Elk farmers contest a confusing hunting ban
The province continues to go ahead with plans to ban hunting on game farms, with new regulations coming as soon as Jan. 1, much to the anger and confusion of elk farmers.
Bill Topp of Belwood, president of the Ontario Deer and Elk Farmers' Association, says elk farmers want to be able to send their "spent" bulls to game farms for trophy hunting when they are no longer velvet producers or herd studs. There is potential income of as much as $3,500 per animal from game farming in an industry that is otherwise going down the toilet.
A handful of park game farms would take care of the needs of hundreds of elk farms saddled with bulls that are past their velvet-producing life, Topp says. "The beef industry would love to have this sort of revenue" for its cull animals, he notes.
Topp says opponents "paint a picture that these animals are in a quarter-acre pen and the hunters are lined up against a fence." That isn't so, he says. At Universal Game Farm in Coldwater, for example, the elks are in a wooded area of about 75-80 acres. Topp says Universal owner Todd Grignon "has won this right as a farmer in two lower courts."
"We have a wonderful opportunity here that we don't have to be funded by any government," Topp says. "We have an industry that can be self-sufficient if you let us farm with what the courts and government policy have in place."
Grignon is furious because he had hunters lined up for this fall. A business associate in Michigan had sold 80 harvestings at about $3,500 a piece. On Aug. 23, a Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) official sent a registered letter to the Michigan associate, warning him that clients at Grignon's game farm may "violate several sections of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act" if they shoot elk in an enclosure and that "these activities will also violate sections of either the Federal or the Provincial Meat Inspection Acts."
Senior media officer Steve Payne says he knows nothing about the letter and that, as far as the MNR is concerned, it is now legal to shoot these elk. From the minister's officer, however, comes a different story. Ginette Albert, senior adviser, communications and political appointments, says residents can hunt elk now but non-residents cannot." Why? It's been like that since the previous government, Albert said.
Payne quotes natural resources minister David Ramsay as saying hunting animals in captivity "is inconsistent with Ontario's traditional hunting heritage. The animal in captivity has no means of escape."
