Deer are criminals in British Columbia. Please stop them from being slaughtered!

Last year the province of British Columbia Canada decided to begin promoting the culling (slaughter) of wild deer, especially those living in and around populated areas.  

These culls can now be decided by individual municipalities, and there are currently four places planning culls.  Why?  One mayor actually called deer "criminals".  Can you imagine?  Lots of people want a sanitized environment, with no animals or birds, or anything that might eat their plants.  

Culls are cruel and horrendous things.  There are different ways of doing them.  All of them are horrible.  One is the "net and bolt" cull.  Deer are baited, using fruit, nets dropped on them, and then the hired killers come and attempt to shoot bolts into their brains.  The deer struggle and cry like babies in the nets.  Another method is baiting the deer again, corralling them, and shooting them.  Shooting animals that have no hope of escape.  These things are done in the dark of night, and it does not matter how old the deer is. It could be a new-born fawn.  There are also other methods. One is the use of mobile slaughterhouses.  However, the babies are too small to go "down the chute", so they have to be corralled until darkness falls and be slaughtered one-by-one by hand.  It appears that several British Columbia slaughters of deer will be done using a method started in Helena, Montana called the Clover Bait method, which involves cages.  It seems that humans have no lack of imagination when it comes to murdering innocent, docile animals. 

If you look at the net and bolt method as one example, there are MANY experts who are very much against it.  This includes The Humane Society of the United States, Dr. Allan Rutberg of the Veterinary School of Tufts University, and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, among many others.

There are alway claims of over-population, as one excuse.  However, no proper counts have ever been done in the province of British Columbia.  Over-populations of animals are almost always "taken care of" by nature.  If there is not enough food, for example,then not as many babies are born.  There is another method of population control, if necessary. The immunocontraceptives for deer has scientific knowledge behind it, and does not have to be used every year.  It is a much kinder way of controlling the populations of the gift of the deer that we have been given.  This trend of culling is going to spread in our province.  If it is successful here, it will probably move to other Canadian provinces. 

Please help us to stop this horror.  Deer were living here before we were.  Please sign our petition, and help them to keep living.