Unmerciful Short Hills Deer Hunt by Heather Clemenceau

Throughout the 2015 Short Hills Park deer slaughter, hunt supporters collectively jumped on the martyrdom bandwagon. Spurious claims of racism and abuse of hunt supporters are all ridiculous and cannot stand the barest scrutiny. The complainants, who include Brock University students, native hunt supporters, Food Not Bombs, HALT (Hamilton/Halton Animal Liberation Team), and Christian Peacemaker Teams, are consistently unable to support a single slanderous claim of their own making with a photograph or video of abuse or misbehaviour by the hunt protesters. At the start of the hunt several of them finally decided to go for the whole loaf and slandered us on CFBU Brock University Student Radio. And when confronted about the accusations, the student radio organizers hastily yanked the program.

Evidently not one of these counter protesters can grasp the significance of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote above. There is no person or culture that is or should be immune to critique – the charge of racism against those who are opposed to the hunt is just an updated, politically correct version of the cry of blasphemy – a fashionable position for those who want to mask their role as censors. My view is that criticism of the deer hunt or the hunters can never be off limits. In addition, this particular issue invites scrutiny because the counter protesters make claims that are put before the public that they urge the public to accept, via the student radio program and various social media channels. Left unchecked, these false claims equate the anti-hunting position with racism, while the narratives of others are hushed, creating an unmanageable template for the future. To our knowledge, no organizers of the student radio program asked for proof from these students, nor did they attempt to contact anyone from the Short Hills Wildlife Alliance for a rebuttal. The original broadcast is gone, but a copy is presented here and annotated with the most objectional statements: