Canadian Seal Hunt

Seals are hunted for their hides, for either commercial or personal uses. Although it would seem that regulations for this are reasonably strict there are still countless reports of barbaric treatment when killing seals, including skinning the seals alive, sealers dragging seals that are not dead and still conscious across the ice floes with boat hooks and shooting seals with one shot and leaving them to die in pain since more then one shot will damage the pelt and ultimately is not worth as much.

In Canada, the season for commercial hunting is from November 15 to May 15 and is primarily for harp seals, with many of these being just weeks or even days old. The main hunt in Canada takes place in two different areas, and depending on which of these two areas that you go to determines when the main hunt takes place. In the Gulf of St Lawrence this is in late March and in Newfoundland, or “The Front” as it is more commonly known, this is during the first or second week of April.

The height of the hunting in the spring period is what is referred to as the Canadian Seal Hunt. The seal hunt in Canada is monitored by the Canadian Government and there are many regulations that exist, including specifying the minimum and maximum dimensions of clubs used and the minimum calibre of rifle and bullet velocity that can be used. However many animal welfare agencies would argue that these are not being adhered to.

Commercial hunting of infant harp seals and infant hooded seals has been banned in Canada since 1987 and only those from 12 to 15 days of age for harp seals are legally allowed to be killed.

The hunting of seals will always remain extremely controversial, with many animal groups wishing to see it completely eradicated, however whilst there is still a market for the pelts and many using them personally, it is hard to know if this will happen.