[We Are Hunters] and we are Part of - [Canada's Resource-based Economy] [Your Community] [the Conservation Community]

Ontario's Hunting Community

We are all descendants of successful hunters. Anthropologists tell us that hunting made us who we are over the course of one million years of human history. We evolved as hunters on this planet. Our upright posture, our ability to run and throw, our highly developed minds, our forward-looking eyes, and our incisored smiles are all because we are the descendants of successful hunters. The hunt is central to our human experience. Prior to the development of language, art, dance, spiritual ritual, tool making, and society, was the hunt -- and the celebration of the hunt -- throughout the ages.

Today many people live as if their actions have no bearing on the natural world - as if they are totally separate from it. Hunters know better. We know we are all part of nature. We know our food comes from the land, not the grocer. Hunting reminds us that we are ultimately dependent on ecosystems.

The entire hunt, from initial planning through all of the steps leading to the serving of game on the table, becomes a celebration of our true relationship with nature.

People can be a positive or negative force in the ecosystem. Even pre-historic people, in very low numbers and with primitive tools, contributed to the extinction of mammals like the Irish elk and the woolly mammoth. Today the earth's air, water, soil, and wildlife resources are stretched by over 6 billion people, many with powerful tools.

However, no wildlife species in Ontario is threatened by regulated hunting; in fact, most wild species are better off because of licenced hunters.