During his career as a journalist at News and on the show Investigation at Radio-Canada, Luc Chartrand has never been one to give privileges to anyone. Not even to hunters, brotherhood (and increasingly sorority too) of which he himself is a part. Some of his reports in the countries traveled by his peers, in Parent, in Haute-Mauricie, in 1990 or in Gaspésie more recently, had provoked the anger of many disciples of Nimrod, this mythical hunter of Genesis for whom freedom is n was not negotiable.
He therefore does not shoot blindly when he devotes many pages of The Great Hunting Experience (Québec Amérique), his half-essay, half-report published in May, to the ongoing debates on this subject. Is this activity which dates back to the dawn of humanity legitimate, even moral in the 21ste century ? However, it is mostly hunters who discuss in this book: is stalking with bait still hunting? Who owns the territories? What’s the point of the race for trophies, these animals being slaughtered only for their attributes? How to honor the game? The author dissects this last, more spiritual question, notably with a young Huron-Wendat.
“I was aware that I could be of interest to non-hunters, who seek to understand what is going on in the minds of their husband, friend, colleague or neighbor hunter,” says Luc Chartrand. But above all I wanted to write to hunters, so that they can find elements of understanding of what they do and why they do it. »
At a time when the ethical fate reserved for animals preoccupies many people — think of the deer of Longueuil — Luc Chartrand defends himself from trying to make socially acceptable an activity which, in the eyes of some, constitutes for humans the absolute link with the environment — “a pause for humanity”, he says, paraphrasing the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, author in 1942 of a famous treatise on hunting… although he was not a hunter himself.
“Seeing animals while hiking is one thing; understanding them to be able to track them is on another level. You are no longer a spectator of nature, but an actor. »
The portrait of the hunter of 2022 painted by the journalist and writer is far from the image left by filmmaker Pierre Perrault in 1982 with his documentary The luminous beast, a chronicle of a group of men’s moose hunting season marked by violence, intimidation, drinking and vomiting. It had caused a scandal at the time among the hunters, who maintained that the painting was not representative. “Current hunters are a reflection of their society,” says Luc Chartrand. I meet workers, business leaders, professionals, retirees, students…” More and more female hunters too: around 30% of new hunter certificates issued in 2019 by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks were intended for women.
The stories the author draws from his conversations with hunters—friends, country folks, urban youth, Aboriginal people, industry stars and legendary guides—present dimensions of the activity unknown to the layman. It talks about the environment, territorial protection, gastronomy (a lot of it), but also about philosophical and even spiritual approaches.
Luc Chartrand also underlines the arrival of a spontaneous generation of hunters, for whom the taste for wild life did not come from a family tradition, as it was the case for him. “We are seeing the arrival of urban youth, driven by ecological values surrounding organic and local food, with ethical ideals, who are seeking to reduce their consumption of farmed meat. Hunting gives a good option to these youngsters. Moreover, on Sunday mornings, several TV channels are populated by these new kind of hunters (Hooked on the hunt on TV5 and Unis TV, Quebec from a bird’s eye view and Chassomaniak on TVA Sports, to name just these shows) for whom the art of living linked to wood takes precedence over game harvesting.
The author joins the historian Yuval Noah Harari, who, in his book Sapiens published in 2011, argues that humans struck the worst deal in history when they traded freedom for security by trading hunting for herding.
“I have admiration for wild animals, for the freedom they enjoy. And when you hunt, you participate in this freedom. It is the privileged channel to get into the heads of free beasts, to be empathetic towards them and to understand the environment through them. Which makes it, swears Luc Chartrand, a demanding process. “Seeing animals while hiking is one thing; understanding them to be able to track them is on another level. You are no longer a spectator of nature, but an actor. »
Ethics are an intrinsic part of hunting, he argues: avoiding suffering, giving game a chance, abhorring waste, preserving nature and ecosystems, ensuring the health of hunted populations and other species. whose survival is linked to it. The laws governing hunting are strict, even if certain morbid rules have aroused more incomprehension than support in the past. Like the bloody era of moose heads on hoods, which disgusted many citizens. “It was a legal obligation! The authorities wanted to combat poaching with this practice by ensuring that what was hunted was seen. This regulation no longer exists.
If demonstrations against hunting are rather rare in Quebec, they are legion in France. In the United States and English Canada, animal rights associations are more vocal. “The divide between hunters and anti-hunters is widening, even in Quebec, with the rise of the animalist and vegan movements. I have no problem with people who don’t like hunting. But if it turns into proselytism, that’s another thing. »
Luc Chartrand wore a suitable forest green plaid shirt for the interview. Unbuttoned, it revealed a t-shirt displaying the various pieces of butchery not of an ox, like the images that one often sees at the butcher’s, but of a moose. Two beasts of similar dimensions, but with opposite destinies. “The success rate of a trip to the grocery store for animal protein is close to 100%,” he notes, while the chances of returning from a moose hunting trip with a catch are close to rather 10%, according to the statistics provided annually by the Ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs.
This is also one of the aspects that emerge from his essay: in 2022, killing is not essential for hunting to be successful. “An unsuccessful hunting trip remains an extraordinary adventure. But bringing back game is the motivation that guides the whole process. It constitutes the hunting experience. »
Is he a good hunter? “I’m very average. And how does it feel when you kill a beast? “Believing that hunters derive pleasure from it is a false interpretation,” replies Luc Chartrand. A complex mix of emotions emerges after the fatal blow, he adds, first a sense of great drama. “Then there is the satisfaction of accomplishment. Because it requires great effort, a long and difficult quest. »
In his book, his friend Marleu Vincent writes: “It is a moral question that all hunters must face. Killing an animal is a serious gesture, but it is the law of nature. You take it. Thus, if man can be a wolf for man, he can also be for moose or deer.