Ask The Farm

VICE: What the fuck is that smell?

Markus and Jen

: That’s a rotting moose carcass.

That’s disgusting.

I know.

Did it die of old age or something?

No, it was shot by a bunch of fucking assholes who think they’re natives. A few nights ago Jen and I were awakened at 11:00 PM by rifle shots and when we looked out the window we saw bright flashes of light followed by a series of gunshots. I thought, “Oh, it’s just someone jacking deer.”

What’s that?

It’s a mode of hunting that’s totally illegal. What they do is they shine a bright light (a jack light) into the fields at night and just start shooting at the pairs of green eyes (usually deer) that pop up, blinded by the light. This time it wasn’t a deer. The moose that you’re smelling is a cow moose. They shot it and it ran, wounded, back to where its little calf was, and proceeded to die forthwith.

Shit.

Brutal. We have a pick-your-own-strawberry operation on the farm, and on our season’s opening day the public was greeted by the stench of rotting flesh. I followed the smell and discovered this dead moose replete with vultures and maggots absorbing it by the second. (It’s pretty amazing how fast it gets devoured. Most of the flesh is gone now and it’s only been three days.)

Anyways, the tiny calf was orphaned and, without a mother to support it, will not survive long. It’s pretty sad. It approached people picking berries and hung around our yard for a while but we couldn’t capture it. It needs milk and will probably succumb to dehydration given that it hasn’t learned to drink from a stream yet.

And who did it? What did you mean by a bunch of people that “think they’re natives.”

Here in Canada there are all these idiots who take advantage of native rights. They caught the whiff of “native land claims” and other types of retribution and now they have casinos, tax-free consumer goods, and unimpaired aboriginal hunting and fishing rights. The worst part is they’re not even native. They have fucking blonde hair and blue eyes. If they can claim 12.5 % Indian heritage they can hunt and fish and basically kill whatever they want. Many of them shoot from the comfort of their pickup trucks, or at night with a jacklight, or both. This is not done to feed themselves but rather to enjoy themselves. They are useless lumps of human flesh with too much time on their hands and a welfare check in their mailbox every month.

But what about the real natives?

They obviously still exist but we don’t see them around here. The people I’m talking about are not natives who live in remote parts of the province where there is no industry and a desperate need for help. These are people with no connection to their so-called native culture. Twenty years ago they would have denied their native roots. I don’t get it. If someone is 1/8th Indian, what about the 7/8 Irish or German or French? It’s ridiculous. That’s the problem with Canada. They feel so guilty about imperialism that they go overboard trying to compensate.

Besides, we are all 1/8th something. This is just another case of political correctness running amok and we are losing sight of the need for a common rule of law without special privileges based on race.

It sounds like you’re saying even the real natives don’t deserve special rights.
Look, I don’t want to get into a debate about retribution and history. The point is this has nothing to do with natives. This is about people abusing a system that is begging to be abused. The result is I have a rotting carcass screwing up my strawberry-picking season and a orphaned moose literally dying of thirst. Questions about the non-city world can be sent to askthefarm@viceland.com.