With a comment as intelligent and well-researched as this, it's a shame you don't participate here more.

I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage you to do so!

I agree with you 100% on this, by the way. Nothing frustrates me more than animal rights activists who have never really visited the wilderness. Having worked in and around the Arctic for a decade, I see the seal hunt as a good thing (though I feel the opposite about some of the narwhal hunts).

Just because it is not endangered, doesn't mean it needs to be culled yearly.

Rats of the Ocean? Where did you come up with that?

Edited to add, *IF* the hunt were to continue, I would oppose them banning the clubbing. Too often, seals are shot poorly, at long distances and there isn't a proper way to dispatch them quickly when they can get to the seal to finish them off.

Far too often, seals are shot at long distances, and poorly shot, to suffer and wait until the boat can get to them.

I would rather they be clubbed. Less appealing, but more humane.

What is different about the Narwhal hunts? I didn't actually know they hunted them at all, to be honest.

Last time, I saw 80 bloody carcasses strewn across the ice in one community so the tusk could be cut off and sold. An Elder (from another community) who was in my helicopter that day expressed his frustration at the needless waste of activities such as that. Apparently, the tusks can be sold for a ridiculous sum, especially if they're carved up.

This is in contrast to the last time I saw a whale hunt, at which point everyone came down to cut it up and I ate raw whale blubber, or a seal hunt, in which a community will participate and celebrate and I ate raw seal eyes. The Inuit believe the seal is the mother of the earth, and while they are killed every year they're still respected.

I wish that every person could actually see these things taking place instead of being armchair critics from across the planet.

It's hard to describe these things, even with pictures.

That's because cows aren't cute but furry things are.

Honestly, I have a real sealskin coat and boots, real moosehide mittens, real rabbit mittens, a beaver hat.... I think it's the best gear out there and I have no problem with people wearing animals if they're going to use it, if you know what I mean. I get mad when it's all just a fashion statement.

I can assure it is only used as a fashion statement in Arizona.

Out of sheer curiosity, TM, do you feel the same for actual rats as you do for seals?

I mean, rats are poisoned and killed in very unhumane ways, but you never hear of rat advocacy groups.

I personally think ANY animal however aesthetically unpleasant that's treated inhumanely and killed unnecessarily is wrong IMO

I couldn't read the article. I just couldn't make myself.
Maybe this is a stupid question but what do they use the seals for? Fur? Meat?

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever seen an objective article written on the issue? I couldn't read this one, but not for the same reasons as most others-- I couldn't because all it was was a few pages of loaded words and subjectivity, no more accurate than the average blog. And it masqueraded as a news article to boot.

I'll pay attention when a reporter does his job: give both sides of the issue and let me decide.

Yeah, the CBC's done a few fairly unbiased newspieces (and a good number of biased ones, but it's the CBC), and last year or the year before I read a well done article in ... the Globe and Mail or the Post, I can't remember which one.

Anyway, as a Canadian, the whole doe-eyed baby seal stories aren't nearly as popular, but I think that's because the government and the CBC strive to keep us informed, using facts instead of feelings.

Maritimers/Labradorites/Newfies are intense. The Newfie guys I've worked with almost always kill fish with their bare knuckes.

That's all I can think of when I read this description. I know it shouldn't make me laugh, but if I could show you the video in my head of this one guy Keith killing the fish, you'd laugh too.

I get flack every year for killing Bambi. In a huge way, I understand what you are saying, when you support the seal hunt.

In fact, due to huge population growth around here and building, deer have no homes. Local metroparks authorize sharpshooters to cull the herds. Either that or they end up going thru windshields as they get hit EVERY single day during rutting season.

I support that cull. The deer are headshot and meat donated to shelters.

Seals on the other hand are not overpopulated as I can see, we compete with their food (cod) and the carcasses are tossed over the side or left to rot on the ice. This seal hunt is way different that local native groups, (which I support) but one done for commercial reasons and for the fur.

I would have an easier time embracing the hunt as a hunter myself if it was for meat for local impoverished as well.

Hunting ANY animal for fashion fur is wrong. What you have, you need and I support that.

I, myself, am sad when I harvest an animal. But I know I am keeping a factory farmed animal off my plate as well. And when I do buy beef, pork , or chicken I go to a place that raises the animals free range.