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Brett
Citizen
Username: Bmalibashksa
Post Number: 519
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 15, 2003 - 9:35 pm: | 
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Harpo: I understand if you feel that hunting is not the best way to handle problems. Personally I think it’s a pretty stupid sport. The point of my post was that I had a real life experience that in my mind proved the solution to a problem.
And as every scientist will tell you reading the studies is great but sometimes you have to prove it. In my mind we did prove it, 0 cases in two years.
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ffof
Citizen
Username: Ffof
Post Number: 1736
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 9:07 am: |
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If I use mouse traps in my house to cull the mouse herd, I actually lower the mouse population. Amazing how that works. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 335
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 12:00 pm: |
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I say blast them. And the bears, too, if they show up. The balance of the whole park is more important than the individual experience of each deer. I'd like to see some plants below the browse line. I just can't sympathize with the animal rights position on these matters, and I think it really hurts the environmental cause.
Audubon was a crack shot, and he didn't paint those birds from life. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 337
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 4:51 pm: |
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Deer in Wash DC Subway |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4074
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 8:40 am: |
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Harpo, I hope you aren't now advocating wolves in SMR. 
I read an interesting study on reintroducing wolves into the Adirondack Park in upstate NY.
About 18,000 deer die of starvation in the area every year. If wolves were reintroduced they would kill and eat about 4,000 deer per year. However, somewhere short of 22,000 deer would die every year because the wolves would prey on the young, ill, lame and old, who would die of starvation anyway. You can probably make a similar arguement about hunting, although hunters take the best trophies they can find.
Another interesting article, from the NYTs I think, concerned a study of big horn sheep in an isolated area of Canada. Over the last ten or so year around 60 sheep were killed by hunters. My recollection is that the flock being studied was around 900 head. During the same period the average weight of the sheep declined as did there horn size, the trophy head being the main reason people hunt these animals.
Me thinks hunting is a mixed blessing and has to be combined with other methods to keep deer (and other) herds to a level where they are in balance with their enviornment and don't cause the damage they have caused in the reservation. As Themp points out SMR is pretty much free of understory growth.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 1071
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 2:51 pm: |
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JCrohn,
Were you counting on people not reading the original article?
Here's the part JCrohn left out for those interested:
"Rand said the Maine research team found other mammals, such as rats, and migrating songbirds, helped to spread the disease bacteria, even in the absence of deer.
"This was the case on Matinicus Island, where Rand said there are no deer, but the team has found small numbers of ticks.
"The Monhegan study did not show that removing all the deer eliminated the risk of the disease, Rand emphasized.
"Right after the deer were taken off, there was a great increase in ticks out trying to feed on people. They didn't have any deer to feed on," Rand said. "After the two-year tick cycle came to an end, the numbers have fallen off dramatically and are very low indeed."
There a huge difference between an increase or reduction in the number of Lyme infected ticks and the increase or reduction in the number of Lyme infected people. The article you quoted does not establish any reduction in human Lyme disease, and it certainly not does not show that hunting or culling deer reduces Lyme. In fact, the article shows figures stating that the rate of Lyme disease in humans has been increasing in Maine while also reporting that more communities have been talked into allowing hunting. I am not saying hunting increases Lyme (although it ofen increases the number of deer). I am pointing out you are mixing apples and oranges.
The most dangerous moment for human beings with respect to Lyme disease is when the adolescent tick drops off the smaller mammal on which it has been feeding and looks for a large mammal with a bigger blood supply. The adolescents who don't find a large mammal don't survive. The total number of infected ticks in an area is less important that the number of infected adolescent ticks looking for a host, as the article notes. " While many people consider July, August and September to be the time of year to watch for ticks, Holman said the spring is the worst, when the adult deer tick is looking to feed on a host from April until June."
