it comes in pints?

I heard about that. Fucking morons, one and all.

"As God is my witness, I thought that deer could fly."

The coyotes on the East Coast migrated here via Canada and interbred with wolves. They exhibit some very un-Coyyote-like behavior such as hunting deer in packs. About once per week I hear them take down a deer in the woods behind my house and fight over the scraps.

They might be natural, but they are also a much greater threat to my small kids than any hunter, and any one that sets paw on my yard in broad daylight is going to regret it, but only briefly.

oh, yeah, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I was involved (about 10 years ago) with a private wildlands group that was dealing with deer overpopulation. The logical answer was to allow hunters on to the land to remove some of the deer (and also scare the remaining deer out into the surrounding areas where hunting was common - seriously, as soon as the first few shots of hunting season were fired, all the dang deer went into the preserve because they were safe from hunters there).

Some city-dweller-transplant, at the meeting where we were proposing the solution, objected to hunting because it was "cruel." The argument, they made was, can't we relocate the deer?

The deer expert for the group calmly explained that deer were more traumatized, and it was ultimately crueler, to trap, crate, and transport them (And after that - who would want more deer? There's overpopulation everywhere) than a quick death by well-placed bullet.

Then they brought up: but can't you just give them birth control? You know, lower the future herd size that way?

Again, the expert explained: it takes two injections, spaced (I forget how far apart) to make a doe sterile for the year. You have to be sure to catch the deer twice. And it's expensive. And it traumatizes the deer.

Fortunately, in the end, common sense won out and they allowed a hunt on the site. And guess what? It worked. And it didn't cost the wildlands group anything; in fact, hunters paid for the chance to hunt on the lands....

Part of the problem, I think is the former-city-dwellers' stereotypes of the hunter. From what I heard at that meeting, it seemed they believed all hunters were drunken idiots who shot at anything that moved....people were actually afraid the hunters would shoot their kids when the kids were waiting for the school bus, hundreds of yards away from the edge of the wildland area.

A couple years ago I did a rant about a local "humane" program to deal with the feral cats problem here. They trapped, sterilized, and then released the cats instead of euthanizing them. They actually came right out and said this:

"We take advantage of the fact that they have a poor survival rate in Minnesota. So what we do is trap, sterilize and return cats back to the wild so that by next spring the ones that survive will be incapable of reproducing."

Yeah, that poor survival rate is most likely from freezing to death, being killed by a predator, disease, or getting hit by a vehicle. That's really humane. Dumbasses.

"...as soon as the first few shots of hunting season were fired, all the dang deer went into the preserve because they were safe from hunters there."

How true, how true. The elk in and around Jackson, WY have the hunting/no hunting areas mapped out to the nearest inch.

And there's an amusing story about that place and elk, although it is a decade or more old; got it second hand, but my source is reliable....

Jackson Hole is a favorite spot for celebrities, "people of means", and trust babies to live "next to nature"; it's so over run with former-city-dwellers (talk about stereotyping!) that the natives call it "Little California". It's a classic example of people who think living next to nature is watching the snow fall in the mountains while sitting in a 5,000 square foot "vacation residence", complete with satellite TV and broadband INTERNET. And a wet bar.

Anywho, one such resident (an actor who shall remain nameless because this is merely reliable gossip) has a ranch there. And he liked the elk so much that he prohibited any kind of hunting there. To be fair, that's his property and his privilege to do. He also values his privacy.

But the elk picked up on this, and not only sought refuge during hunting season, they began to winter there.

One day, early in the winter, some state biologists came knocking, and offered to cull the herd for him, explaining that the vegetation on the guy's property would not sustain the elk through the winter. The guy declines the offer(somewhat less than politely, I am told), and the state bubbas go away to spend their budget on culling other herds with more realistic land owners.

Lo and behold, later that winter, the elk on that property eat up all the natural food supply. So they start in on the bushes, trees, shrubs, etc, that were planted around the house for landscaping. And they're nibbling on the wood as well...of the fences and buildings.

Suddenly, the elk aren't so endearing to this actor, who calls up the same state biologists, asking if they would come out and cull the herd.

The answer? "Sorry, we spent all of our culling budget already." Which was true enough, but still (I am told) ironic enough to be delicious.....

Since then, the land owner has to deal with the herd on his own (I think he feeds them in the winter, not an uncommon arrangement there).

Heh, heh, heh.

"We spent all our culling budget already."

Poetic justice.

One thing I've learned: if you're an outsider to an area, don't immediately dismiss advice given by people who've lived there all their lives, no matter how seemingly-poorly-informed or superstitious that advice sounds.

Hmm, that link about the National Park Service meetings is from my local paper and about my local parks. I didn't realize there WERE deer at the farm park until I was walking there a couple of weeks ago and saw a few at a distance--and I have no desire to get any closer to them than that. The quote about hearing gunshot and feeling "something beautiful's dying"? A little overwrought. I mean, I wouldn't want to witness that stuff, but there are good reasons to do it.

All this stuff winds up seguing into the whole "people are pollution" theme and it ticks me off.

Yup. Because of construction, I had to essentially drive an elongated S for about 10 miles to get 2 miles down the road today, and I saw three deer dead at the side of the road. This is Pennsylvania, one of the biggest hunting states in the nation -- they even close schools for the first day of dear season here. And we still have an overpopulation problem.

California's a little different. We have areas, primarily coastal, with very little hunting pressure and huge herds. Monterey area is particularly overpopulated, with large herds grazing through yards and anything else vaguely green.

Up country, there's much more hunting pressure and correspondingly smaller herds.

I can't remember where this happened - one of my professors in college told us about this ages ago - but it's the best deer hunting hunting story I've ever heard. Turns out, there was some place where the deer population was eating up the local farmers' soy crops, so the state loosened up the restrictions for hunters in response. So basically, a bunch of hunters got to go around shooting extra deer so that vegetarians could have their tofu. Sweet, sweet irony.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That laughter is why I love Ken.

Ken,
So many people just don't GET us as Californians.

Not thirteen. Shoot me.