A meat restaurant owner remains locked in battle with vegan protesters after he "attacked their sacred kale".
Toronto restaurant Antler specialises in native meat, including bison, boar, rabbit, duck and deer.
In December, owner Michael Hunter put a sign outside his restaurant saying 'venison is the new kale'. He told YouTube podcast host Joe Rogan this led to war.
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"This cyclist vegan rode by and took huge offence to our sign and all of a sudden one day all these protesters showed up," he says.
"We were just totally floored with why this was happening."
"You attacked their sacred kale!" Mr Rogan exclaimed.
"If you just didn't promote anything they were allowed to cycle by and dream of broccoli without any interference..."
Animal rights activists started targeting his restaurant to the extent police are needed to keep the angry vegans in line.
"They went from two or three people being peaceful to being 10-15 people not so peaceful," Mr Hunter says.
"It's when it turned not so peaceful, they were shouting at our guests, shouting in our door and really trying to harm our business that I kinda got fed-up."
In retaliation, Mr Hunter pulled out a deer leg and started butchering it right in front of the shocked vegans.
"We stood peacefully on public property with our signs; less than an hour into our protest Michael Hunter, owner of Antler, brought out the leg of a deer and began to carve it in front of us," vegan protestor Marni Jill Ugar wrote on Facebook post afterwards.
"Once the deer was cooked Michael Hunter sat back down at the window to eat the dead deer.
"Look in the window. Look at Michael Hunter. That deer was treated like a joke. That deer was an innocent animal who did not want to die."
This only made the situation worse. Mr Hunter told Mr Rogan the vegans have returned time and time again, abusing staff and customers in an effort to get their own way.
"They're basically giving us an ultimatum. We have to put their slogan in our window and they'll go away," he says.
"It's like, 'killing animals is wrong, they have feelings'."
But Mr Hunter says he's refusing to do so, condemning the vegans' actions as "eco-terrorism" and "extortion".
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