Animal Cruelty as Public Policy, 1: Don’t Let Croton Become Westchester's Animal Cruelty Capital

OP ED

Deer have become a nuisance--but a nuisance and a hazard of our own creation. In 1930, the white-tailed deer population of the U.S. was about 300,000. Today, it is estimated at 300 million, the result of the disappearance of predators, conservation efforts, clamor by hunters, and the growth of suburbia.

Yes, suburban dwellers’ desire to surround their homes with attractive and eminently edible shrubbery has aided this population explosion. Who hasn’t seen deer locally on a lawn, backyard or street--usually in small groups of a doe and a young fawn or two? The impressively larger, antlered bucks are less frequently encountered.

To counter the problem of an abundance of deer, Croton is about to take steps to repeal its existing ban on hunting and to allow bow hunting of deer on designated properties, public and private, including the Arboretum, without simultaneously excluding the public. This is a serious and foolish mistake stemming from ignorance.

The hunting must be done from elevated tree stands (platforms raised and anchored to trees). It so happens that tree stands, even with safety harnesses, are the cause of more than 50 percent of hunting accidents in the U.S.

Bow hunters are a small group for whom hunting large game with bows and arrows offers a greater recreational challenge than hunting with firearms. The objective in bow hunting is to maim the animal using arrows tipped with broadhead points consisting of up to four triangular razor-sharp blades about 1.5 inches in diameter. These tear through flesh, cartilage and nerves, and induce bleeding by inflicting a huge gaping wound that causes the animal to eventually bleed to death, cruelly, painfully and inhumanely.

Croton proposes to test the proficiency of prospective hunters in target shooting at a distant target. But the first instinct of the wounded animal is to flee, and the Village should also test their ability to track a wounded animal through woods or backyards to the place where it expires. Less severely wounded animals may travel for miles, especially if actively pursued.

Permanently effective contraception techniques have not been devised, but deer could easily be trapped in large, baited boxes or sedated by game wardens using darts (as is done often on African wild animal reserves) and then humanely slaughtered. We insist on humane slaughtering methods for killing cows, sheep and other animals we eat. Why would Croton countenance cruelly killing the animals whose very overpopulation we have abetted?

Moreover, bow hunting from tree stands in Croton is no solution to the countywide deer problem. Proponents refer to “the Croton herd,” as if to give the impression that the deer live in herds like the grazing buffalo of the Old West. Nor is there a “Montrose herd” or “Cortlandt herd.” There are no regular deer denizens of any locality. Deer are omnipresent and roam at will without regard for administrative boundaries. You could exterminate every deer found in Croton today, but others would soon move in from elsewhere to feast.

If Croton were genuinely serious about culling the deer population, it wouldn’t be resorting to the cruelty and inefficiency of primitive bow hunting to provide recreation for a small group of individuals in the name of ethical conservation. I am surprised that someone has not suggested that we go farther down the evolutionary scale and club the animals to death, caveman-style.

As for my credentials to speak on this subject, I am quite knowledgeable about hunting, having been a publisher of hunting, shooting, fishing and outdoor books, including the perennial bestseller “Shooter’s Bible.” But the issues at stake here have nothing to do with the pros and cons of hunting. They are more about what is happening to the Croton I knew.