Hunting Season

The guns fire in Muskoka. Once, at dusk, I heard 4 shots in a row. It breaks my heart and causes me to fear. Hunting season began a month ago. This month they are firing in earnest. I fear for my fellow creatures. Brian’s experience on the farm included that with firearms. The farm animals have to be protected. I can see the hunters in their bright orange jackets travelling by boat across the lake. Hunting, Brian tells me, is good on the railway tracks that run on the other side and parallel to our lake. The hunters travel in a small motor boat. Too small to bring back a carcass, I think. I wonder what motivates them as I really do not understand how they might find sport in this exercise. They do not hunt out of a necessity for food, not if they own or rent a property by a Muskoka lake. The run at about $400,000. Rentals can be $1000 per week.

The sound of the rifle, my husband says, is a crack. A shotgun, which they use for moose, is more of a boom. In my own way I try to analyse the noise as it separates me from the knowledge that the three shots I heard this morning means that one of the men has missed something and shot again. A letter to the editor of our paper suggested that since her father hunted she knew their motivation but had two thoughts for them: that their first shot be true so that the animal feels no pain, and that they cover up the evidence of their prey, dumped in the back of their pick-up trucks. The bleeding carcass, with the heads lolling in the back, make her feel sick.