The American Lyme Disease Foundation has endorsed the use of a device invented by the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA called a four-poster which kills ticks on deer as a means of reducing Lyme Disease because the Foundation has stated publicly it considers culling programs ineffective in reducing Lyme. There is simply no basis for your conclusion that the unpoliticized scientific community believes killing or elimination deer is a sound strategy for reducing the risk of Lyme disease.
To quote from the USDA website:
"People and deer will be able to live together without fear of Lyme disease," says ARS entomologist J. Mathews Pound. Pound is optimistic because he, ARS agricultural engineer J. Allen Miller, and ARS biological technician Craig LeMeilleur at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville invented the four-poster as an alternative to eliminating deer populations or applying chemical sprays to the environment."
And from the same article:
"When I found out about the four-poster, I immediately started the licensing process," says David Weld, executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, which is forming a subsidiary company to market the four-posters.
"Thanks to the American Lyme Disease Foundation, Lyme disease has become a household word. Although there is currently one Lyme disease vaccine on the market, its effectiveness hasn't been established for total disease prevention. For more information about Lyme disease, see the Foundation's web site at http://www.aldf.com.
"In terms of having an impact on Lyme disease risk over a community-based area, the four-poster is the only current technology I know of that can do the job," says Pound (the ARS scientist). "I believe we are having an impact on tick populations in the Northeast, and there's still time to reach our goal."
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 1072
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, December 19, 2003 - 3:09 pm: |
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bobk,
I'm having a hard time following the numbers in your post, but if your point is that it is not wolves, but starvation, that controls deer population, that's what I've been saying all along.
I've also been saying that I don't think we should have tax-payer funded programs to save starving deer.
I'm not advocating wolves in SMR, but unlike some, I don't think nature can be controlled and they may show up on their own. It's been fascinating reading that wolf webiste I linked to above. Wolves don't turn to eating livestock or people unless they run out of wild game.
I'd say that's a great argument for not shooting deer in SMR. 
Please understand there is a difference between hunting and "culling" that goes beyond mere "sportsmanship." A company that is hired to shoot deer in a suburban area contracts to meet a goal of XX many deer by date certain. Their contract doesn't get renewed and they don't make money unless they produce XX many carcasses. So they just shoot any deer that comes into sight, regardless of sex and age, and what type of deer you shoot makes a difference as how fast the remaining deer will then reproduce.
As for "balance" in SMR and a missing understory, there has never been a study of the understory of SMR in the entire history of the park or its prior life as a logging site. (How could wild turkeys have re-emerged there recently without an understory? Wild turkeys are ground nesting birds.) There is simply no scientific evidence to demonstrate that deer are responsible for SMR being "pretty free of understory growth." It could be an old wives' tale, like gangs at CHS. (It's amazing how quickly that story has fallen apart.)
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Copihue
Citizen
Username: Cop
Post Number: 188
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 3:50 pm: |
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We have killed all wildlife in our environment, and we are talking about killing some more. Killing is awful, dying unnecessarily is tragic. Deer, wolves and other creatures have the right to live in New Jersey. I much rather see a deer than another Beemer on the road, a bear over anther ugly house or even a beautiful house. If we leave it up to you all pretty soon the only wildlife we will have left are rats and ticks.
Pack your own chute.
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sbenois
Citizen
Username: Sbenois
Post Number: 10535
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 4:05 pm: |
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Kill the freaking deer already. They're a nuisance.
---> Brought to you by Sbenois Engineering LLC <-
Hey, it also wouldn’t look good coming out of a motel with your wife’s best friend saying you were just planning a surprise birthday party for her husband...- Arturo November '03
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tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1982
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 4:08 pm: |
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Copihue,
Are you suggesting that I don't have the right to hunt in rural areas? Hunting in Essex County is not a good idea, but there are still places west of here where hunting can be done safely. |
Copihue
Citizen
Username: Cop
Post Number: 189
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 6:40 pm: |
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I hear that the hunting in Minnesota is good. It's a beautiful state too. Go there.
