TORONTO—The Alberta provincial government plans to ban the practice of spearing wildlife after a video posted online showing an American killing a black bear with a spear sparked outrage.
The video was posted in June on the YouTube account of Josh Bowmar, who runs an Ohio-based fitness company, and shows him killing the bear on a hunt in northern Alberta. By the time it was removed from public view on Monday it had garnered more than 208,000 views.
The 13-minute video shows Bowmar launching a massive spear — with a camera attached — at a bear from 11 to 14 meters (36 to 46 feet) away and captures his jubilant reaction when the animal is hit.
“I just speared a bear!” Bowmar says on the video. “He’s going down. I drilled him perfect ... I smoked him.”
He later says he got “mad penetration. That’s a dead bear.”
Commenters on YouTube were livid. At least one comment threatened to do to the hunter what he did to thebear. Twitter users called the bear’s killing sick, inhumane, shameful and disgusting.
Alberta’s Environment and Parks department issued a statement, calling the spear hunting an “archaic” practice.
Spear hunting is already illegal in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.
