Tuesday - January 29, 2008

Deer Me!

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. - On a hilltop with breathtaking views of New York’s skyline, sharpshooters perched in trees took aim Tuesday at white-tailed deer, a species being crowded out of one of the nation’s most densely populated areas.

Ok, let’s get our biases in order right off the bat. The poor widdle bambis are being forced out by suburban sprawl. TOTAL LIE. I grew up in that part of the country; back in the 60s and 70s there wasn’t a deer to be found anywhere. East Coast deer had been hunted to near extinction by the early part of the 20th century. It’s taken them a long time to rebound, but boy have they ever.

The problem is common enough in New Jersey’s suburbs, as it is in other communities that have brought in marksmen to thin the herd: When their numbers get too great, the gentle animals destroy the forest, spread Lyme disease and pose a hazard for drivers.

But perhaps nowhere else have the trained shooters been so close to so many people as they are on the South Mountain Reservation, a nature preserve bordering hundreds of high-priced homes in the thick of the country’s most crowded state.

If they’d let me, I could shoot 5 or 6 a night from my back porch here in my condo park. Every night they cruise by, bold as brass, not 20 feet away. NJ deer aren’t tame, but they’ve adapted to super-suburbia amazingly well.

“I could come out on my deck and get shot,” said Sharon McClenton, a 42-year-old teacher whose house in West Orange butts up against the preserve.

Fear! Fear! Panic at the remotest of possibilities!! Sharon neglects to mention that she goes out to “Furry” parties 3 nights a week and uses the party name of “Dasher”. So there’s hope, at least, that her dream will come true.

Officials and many other residents insist, to the consternation of animal rights activists, that the hunt is necessary.

“There are clearly too many deer for this environment to handle,” said Michael Jaffe, 65, who normally walks through the reservation with his dog Charlie.

On Tuesday morning, shortly after at least one gunshot cracked in the distance, the two were forced to stroll the side streets bordering the scenic preserve because it was closed for Essex County’s first deer hunt.

Forced. FORCED!! by The Man. To walk on public streets (and thus again FORCED to use the Puppy Pooper Picker Uppper^tm) instead of walking his Lotza Shitzu in the woods. Cuz it’s wabbit season. duck season. Evil Sniper Season!

The 10-day hunt will take place each Tuesday and Thursday through Feb. 28 throughout the roughly 3-square-mile preserve, an oasis of woodlands, streams and trails that was famously used as an outdoor backdrop for Thomas Edison’s early movies and even “The Sopranos.”

Up to a dozen specially trained hunters at a time will be perched at least 20 feet up in trees and are required to shoot downward to ensure that the bullets go harmlessly into the ground.

Yeah, after passing harmfully right through the deer’s heads

The rules also require them to set up a minimum of 450 feet _ a football field and a half _ from the nearest homes, a mix of colonials, Tudor-style, and Queen Anne-style houses and sprawling mansions on tree-filled lots _ many of which have back yards looking into the reservation.

Those measures didn’t make McClenton feel any safer as she waited Tuesday for her pre-dawn bus to the New York City school where she teaches second-graders. She questioned whether the hunt was necessary.

“I haven’t seen an abundance of deer, quite honestly,” she said.

she said, as she extended her 4 part white cane and tapped her way along. You can’t drive 3 miles on any highway in this state and not see a dead deer, any time of the year. They are everywhere. Truly, the Official State Animal, Bird, and Insect all ought to be on one T-shirt: dead deer by the side of the road, being eaten by turkey vultures and swarmed by a cloud of flies.

County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr., who has pushed for the hunt, said the preserve can sustain about 60 deer, but estimated 300-400 were living there. The goal is to kill about 150 of them.

So 400 deer live on 2000 acres; 5 acres per deer. It’s a wonder they haven’t all starved to death by now. Of course, Jersey Deer can eat anything. The effers are half goat, I swear. They’ll eat your entire garden in one night, and then come back the next night and finish off your shrubs and trees. I bet they’d eat the siding right off your house. I’ve heard they go through the dumpsters at McDonald’s after closing and fight over the leftover McSalads.

“The residents of our county will hear shooting, and there is no reason to panic,” he said.

Got it figured out? Shots from the wood: no need to panic. Shots from the hood: Panic! Quick, pass another gun control law!!
Or, since these guys are Official State Animal Control Culling Agents, they could be issued silencers. Oooooh, that would be sweet!! Let’s give them High Powered Sniper Rifles too!!

DiVincenzo said 13 deer were killed Tuesday morning on a total of 15 shots.

“It worked perfectly,” he said. “There were no incidents whatsoever.”

Hunters killed 50 more deer in the afternoon, bringing the day’s total to 63, according to county spokesman Anthony Puglisi.

If they continue at this rate, in 10 days they’ll have killed them all. Twice over. That’s when they’ll find out that it’s really 1200 deer living there instead of the estimated 300. And as soon as this bunch are offed, all the other municipalities will engage in some Midnite Deer Dumping (NJ didn’t learn anything from watching the Sopranos. The Sopranos learned from watching NJ), and within a month this park will have twice as many deer as before.

Throughout the hunt, the meat from the kills - Tuesday morning’s shoot alone produced about 2,000 servings of venison - will be donated to needy families, officials said.

who will probably sue, because their feelings are hurt because the nanny state is forcing them to eat road kill. Woods kill. Whatever. Believe me, they’ll complain about it.

Animal rights activists call the culling barbaric, and say officials should explore other methods such as contraception to control the animals’ numbers. Authorities used to trap the deer and then move them out of the preserve, DiVincenzo said, but many deer would die in transit and fewer places wanted to take the animals.

Hey, I’m fine with doing it the kind, gentle, natural way: let’s import a few hundred big hungry bears and wolves and let them loose. Besides, you can think of this hunt as a kind of Lybrel for Jane “Doe”^tm contraception - feed them just one lead pill once, and they’ll never breed again. Ever! (I knew I could work the birth control thingy into this somehow)

Essex County, which includes Newark, has about 6,300 people per square mile - almost 80 times the national average - making it the state’s second-most densely populated after neighboring Hudson County, according to 2000 census figures.

Newark has so many people in it that the rats feel squeezed in. And in the middle of that, the deer are breeding like mad. Sure sounds like “a species being crowded out” to me.

Original article here.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/29/2008 at 10:58 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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