New York SWAT Team To Hunt Deer
BY Herschel Smith
10 years, 8 months ago
In what must surely be one of the more stupid programs ever conceived, a New York SWAT team gets to go hunting.
An Erie County city is bringing back a bait-and-shoot program to reduce a surging deer population that’s causing damage to property and hazards to motorists.
The city of North Tonawanda used the technique from 2004 to 2008 to reduce the deer herd. Now residents are complaining again about too many deer.
According to the Niagara Gazette the program will be conducted by four police SWAT team members between October and March in two undisclosed locations.
Alderman Eric Zadzilka said the city had 77 car-deer collisions in 2003, and only 17 the following year after the deer reduction program was initiated.
Mayor Rob Ortt says meat from deer killed through the program will be donated to the Food Bank of Western New York.
Because, you know, it must be bad policy to issue off-season permits to local hunters, and such. Because they aren’t special like the SWAT. And we need to find some way to spend all of that tax money.
I find myself wondering if the cops are going to use MRAPs and machine guns. Do they go deer hunting while tacticool?
On April 2, 2014 at 8:26 am, inquiring minds said:
Is it really a good idea to feed blood-lust of LEOs dressed in body armor and literally loaded for bear? Psychologically you are setting them up and reinforcing a propensity to shoot to kill.
On April 2, 2014 at 8:59 am, pjb1 said:
They already have that propensity.
M4’s using 5.56 FMJ ought to be just fine for killing deer, as long as you get enough hits with it. Their usual full-auto, spray-and-pray should work well enough. Instant hamburger…
Now that is sporting, ain’t it?
On April 2, 2014 at 7:17 pm, Josh said:
Only the King’s men may hunt the King’s deer in the royal forest.
On April 3, 2014 at 10:30 am, Tumbleweed said:
I guess it’s safer than hunting New York criminals!
On April 3, 2014 at 1:54 pm, Smarter_than_you said:
So instead of allowing local hunters the opportunity to enjoy their sport and the food provided by hunting we’re going to pay a bunch of tacticool yahoos overtime pay to go out and play Rambo with deer that are being led in to slaughter? The level of intelligence or lack thereof being shown here is staggering. No wonder no one trusts anything govermental.
On April 3, 2014 at 7:54 pm, s-wat? said:
You spelt “dog” wrong.
On April 5, 2014 at 4:42 pm, Alexander Davis said:
Not only do deer cause crop damage and endanger drivers, they also spread diseases which may be fatal. The deer tick carries not only Lyme disease but also potentially fatal babesiosis, anaplasmosis, and Powassan viral encephalitis. These diseases are on the increase along with the increase in deer population. Over 90% of tick eggs come from ticks on deer, which is why Lyme epidemics have been stopped by deer removal. To effectively lower tick density, deer density must be lowered to less than 10/square mile.
On April 7, 2014 at 8:23 am, RE Hafner said:
That is what hunting does, not waste meat like trigger happy badge carrying buffoons throwing away taxpayer money.
On April 7, 2014 at 12:22 pm, Alexander Davis said:
The problem is that hunters can’t get deer populations down to the low densities necessary to reduce tick populations. When deer density is less than 30/square mile, deer become smarter, more wary, and harder to hunt. Hunting seasons are designed to prevent this so as to boost the population of hunters.
On April 7, 2014 at 1:33 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Is this what they teach you in LEO school? Good grief. You need to get out more (or drink less kool aid). Most good deer hunters could shoot the hair off a flea at 300 yards, and would love to hunt year round and would willingly pay to do it. But according to you, hunters can’t get the populations down enough. So what do you recommend? A SWAT team to do it when hunters can’t?
Do people listen to themselves? Do they think at all before they write?
On April 7, 2014 at 4:38 pm, Alexander Davis said:
Many areas are hiring sharpshooters to reduce the deer population. Hunting is big business, and hunters like larger deer populations to make hunting easier, which is why hunting seasons and bag limits are so restricted.
On April 7, 2014 at 5:10 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Your response makes absolutely no sense whatsever. Really, you should think before engaging your mouth – or in this case, your keyboard.