Pack your own chute.
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tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1985
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 9:55 pm: |
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Hunting in Pennsylvania used to be good too. Unfortunately, practically every place I used to go hunting there is now overgrown with McMansions. |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1987
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 10:02 pm: |
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http://www.game-revolution.com/download/pc/sim/deer_hunter.htm
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4097
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2003 - 7:22 am: |
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Harpo, I think the major point I made was that 18,000 deer starve to death in the Adirondak Park every year. This is not a nice death.
As far as SMR is concerned, take a walk and look around. Most of the understory is gone. Long term this will lead to the end of the forested areas in the park because the trees can regenerate. There is one section near the top of the mountain not far from the public works facility off South Orange Area where the trees are dead and not regerating. I am not going to curse the deer for this since I am not sure this is the cause, but this isn't encouraging.
The number of deer in SMR should be kept to a level that is sustainable without destroying the reservation. How that is done is an open question, although I don't support open hunting there.
Tjohn my young teen nieces and nephews love the game you are showing. They can hardly wait until they are old enough to hunt with their dad up in the Catskills!!!! |
Copihue
Citizen
Username: Cop
Post Number: 190
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2003 - 9:13 am: |
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I have been walking the SMR every day with my dog for nine years, and the problems with the park are many. Nobody seems to be managing those public lands. The maintenance seems to be limited to cleaning up after the weekend picnicers. Every storm there are trees which go down on the trails, and nobody clears them. There is poison ivy on some of the trees, and I have to completely avoid those trails when a tree comes down. On a windy day, you can hear the trees creaking, and one day it is going to fall on top of somebody, but I have NEVER seen ANYONE working on the trails: the trees or anything else in that park. There is a group of volunteers which looks over it, but I am not sure exactly what they are doing. To me it looks as if the park is neglected. Nobody is looking into the long term or short effects of anything, Bobk. The deterioration is slow, but it is definitely real. I pick up garbage in the trails, and my walking partner brings his garden clippers to clear the path for us, but I don't see anything done to take care of the trees or the wildlife. There are so many broken beer bottles near the fall, that I only went there once with my dog, she got a deep cut in her paw, and that was it for that part of the park for me. I know other dog walkers who collect nothing but glass. I don't know who donated those lands, but if they could see what has happened, I am sure that they would cry. There is no comparison between SMR and the Great Swamp, for example, or some of the state parks in the Pinelands or on Rt. 23. We care so little that at this rate we will probably end up astroturfing the park in twenty years, because there will be nothing left. We are loosing that resource and nobody seems to care.
Pack your own chute.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 833
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2003 - 2:28 pm: |
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Harpo, please provide evidence to the contrary if possible, but as far as I'm aware, the 4-poster is still in development or else not widely used in our area. At the beginning of the five-year study of its effectiveness, it didn't work so well in the northeast as in Texas, where it was first developed. Seems deer in the NE sometimes prefer acorns to the corn bait used in the 4-poster, and when they do take the bait the larger, more numerous northeastern deer eat huge amounts of it and use up a great deal of acaricide in the process. At NE sites, studies of the 4-poster saw tick reduction after 3 to 4 years, as compared with 2 years for the deer reduction study I cited.
Given the questionable nature of feeding deer in the first place, compounded with the problems of deer-overpopulation unrelated to Lyme (not to mention the cost of 4-poster tick reduction methods, public resistance to permitting pesticide use on personal property, or the fact that it's only a matter of time before deer ticks are resistant to permethrin), it seems killing ticks ultimately may not be preferable to killing deer.
But your insistence that scientists do not support hunting deer as a means of reducing Lyme continues to perplex me. Scientists (such as those quoted in the article I linked previously) undoubtedly do believe that deer population reduction reduces the likelihood of Lyme in humans. If you want to split hairs over whether scientists who study Lyme support deer reduction via hunting or other means, then you're obfuscating for the sake of argument. Clearly, the preferred means of reducing deer in any given location depends on a variety of factors, including political ones such as public aversion to killing bambis, but the fact remains that scientists (and the state of Maine, and various municipalities) advocate deer reduction, in part or chiefly as a means of controlling Lyme.
