New Painting

Poacher's Signal, oil on panel, 24" x 24", $3,000.00, Steven Rhude, Harvest Gallery

Poaching was, and probably still is an underground pass time in many parts of the Atlantic provinces. Without naming names, I recall some locals in my past who did it just for "the devil of it", while others did it for more obvious reasons. Once a poor man's food, lobster now is synonymous with an expensive habit and a lucrative industry with exports all over the world. Every time I see someone purchasing some lobsters prior to a flight somewhere, I'm reminded of poachers I knew using bicycle wheels to trap lobster, or just diving in wet suits to return to the surface with a prize specimen. They still had to be careful of the watchful eye of Department of Fisheries and Oceans though, so signals were sometimes used in a two man operation when setting up an underground expedition for the big prize. 

Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

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