life, he realized that hunting and conservation have always gone hand-in-hand.

An erosion of trust

Hunters make up only three percent of Canada’s population, mostly living in rural and northern Canada. In the Yukon, however, Northwest Territories and Nunavut 30 percent of the population hunts. When the Federal government passed Bill C-21 in the House of Commons in May, the only two Liberal MPs to vote against it were the representatives for Yukon and Northwest Territories.

The bill, which is still under consideration in the Senate, has deepened the rift between hunters and non-hunters in Canada. Originally intended to target 3D printed weapons (‘ghost’ guns) and street crime, Bill C-21 was amended about a year ago to include a long list of firearms commonly used for hunting in Canada.

The measures went so far that the Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution last December to oppose that version of Bill C-21. NDP representative Taylor Bachrach for B.C.’s Skeena-Bulkley Valley also spoke against it in Parliament.

“People feel hoodwinked by these last-minute amendments,” Bachrach claimed. “They’re going after the tools that my neighbours use for hunting, predator control and backcountry safety.”

That list of firearms was eventually scrapped and replaced with more general phrasing. These changes are a relief for hunters who regularly use guns on the original list, but the Ontario Federation of Hunters and Anglers says that this whole process has led to “a serious erosion of trust in government by the hunting community.” Some fear that the government will use existing regulatory avenues to enact the prohibitions anyway.

Why hunt?

For Pavlina Sudrich, a subsistence hunter living in Whitehorse, Yukon, harvesting one bull moose per year means she can avoid buying meat that was trucked thousands of kilometers.

“While the Telos (ultimate goal) of hunting is for food, the action itself can be an incredibly important time of communion with both family and the land,” explained Sudrich, who shares her outdoor adventures with almost 500,000 followers on Instagram. Sudrich is also a practicing Catholic. She said the slow pace of living on the land while hunting on foot reminds her of Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19:11.

“It is hard to hear God in the passing storms of our lives, but God’s whisper is pretty loud. A lot of our lives are built around creating a sense of protection – sanitizing and removing risk and consequences. When we think we are in control and solely responsible for protecting ourselves and others we limit our capacity to trust in God, to see his great love, care and intention for us.”

“When you’re hundreds of kilometers from the nearest person for weeks at a time,” continued Sudrich, “you gain a different awareness of your own vulnerability and limitations. You’re not really in control. It can be scary. Nothing makes prayer more vibrant than running into a grizzly bear.”

Hunting’s reputation

“For someone looking from the outside at what we do, we’re smiling. We’re holding an animal and we’re smiling. ‘How can you be happy? You’re happy because you killed something?’ No, that’s not it at all,” explained Jim Shockey during an interview with Silvercore, an outdoor adventure podcast. “We’re happy because we’ve touched our ancestral soul.” Shockey is a naturalist, professional big game hunter and TV producer who lives on Vancouver Island.

His novel Call Me Hunter was released last month. Shockey said hunters and non-hunters need each other and always have. But rapid urbanization has led to a breakdown in communication. Now urban and rural Canadians are finding it increasingly difficult to understand and respect each other.

“The purpose of the novel is to reach outside of our core audience, who already know how we feel, how we think,” explained Shockey, who believes mainstream media has played a significant role in vilifying and stereotyping hunters.

Creation care

If you ask a hunter like Casey Braam why he is smiling as he poses with a dead moose, deer or mountain goat, you’ll get a nuanced story.

“Hunting is so different to each person. Sometimes it is about food, but I think more often it’s not only about food. It’s about connecting to the world around you, getting to go to all these amazing places and do amazing things. For some people, it’s almost a spiritual experience,” Braam said.

“To think that we can step outside and watch nature happen is such a false urban idea. We’re not separate from it. We’re part of it. As a hunter, you’re making an obvious choice to be a part of the natural cycle.” Braam sees responsible hunting as a form of creation care.

Nathan Voogd is a farmer and hunter who also attends Terrace CRC. Voogd agrees with Braam that hunting can play a stewardly role in managing our human-altered ecosystems. “We’ve created roads and cut lines and seismic lines that give these predators access to the prey in such a way that they can wipe out an entire herd or potentially species,” explained Voogd, whose work involves managing roadways in Northern B.C. “So the idea that we shouldn’t have a management role is out the window. There is no ‘let it manage itself’ anymore.”

The grizzly example

When B.C. banned the Grizzly Bear hunt in 2017, Doug Donaldson, B.C.’s Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources at the time said the decision was motivated by public pressure, not conservation science. In part, this is why B.C. has just introduced a Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework designed in collaboration with 85 Indigenous governments and groups.

One of its proposals is to set up regional and subregional wildlife committees where First Nations, local governments, conservation scientists and hunters can collaborate to make decisions that affect grizzly populations.

“The basis of the framework is solid,” Voogd said. “The data supports a managed hunt and hunting is a tool that can be used to monitor the health of a population.”

Pacific Wild, along with 55 environmental, Indigenous and animal care organizations, is critical of the framework. They say that putting decision making power into these regional committees is “inconceivably irresponsible” and will give hunting, trapping, industrial and political interests too much power. They recommend that one expert wildlife stewardship team make management decisions “across the province on behalf of all British Columbians.”

“It’s an urban versus rural thing,” said Braam, pointing out that lawmakers often have little experience living near predators. “Wherever the population is, gets to make the decisions and has the biggest voice. But it has different effects for people living in a rural environment.”

Sudrich, Shockey, Voogd and Braam believe that under the right set of regulations, hunting can be sustainable, ethical and contribute to conservation. Living off the land without comforts and distractions can also change the heart and mind of the hunter.

“You cannot watch a caribou glide up a mountain, or a grizzly bear somersault in the alpine without developing a deep love and appreciation for them. Harvesting an animal is an extremely physically and emotionally hard thing to do,” Sudrich said. “I do it because life is not about avoiding hard things.”

“If you’re not sure if you believe in God,” remarked Sudrich, “two weeks in the Yukon bush will probably sort that out.”

How big is hunting in Canada?

In 2019, The Conference Board of Canada completed an independent investigation into the economic impact of hunting. They found that these activities contribute $4.1 billion to Canada’s GDP every year and 33,000 Canadian jobs.