It wasn't a good omen for Lincoln's defenseless fawns and does. Last
week's Conservation Commission meeting was the first to be held in the
Hartwell Multi-Purpose Room since the commission announced restrictive
dog-walking regulations at Mt. Misery.
Then, commission members merely demanded that dogs be leashed. This
time, the topic was hunting deer with bows and arrows on town
conservation land. They were seeking resident input on whether or
not the practice should be permitted.
Considering that Bambi's life was on the line,
the meeting was thinly attended. One of the commission's co-chairmen
wasn't able to attend. He was off trekking in Nepal, presumably
without his bow and arrows. The other co-chairman was present, but
his comments and those of other commission members made it clear that
Bambi's fate hangs in the balance of a committee split opinion.
Supported by Conservation Commission Administrator Tom Gumbart and
some of the commission members, arguments for allowing deer hunting go
something like this: 1) the deer carry ticks which cause Lyme Disease,
2) the deer can cause accidents when they recklessly run across busy
roads, in front of speeding cars, without first looking both ways, and
3) the deer graze and nibble on Lincoln's vegetables, ornamental
shrubs and other landscape plantings without first paying for them at
prevailing salad bar rates.
Gumbart began the meeting by highlighting the deers' faults (see
above), then extolling the solution: kill 'em. If you think that
solution is too Draconian, don't worry. In an effort to level the
playing fields, firearms won't be allowed. Only bows and arrows. And
it's not like bands of armed hunters will be roaming the woods.
Rather, hunters will be required to shin their way up trees and take
aim from elevated deer stands. And they wouldn't be out there all day
long. Mostly at dawn and dusk, when the deer are active.
Sudbury now allows deer hunting on conservation
land and, according to Gumbart, it has received no negative feedback
on the practice, at least not from Sudbury's human population. Yet
therein lies the problem with the argument to allow deer hunting on
Lincoln's conservation land: all the data and evidence used to support
that argument is purely anecdotal.
There is no data showing that Lincoln's deer population is too large,
nor even that it is growing. Gumbart guesstimated that Lincoln has
16-20 deer per square mile (equal to between 232-291 deer), but nobody
knows for sure. He'd prefer to cull the herd down to 6-8 deer per
square mile (a maximum of 116 deer), but nobody's been tagging them
and nobody's taking a census. I walk in the woods almost every day,
sometimes early in the morning, sometimes towards dusk. If there are
almost 300 deer roaming Lincoln how come I rarely see them?
The commission pointed out that these dastardly deer also eat the
understory, the foliage used by ground-nesting birds. But there is no
evidence that these birds have been left homeless. It's a similar
argument to that used on unleashed dogs (that they used to trample
that same understory). Will Lincoln's ground-nesting birds ever
be safe?
Regarding public safety, the commission admitted
it had no hard data on the number of deer-caused traffic accidents and
no idea whether or not the problem has worsened over the last few
years. And, while deer surely carry ticks, there must be a gazillion
of them lurking under the fallen leaves. Every time I walk my frisky
puppy on Lincoln's trails he attracts them by the dozen without
bumping into any deer.
And what about the killing method? Can there be anything more cruel
and painful than being hit by an arrow? Especially when the arrow
only wounds the animal. Gumbart acknowledged this when he said of the
practice, "it's not painless, but it's part of hunting." But, with an
arrow, the deer ultimately die by bleeding to death. That rarely
happens instantaneously, even with the truest of shots.
The commission promised the implementation of a
hunter education program and other safeguards, but I would be very
nervous walking my dog, which has a rather bushy white tail, on town
conservation land, knowing that there could be 30, 40 or even 50 armed
people at any given time, as there are in Sudbury, lurking in the
trees above.
Many more steps can be taken before reaching the drastic decision to
hunt Bambi. Real data should be collected; deer birth control methods
should be explored; and the commission should be required to prove to
Town Meeting's satisfaction that bow hunting is the most effective
means of deer control.
My cat was eaten by a coyote, but I don't think we should hunt those
pet predators. Beavers have flooded the wetlands surrounding me, but
I don't advocate killing those buck-toothed pests. Canadian Geese
poop in our drinking water supply and yet we don't blast them out of
the sky. Why pick on Bambi?