Consider the following from a 1998 article about NJ nixing a deer shoot in Mercer county (http://www.pacpubserver.com/new/news/12-1-98/dead.html):
News of the attorney general's recommendation came to the Township Committee just as former Committeeman Tom Poole of Mason Drive appeared with news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was interested in studying the correlation of Lyme disease and deer in conduction with White Buffalo's reduction of the deer herd. Lyme disease is transmitted by deer ticks, but those ticks also attach themselves to mammals other than deer.
"If you reduce the size of the deer herd, chances are you're going to reduce Lyme disease," Mr. Poole said a CDC representative told him. "The only thing they don't know is how far you have to reduce the herd."
Clearly, the CDC was willing to consider deer hunting as a viable response to deer overpopulation; but politics intervened. Not so in the city of Philadelphia, where urban hunting has been permitted for at least the last couple of years in Fairmount and Pennypack parks, huge urban forests that were being decimated by burgeoning deer populations.
***
Tjohn: "Unfortunately, practically every place I used to go hunting there is now overgrown with McMansions."
Well, there are real mansions throughout Fairmount Park and you can hunt there anyway, if you can use a bow and arrow. (http://www.ljworld.com/section/outdoors/story/119867) Take a trip down to Philly and help the city's hired sharpshooters reduce the herd.
"We live more densely, so we have to be careful about shooting each other." -Tom Reingold the Prissy Pants
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 834
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2003 - 2:36 pm: |
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(Incidentally, I don't think this thread is going anywhere but 'round in circles and I'm getting too busy to post on MOL for a while anyway, so will have to leave future comments unanswered.)
"We live more densely, so we have to be careful about shooting each other." -Tom Reingold the Prissy Pants
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 1073
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2003 - 5:25 pm: |
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bobk,
Animals starve. It's been going on since time began. Most people don't want their tax dollars spent saving starving deer (why not starving birds?), especially if the remedy is shooting up the parks where they walk their dogs, commute and their kids cut class.
Copihue is right. I walk in the reservation all the time and see healthy understory but I also see problems the lack of maintenence causes, like dead trees, etc. Yes, deer eat acorns and other plant material in the understory. But to assert after years of drought, increased pollution, various tree blights and other environmental impacts that it is deer and only deer who are responsible for the degradation of SMR is just an anecdotal assertion on bobk's part, perhaps one you believe with all your heart, but which can't be a basis for shooting in a public park. Besides, shooting deer in SMR would be a "cure" worse than the disease for its Essex County users and residential neighbors.
sbenois,
Being a nuisance is setting the bar too low for execution. Could backfire!
JCrohn,
White Buffalo is paid to do deer kills all over the northeast, so if the CDC wants to study whether that reduces Lyme disease, I don't see politics stopping them. When the CDC endorses hunting or culling I'm sure we'll all hear about it, and I'm not going to stand in the way of necessary public health program, even ones that kill animals for safety sake. But right now (and for almost a decade running) no public health official or wildlife official I've ever talked to or read about, or the American Lyme Disease Foundation or Rutgers thinks that "removing" deer by whatever means is an appropriate way to spend taxpayer's money in an attempt to reduce Lyme disease, and most people recognize it could increase the risk to people. And I simply disagree with you that you article you posted says scientists in Maine think otherwise. In fact, you can go directly to the website of the two scientists from Maine Medical Center Reserach Center quoted in that article and see for yourself what the recommend for prevention and control of Lyme Disease. It's not removing deer.
http://zappa.mmcri.mmc.org/lyme/prevent.html
(You can do your own reserch on 4-posters. I'm busy too.)
