A frustrated Stan Hall says the Saskatchewan deer industry has had enough.
“People, for whatever reason, use any excuse to bad mouth us,” he said. “We’re tired of it.”
So tired of it that the Saskatchewan Whitetail and Mule Deer Producers Association, of which Hall is president, has been accumulating a legal fund and is close to taking legal action against some of its detractors.
The latest blow was the discovery by Saskatchewan SPCA inspectors of 114 dead fallow deer on a Spiritwood-area farm. Two white-tailed deer had to be destroyed, and another 54 fallow deer were relocated.
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Critics called for the game farm industry to be shut down.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare, headquartered in the United States, but with offices in 14 countries, said the province and SPCA should conduct a comprehensive investigation of game farming.
“We are clearly beginning to see an epidemic of cruelty and abuse on Saskatchewan game farms,” said IFAW provincial issues co-ordinator Rob Sinclair in a News release
news. “It is high time that officials from (Saskatchewan Environment) and the SPCA get a handle on this before even more game farm animals are left to starve.”
The Canadian and Saskatchewan Wildlife Federations said the game farming industry must be reviewed.
Hall declined to say against whom legal action might be taken, but he said comments like these irk him.
He wonders why the cattle industry isn’t reviewed each time starving animals are found on farms.
And he points out that at least once a year there are high-profile cases of cats and dogs being left to starve in city homes.
“Nobody called for the outlawing of people keeping pets,” he said.
Hall said his industry is worth about $10 million to the provincial economy, and it’s mostly new money brought to the province by Americans willing to pay to hunt bucks supplied to trophy ranches from farms like his.
Fallow deer are raised for their meat.
Meanwhile, both the SPCA and the RCMP said their investigations continue. Charges have not been laid.