The goal is to reduce the deer population, which as it stands presently is too large. So there is no reason to engage hunters because, well they like large populations. Er … or something. So there. Except … you just destroyed your argument.
Hunters are sharpshooters. Your just a LEO looking to justify being paid by the state to hunt deer rather than paying the state with your own money under restrictive rules for what gender you can shoot, when you can shoot (no shooting at dusk, etc.). Game wardens be damned. You have a badge just like them.
Because you’re among “the only ones.”
On April 7, 2014 at 6:09 pm, Alexander Davis said:
If hunting seasons and bag limits were extended so that the deer population was reduced by hunters to less than 10/square mile, I would agree with you, but it has been around 15 years since we have known that Lyme epidemics can be stopped by deer removal, and yet deer populations are still way too high. Are you arguing that restricted seasons and bag limits are not designed to maintain the (oversized) deer population?
On April 7, 2014 at 6:51 pm, Herschel Smith said:
This is becoming too complicated for you because of your commitment to your fault logic. This is simple, but I’ll go over it again slowly. If you want to kill deer, extend the season and tell the hunters about it so they can go kill deer. It doesn’t take a SWAT team to kill deer. Your own laws (season length, size, Doe days, etc.) are what limit the hunters to begin with.
Was that slow enough?
On April 8, 2014 at 1:26 am, Alexander Davis said:
You just don’t recognize that hunting is big business which is why extending the deer season to the point where the deer population is actually lowered to less than 10/square mile is easier said than done. Think about it. As Douglas Turner wrote in The Buffalo News 8/13/12, “In New York, white-tailed deer, alive or dead, clutter the roads and highways. They munch on people’s gardens, kill forest growth and foul suburban lawns. There are almost a million of them roaming the state, one for every 18 bi-peds. Yet politically, the white-tailed deer does not exist. This is because of the convergence of interest of gun-huggers of the National Rifle Association, hunters posing as conservationists and the sporting goods and guide industry which pockets more than $1 billion in sales and fees from those involved in the closely limited ‘harvests’ of white-tailed deer in the Empire State.”
On April 8, 2014 at 10:09 am, Herschel Smith said:
Oh. I see. Now your argument has transitioned to bashing the NRA and hunters who, as you would claim, are too ham handed to cull the deer population to exactly the point it needs to be. No, you can’t open the season in the spring or summer for one week or extend it several more weeks in the fall. You have to send SWAT teams out to do the job. Because, you know, their cartidges are different and somehow special, just like SWAT teams are.
Horse shit … and more horse shit … and even more horse shit, like all of the other manifestations of your argument. You are full of crap, just like your ideas. Deer don’t care whether they are hunted by “special” “we are the only ones” SWAT team members (what did you call them … sharpshooters … ) or hunters.
Like Josh said above, only the king’s men may hunt the king’s deer in the royal forest. Yours is an elitist mentality and you make up your logic to suit your felt needs. It is exactly why I will never even visit New York, much less live there. In the South we don’t have the problems you seem to have because we like hunters and we don’t try to make guns illegal.
On April 8, 2014 at 11:19 am, Alexander Davis said:
Perhaps living in the South, you aren’t experiencing the Lyme epidemic, which was caused by the deer epidemic. Lyme is difficult to diagnose since most people never see the tick that infects them. Even when properly diagnosed and treated, 10-20% have persistant symptoms such as crippling arthritis and brain impairment which can last for months or years. In 1930 there were 300,000 deer in the US. Today there are 30 million. I don’t care who removes the deer as long as it gets done. The point I’m making, however, is that since the hunting industry is big business, it is unlikely that deer density will be reduced through extending hunting seasons to a level at which a lot of hunters come back empty-handed. That’s not good for business.
On April 8, 2014 at 12:29 pm, Herschel Smith said:
I really do believe that they ought to go back to teaching logic in grammar school (Isaac Watts had a nice little primer on logic for grammar school), and at least make it a prerequisite for graduation from H.S. and college. I’m convinced that you understand the weaknesses of your arguments, you just don’t know how to correct it.
