Cops Culling Deer Herds
December 6, 2007
Is this right? South Smithfield, North Carolina is using their police force to cull deer in the town that are chewing up people’s landscape. Town Manager Pete Connet says he didn’t want “every Tom, Dick and Harry out there,” so he said he erred on the side of caution and told his police department to go get the job done.
The chief of police there says the operation is only costing the town $3,000 and that if the town hired professional sharpshooters to do the job, it would have been $100 per deer killed. What about hunters? Oh, yeah! I guess those must be the “every Tom, Dick and Harry”.
But isn’t it nice. Each cop assigned to kill the deer get to keep one deer each and the rest get passed on to feed the hungry.
Tom Remington
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I’ve got to agree, that doesn’t really make sense. Hunters would have cleaned up the deer and paid to do it.
At least they’re giving excess deer to food banks. I guess that’s something.
I hear this everytime there’s a culling operation, whether it’s whitetails back East or wild hogs here in CA… “Let the hunters do it!”
Sorry, but while I like the idea of hunters helping out with deer herd control where possible, it’s just not realistic in a suburban environment.
First, how do you pick these hunters? Lottery selection? The police chief’s buddies? Open sign-ups?
As a town manager, mayor, or even resident, I would NOT get behind any such plan… there’s too much risk. One stray bullet can cost the town millions of dollars in lawsuits and expenses… or worse… someone could get hurt.
Cops are trained in the use of firearms in those conditions. Hunters are not. And while most of us are extremely safe, the risks of just having some kind of open selection of local hunters are too great. (I’d hazard a guess as well that many of the cops on the Smithfield force are also hunters, so you could call it a perk of the job… a well-deserved bonus in a job that deserves a few good days.)
As much as I defend our sport and the people who participate in it, there are an awful lot of folks out there who don’t need to be toting rifles or even shotguns in the city limits. Unless your selection process had some way of weeding folks out, then it’s not a good, or safe, idea.
Now, if NC had a program like Virginia and a couple of other states, where hunters can take specialized training and be “certified” to hunt in this kind of environment, then I could get behind the plan. But without that qualification, hunters, in general, are simply not suited to doing the work that has to be done.
Most towns that have worked WITH hunters and hunting groups to achieve the desired results have creative ways of using hunters. One aspect is as you mentioned, developing programs of which hunters can opt into a training course to be put onto a list. Then there is a multitude of ways in which to employ (use) people on that list.
Another aspect and one you didn’t mention is the use of bow and arrow. This is the most likely way in which urban areas opt for deer culling. There are bow hunting organizations eager to help. Once again, to be able to show proper training and efficiency in the use of a bow is reasonable.
Perhaps some, all or none of these and other methods have been tried, in which case a community needs to do what a community needs to do.
My father was on the local sherrif’s department and I’ve shot with many police. I can tell you it is a fact that the mere incident of having your name on a pay check from a police department does absolutely nothing toward ensuring a person is any particularly good shot. It is pretty safe to say they are above a minimum competency level but it by no means they are any particular “sharp shooter”.
The second portion of this is another “thorn” to me, that is the “feeding the hungry” with the fruits of the tax and labor of hunters, shooters, and sportsment who developed this resource. The deer herd is NOT just a give away worthless food source to hand out to welfare recipients as it if is other wise useless.
It belongs to hunters and the rest of the paying public. It not just another give away program for politicions to buy votes with nor is it the property of the police force to treat as their own private food bank.
Tom, I agree with you there.
If there’s a program where they can train and certify local hunters to perform this function, either with bow or rifles, then I’m all for it. I don’t know specifically about Smithfield, but in some other parts of NC (Bald Head Island, Wilmington, etc.) they’re doing a lot of the eradication with small-caliber rifles.
Bows can be very effective and are certainly safer in the residential areas, but there are downsides there too… like having to trail a deer into someone’s front yard, or having hit animals die under a suburban homeowner’s kitchen window. Like it or not, elected officials have to make these decisions, and they have to answer to the entire constituency. Public relations aspects have to be considered carefully, along with liability. Personally, I think it would be a hard choice, even knowing as much as I do about hunting and the effectiveness and safety of various weaponry.
The thing about Smithfield (I know the area pretty well) is that it’s one of those little towns that suddenly exploded as the nearby urban areas (Raleigh and Goldsboro) overflowed… so you’ve got a mix of urban refugees and small-town country folk living in the place. I don’t envy a Town Manager’s position of having to keep all of these folks happy.
When I was a kid, you could probably have shot those deer out of your bedroom window without a complaint.
Oh, and Jack Ryan…
While I know all too well that a badge is no guarantee of marksmanship (My dad was a cop too… and I heard and experienced the realities). I’ve seen an awful lot of hunters shoot too, and there are times when I’d feel safer being the deer rather than a bystander.
At the same time, if the mayor of my town announced a plan to cull the deer or wild hogs from our residential neighborhoods, I would MUCH prefer to hear that he’s planning to send in police officers to do it rather than opening it up for members of the general hunting population. Whoever does the cull should be able to demonstrate both marksmanship skills and safety. Badge or no badge.
Here in the region where I live, we have a group of hunters who have organized and attended specialized safety training so that they are sometimes called when the hogs start trashing local yards. It costs the taxpayers nothing, and the meat can be used as needed. Unfortunately, CA has not been very open to the idea of Hunters for the Hungry, and wild game meat is not generally distributed to hungry families or food banks. The hunters take what they want for themselves, friends, and families, and the rest goes to a rendering plant.
As to your opinion of distributing the meat to the hungry, what would you propose? Burying it in the landfill?
[...] First, there’s the discussion going on the Black Bear Blog, and now on Moose Droppings, about the town of Smithfield enlisting police officers to cull the whitetail herd in town. Of course, the preference of everyone is to present this as an opportunity to hunters, but that preference has to be tempered with realism. Most folks are going to be much happier knowing that law enforcement officers, trained to safely use firearms in the urban/suburban environment are doing the job. But there is an option of allowing hunters who receive similar (often better) training and certification to do the job. The question is, are there any hunters there with the appropriate training and certification? Follow this one either at Moose’s blog, or on Tom Remington’s Black Bear Blog. [...]
Any where they really want to put a smack down on a hog population they do it with traps. You will NEVER get a hog population under control with nothing but hunting. Probably not even if you hunted them with dogs. Traps catch them with absolutely no risk to any other animal or person in the area, whether in farm land or the city.
I would propose the meat be used in promoting hunting by using it in hunting promotion banquest such as Wheeling Sportman banquets. Many hunting organisations hold public awareness events and most state DNRs do public relations as well and this meat could be used to fund those and provide an opportunity for EVERY ONE to expirience wild game.
As a last resort it could be distributed by lottery to the public at large on an application basis. Then the welfare recipients can apply if there is enough left for a give away and take their chances along with the working public.
[...] up the story out of Smithfield about police hunting on duty that Tom already had it going on the Black Bear Blog and Philip at the Hog Blog also has it going as well. So let me see if I can shed a little more [...]
[...] tried just about everything including hiring sharpshooters and bow hunters. Earlier this month, I reported about one town in North Carolina that had resorted to using its police force to cull deer herds and [...]
[...] tried just about everything including hiring sharpshooters and bow hunters. Earlier this month, I reported about one town in North Carolina that had resorted to using its police force to cull deer herds and [...]
[...] More coverage of this here, at Hog Blog and Black Bear Blog. [...]