Is it wrong to kill animals for sport? What if it’s the last wish of a child who’s terminally ill? These questions are central to The Harvest, a new documentary by Charlottesville filmmaker Gabe DeLoach.
DeLoach, the education director for the Charlottesville chapter of the Virginia Production Alliance, was looking through one of his father’s hunting magazines when he saw an advertisement for an organization called Hunt of a Lifetime, which helps young people with terminal illnesses take a dream hunting trip.
The Harvest was a mostly solo project for DeLoach, who accompanied three teenagers on what they believed would be their last hunt through the organization. "The hunter subculture is really wary of people trying to make them look bad," says DeLoach. "They’ve got a lot of problems with animal rights activists."
Trailer and explanation of Gabe DeLoach’s The Harvest: A Story About Giving.
"Sorry, This is Not An Anti-Hunting Film," DeLoach writes on the film’s Kickstarter website, where he hopes to take care of some of the costs that have sprung up in post-production. Those include the cost of hiring a photographer at the Louvre to photograph a Bruegel painting for the film’s art. (Sixteen days remain on the campaign.)
In 1996 a 16-year-old boy with terminal cancer organized a bear hunting trip in Alaska through the Make-a-Wish foundation. When animal rights activists cried foul, Make-a-Wish ultimately stopped funding trips that involved hunting or shooting. Hunt of a Lifetime was founded in its wake.
"I think you’re going to find that there’s a lot of hunters and nonhunters who may not agree with the way we portray the subject matter. I have a feeling that showing more of the more gory stuff, that some people will think that gives fuel to the fire for antihunters."
But taking sides is not the point. "Showing more of the brutal aspects of hunting is a way to show how death and pain directly affect the child hunter who must face the possibility of death themselves," wrote DeLoach in a follow-up e-mail.
The movie should be out next month, DeLoach says.
Check out some more footage here.
