The white moose had wandered the woods near Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, for years, sacred to the Mi’kmaq and thus undisturbed. But when a handful of non-indigenous hunters came along last week, their first instinct was to kill it. They not only slaughtered the precious animal, but also posed gleefully for photos, which they posted immediately on Facebook and other social media sites.
Brandon Maloney saw the shocking spectacle as he stepped out for coffee on the Millbrook First Nation, near Truro, Nova Scotia. The hunters were parked outside, the moose heaped in the back of their truck. He approached the three men, who confirmed they had shot and killed the white moose.
“I’m a big moose hunter myself,” said Maloney, who is from nearby Indian Brook First Nation, a Mi’kmaq community. “But I don’t think they realized the seriousness of this.”
He gathered what words he could.
“I said, ‘We don’t shoot them,’ ” he told Indian Country Today Media Network.
The hunters told Maloney that the moose had been easy to take down, that they’d shot it in the Belle Cote mountain range on the western side of the Cape Breton Highlands. Maloney’s stomach turned yet again as they said that even the moose’s hooves were white. He snapped a photo to bear witness.
“Here they are sitting on a Native reserve with a white moose at the back of their truck at Tim Horton’s, showing off,” Maloney said. “They were all happy and excited at first, they were bragging.”
The sacredness of a white moose can only be compared to that of a white bison. Read the rest of this story….
Another story about the moose hunt: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/10/08/hunters_spark_outrage_after_white_moose_killed_in_nova_scotia.html