The Alberta provincial government plans to ban the practice of spearing wildlife after a video posted online showing an American killing a black bear with a spear sparked outrage.
The video was posted in June on the YouTube account of Josh Bowmar, who runs an Ohio-based fitness company, and shows him killing the bear on a hunt in northern Alberta. By the time it was removed from public view on Monday it had garnered more than 208,000 views.
The 13-minute video shows Bowmar launching a massive spear — with a camera attached — at a bear from 11 to 14 meters away and captures his jubilant reaction when the animal is hit.
“I just speared a bear!” Bowmar says on the video. “He’s going down. I drilled him perfect ... I smoked him.”
Commenters on YouTube were livid and Twitter users called the bear’s killing sick, inhumane, shameful and disgusting.
Alberta Environment and Parks issued a statement, calling the spear hunting an “archaic” practice.
Spear hunting is already illegal in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.
“Work is underway to update Alberta’s hunting regulations. We will introduce a ban on spear hunting this fall as part of those updated regulations,” a spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. “In the meantime, we have asked Fish and Wildlife officers to investigate this incident to determine if charges are warranted under existing laws.”
A year ago, an American killed a lion in Zimbabwe in what authorities said was an illegal hunt, infuriating people worldwide and invigorating an international campaign against trophy hunting in Africa. The death of Cecil the Lion unleashed an extraordinary outpouring of anger at Walter Palmer, the American dentist who shot the lion, and other foreigners with means who have traveled to Africa to kill wildlife.
Bowmar on Tuesday said he was frustrated by the attention the hunt has received, saying spear hunting is a common practice that has been used since the early days of humanity.
He denied reports that the bear took 20 hours to die, saying it ran 55m before collapsing and was dead at most in half a minute.
Bowmar said his handmade spear with a metal blade that is 13cm wide and 40cm long is far more lethal than a bow, which he usually hunts with, and requires more skill because of how close he had to be to the bear.
The hunt was in mid-May and was filmed by his wife, Sarah, he said, who also killed a bear with a bow.
Bowmar said he is an accomplished hunter who threw the javelin competitively in college at Heidelberg University in Ohio.
“It’s extremely frustrating to me,” Bowmar, 26, of Columbus, Ohio, said on Monday by phone. “They’re trying to make this out to be the next Cecil the Lion situation. It’s clearly not. I didn’t do anything illegal. The bear died very humanely. The truth is I honestly care more about animals and hunting than anybody could.”
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