50 Wolf Road
Albany NY 12233

"The Future of Deer Hunting in New York State"

The time has come for the DEC and other wildlife management agencies to face the reality that hunting is a dying activity, and change its focus to
address the demands of the stakeholders other than hunters.

In the past, all wildlife management focused on supplying the hunters with as many living targets as could be raised. The avowed policy of the DEC had been - and still is "maximum sustainable yield."

With the steady decline in hunting, and the population crash among hunters, evidenced by the ever-increasing median age of hunters - the time has come to take a fresh look at the very basis of wildlife management.

Why should wildlife be managed? And to what end?

Despite the few vociferous pleas for "more live targets, please," we have to look at the interests of the remaining stakeholders:

1) Owners and operators of farms, orchards, nurseries and other agricultural and other horticultural ventures,
2) The general driving public,
3) Hikers, and campers
4) The animal protective community and the environmentalists

All of these stakeholders would like to see a population reduction of
so-called "game" species.

The only constituents that keep demanding larger and larger populations of "game" are the hunters.

People who engage in horticultural ventures would like to see a reduction of game species because of crop damage and depredation.

The driving public and car insurance companies consider large deer
populations as an increased risk of deer-car collisions.

Hikers, campers, environmentalists and other naturalists want to see a
healthy, natural eco-system evidenced by bio-diversity, not an eco-system tottering on the brink of collapse for its dedication to procuring a
mono-crop of game species.

It is well known that the shooting of bucks (which is what most hunting
permits allow the holder to do) does not contribute to population reduction of the hunted herd in the long run. In fact, as most wildlife biologists
will attest, it will directly or indirectly increase the rate of fecundity, the birth rate, and the recruitment rate of the deer herd.

The time has come to manage wildlife not to accommodate the less than 4% (and ever diminishing percentage) of New Yorkers who hunt, but to pay heed to the demands of the population that are stakeholders in wildlife management in New York. If the agency insists on "going down with ship" then the time may be right to legislate for a reassignment of responsibilities for managing the wildlife that, by law, belongs to all of the people of New York.

Peter Muller
Vice-President,
Wildlife Watch

Response to news article on this subject:

July 13, 2000

Dear Editor,

According to your recent article DEC is alarmed that the number of deer is too high and the number of hunters too low. It appears that the number of hunters is the real concern.  The irony is that DEC has deliberately increased the deer population by adjusting female deer kills when there were not enough deer for hunters to shoot in some areas of the state. No matter what the situation DEC wants an abundant deer herd to be used as living targets in order to gain a plentiful supply of hunters and their license money.

Excuses to hunt deer include myths that hunting alleviates car/deer collisions and permanently lowers deer populations. On the contrary- a major insurance company notes that on the first day of deer hunts, accidents rise dramatically five-fold as terrified deer try to escape death by fleeing blindly into the roads. As for population control - autumn hunting only temporarily decreases the number of deer while paving the way for the increase of deer populations in the spring since the surviving pregnant female deer have more available food during the winter.  This is a strategy that state wildlife agencies actually depend upon in order to maintain a steady supply of deer to be hunted.

Rather than concentrating upon this unpopular "blood and bullets" policy, DEC's mission should promote non-violent methods such as immunocontraceptive studies, roadside reflectors which control wildlife road crossings and landscape guidelines. As we can see from the drastic drop of hunters, the public's attitude towards wildlife has changed - so too should DEC's.

Marion Stark
The Fund for Animals
POB 9029
Albany, New York 12209

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