This morning I was driving up Durand and noticed one large tom turkey and 3 large hens having quite a party. They were standing under a tree that had a bird feeder hanging from a high branch, and a very energetic squirrel was kindly knocking the seeds out of the feeder onto the ground, where the turkeys literally gobbled them up.
No point in sticking around for the "kill the turkeys" "kill the squirrels" posts, but to all, happy partying yourselves this holiday season and happy New Year.
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4128
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 8:30 am: |
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Personally I would prefer to see deer killed humanely rather than starving to death. I don't know how many deer starve to death in NJ every winter but I know a number of regular dog walkers in SMR who find remains regularly. I don't advocate open hunting in SMR because it is surrounded by built up residential areas. However, culling the herd is a viable option using professional marksmen and can be done at no risk to the public. Many of the stunted sickly deer we see around here are not pleasent to watch.
SMR is interesting because it started out as a man made preserve, but has reverted to a more or less natural forest. Trees dying and falling in that sort of a enviornment is natural and good for the forest. The death of large trees lets smaller trees develop. Unfortunately, because of the very reduced understory there are no small trees to grow to replace them in SMR.
I have spent enough time in reasonably healthy forests both as a kid and with my son and the Boy Scouts to recognize that the understory and browse line in SMR is not natural.
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weekends
Citizen
Username: Weekends
Post Number: 20
Registered: 1-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 9:40 am: |
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Harpo, your defense of the deer has literally clouded your vision, otherwise you could not state "I walk in the reservation all the time and see healthy understory". With the exception of scattered thickets of invasive knotweed and a few ancient rhododendrons, the understory doesn't even exist!
Before moving to Maplewood many years ago, my family used to take walks in a park in Englewood (where there are few deer, by the way). After an absence of many years, we went back last summer and were amazed and delighted by the diversity of plants and animals on the forest floor. In particular, we watched spellbound as a pair of birds noisily built a nest in a dense bush. After years of walking in South Mountain Reservation, we had forgotten what a healthy understory even looked like.
Harpo, no offense but you've forgotten, too. |
kevin
Citizen
Username: Kevin
Post Number: 147
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 10:18 am: |
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I see them sleeping on tree branches in my backyard at night....
Every single one of them is ready to be eaten.
{There are more, but I cropped the photo.}
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4130
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 10:41 am: |
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Kevin, to be sporting about it and to avoid birdshot in the meat may I suggest head shots with a .22? |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1992
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 11:21 am: |
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Bob,
With that many turkeys, I think a Claymore mine would be appropriate and sporting. |
jeffl
Citizen
Username: Jeffl
Post Number: 258
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 11:39 am: |
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If God hadn't wanted us to eat beef he wouldn't have made them out of meat. |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1994
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 11:44 am: |
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I saw a herd of beefs just the other day. I butchered one and served some fine roast steer. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4132
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 11:47 am: |
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Nah, I really hate it when I bite into a piece of bird shot. A fragment from a Claymore would certainly be even less pleasent and a bonus for my dentist. 
Head shots are the way to go. If you use a silencer the birds are so stupid you can probably get three or four before they get the idea!! |
kevin
Citizen
Username: Kevin
Post Number: 148
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 11:59 am: |
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Here are two of the buggers in the trees:
It's weird seeing them at night in the trees, backlit by the moon.
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Dave Ross
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 6008
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 12:03 pm: |
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quote:"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country....
"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."
Benjamin Franklin
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Cutter
Citizen
Username: Cutter
Post Number: 294
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 2:46 pm: |
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Plus turkeys are quite yummy with some cranberry sauce and a spot of mashed potatoes.
Bald Eagles? Eecch - too eagley |
Copihue
Citizen
Username: Cop
Post Number: 192
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 - 6:49 pm: |
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Did you know that the female bald eagle is bigger, more aggressive, faster and altogether much stronger and capable than the male, Ben?
Pack your own chute.
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