Of course you care who does the job of culling deer, or you wouldn’t be advocating that LEOs do it rather than hunters. So right there you’ve acquiesced to losing the argument that you started.
Moreover, you have variously presented a syllogism that looks something like this (although it has taken so many forms that it’s hard to track):
(a) The deer population needs to be culled in order to ameliorate Lyme’s disease (among other reasons). It is a good thing to cull the population.
(b) If we extend the hunting season, it still isn’t likely that the population will be culled enough to make a difference.
(c) Only SWAT teams can do the job.
(d) If we release hunters into the field to hunt, they will destroy the population, thus ending their desire to hunt in NY next season because they hunters want a big game population.
Opps!
Hunting is big business, so the population needs to be protected. But the population needs to be culled because of disease. Hunters can’t do it alone. But hunters will go too far and destroy the herd if we let them do it, so they really can do this job alone, they’ll just overdo it. I don’t really care who does it, but only the LEOs need to do it because ….. and around and around we go, where we stop nobody knows.
Again, I’m convinved that you see that you supply the defeaters for your argument in your own argument, but you can’t stop it because you know that your own argument is faulty. Therefore, you throw everything but the kitchen sink in. But this (in pedestrian parlance) is the leaky bucket problem. Slamming ten leaky buckets together still creates one gigantic leaky bucket.
Seriously. Go take a course in logic at the college nearest you.
On April 8, 2014 at 3:05 pm, Alexander Davis said:
I will discuss your points one by one.
(A) Correct.
(B) If the hunting season were extended year-round, with no bag limits, the deer population could be reduced by hunters to the requisite level assuming there were enough hunters who didn’t mind hunting scarce deer and were proficient enough to do so.
(C) Incorrect. Theoretically hunters could do the job.
(D) Certainly hunters prefer not to come home empty-handed day after day. As the deer population declines, deer become, as I said before, smarter, more wary, and harder to hunt. Now some hunters may like this, but most do not, which is why, since hunting is big business, it is very unlikely that the hunting season and bag limits will be extended to the level necessary to lower deer population to less than 10/square mile.
On April 8, 2014 at 4:08 pm, Herschel Smith said:
You’re missing the point yet again. Those weren’t my arguments. They were your own arguments, and I merely parroted them back to you. That is literally how confused your own arguments had become.
Stop while your behind. Really. Stop. You’re making yourself look worse each time you comment.
As one final remark, really, you should take a course in logic and listen to a professor tell you that you don’t listen very well, and make bad scores on tests until you slow down and become critical of your own work. Also, if your wife or supervisor gets this kind of nonsensical bluster every time they talk to you, you should learn to be less obnoxious and craft your thoughts more carefully.
Your notion that the reason that you need to send SWAT teams out to do this (because hunters will become bored, or something) is the most idiotic manifestation of your twisted logic to date. Really. Your thoughts are becoming more bizarre as time goes by.
Further comments will be deleted.
On April 7, 2014 at 3:45 pm, RE Hafner said:
The solution is having a special season, not turning loose a bunch of trigger happy government goons to shoot up the area and accomplish nothing as cops can’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside.
On April 12, 2014 at 11:50 am, bsidhe said:
If you took a basic hunter education course, skip to last bit.
Hunting seasons should exist for only one reason: conservation and preservation. The season is often fixed around seasonal issues, such as parasites, mating season, etc. The bag limit often changes based on perceived population, or other environmental factors. As long as these decisions are made by biologists or ecologists, hunting seasons are humane and necessary to allow for healthy populations. When politics gets involved, SWAT gets called.
Deer, or any other species, can be hunted into extinction wherever effort is applied. Hunting deer below a certain limit doesn’t turn deer into ninjas. What people may be referring is certain types (2+ year old bucks, etc) are hard to find. Its not because they are stealthy, but because they are in small numbers in an area as a result of a targeted cull.
Also, most normal hunters definitely want to bag a deer, but a lot just enjoy hunting (they call them hunters), irrespective of actually killing anything.
As for SWAT, its not bad practice I guess. But thats what happens when you legislate hunting to the extent of driving away normal hunters, and dismantle or criminalize a healthy gun culture.