A Pair of Beauties from the NYT (Plus Deer Population Dynamic Geekery)

The NY Times has a fun pairing of pieces in today's online edition that sort of cancel each other out. I obviously like the Times, since I read it every day, and I like visiting New York City as well. But these appreciations are tempered by a constant amusement at New Yorkers' ideas about nature and their frequently absurd demands regarding government policies and nature.

In the first piece, it seems that some swans are unhappy with each other in Prospect Park. Well, duh. Mute swans are widely known to be the biggest assholes in the freshwater waterfowl universe (though pelicans have it all over them). The people are dismayed at this anti-social behavior on the part of the swans. The Times says that "despite residents’ frantic calls about the small war, city and state agencies have been hands-off."

Choice quotes:

...Ms. Titze and Mr. Bahlman said, they have traveled 45 minutes from their home in Sunset Park nearly every day, spending hours trying to protect the [swans] under siege [from the other swans].

...

Over the weekend, Mr. Bahlman and others wrestled with the swans and tried to move them to a smaller lake across a path. But one broke free, returning to the first lake, and they abandoned the effort.

People are also attempting to feed the swans while they do not have access to the lake. Maybe one of these people bothered to do the research and is feeding them the right sort of food, but usually when people try to 'help' waterfowl in this way they end up throwing them hunks of bread. A food which is not even remotely nutritionally appropriate for the animals.

I guess they have good intentions, so they aren't horrible people. But it is always frustrating to come up against this kind of ignorance when advocating for wildlife management that actually makes scientific sense. It's tempting to refer to this type as 'nature-lovers,' but at the end of the day I think that they're in love with an idea of nature that does not and never will exist.

The Times balances out this depressing nonsense (which, I should note, did not appear to editorially take the side of the nature fantasists) with a wonderful piece by biologist Olivia Judson on the geography of predation and fear. I really do recommend it.

There is a truck-load of research in North America on much this same thing regarding the effect of both elk and white-tailed deer on the survival of endangered plants.

However, I am uncertain as to how consistently this applies to deer here in Virginia, where the hunting of deer is a purely seasonal activity and predation by other animals is mostly focused on fawns during the first 6 weeks of life. There is no question that heavy human hunting pressure quickly results in deer avoiding a given area. But I have found, through what I confess to be my own observations rather than a scientific study, that this avoidance lasts no more than 6-8 weeks after hunting season ends in early January for my own area. Come spring with the emergence of newly sprouted or leafed out plants, deer density in those heavily-hunted areas tend to rebound to what they had been previously.

Certainly the shooting of deer in sufficient numbers is known to have an overall effect on density of plant life in both meadows and forest. But does human hunting of deer lead to the creation of these sorts of predator-centric islands of denser or more diverse plant life?

So that is my question. Whether the hunting of whitetail deer by humans under the current system has a meaningful impact on localized distribution and density of plant life and the insects that depend on those particular plants. Anyone's personal observations or referrals to a good study would be appreciated.

Enough Damn School Already

This past week, President Obama expressed his desire to see public schools cut back on summer vacation and extend the school day by as much as 3 hours. I understand the reasons for wanting this and I recognize the good intentions, but I am wholly against these policies as a national standard.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan summarized the main thrust of the argument thus:

"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here. I want to just level the playing field."

Well, there are also other countries that have no minimum wage and pay children pennies a day to work in sweatshops and those other countries have taken millions of manufacturing jobs from the US. By Duncan's logic, we should consider abolishing the minimum wage and child labor laws. I mean, if the main thrust of our domestic policy is to be 'levelling the playing field' versus other countries in various respects then it is going to be a race to the bottom in terms of quality of life in all sorts of ways.

Putting a kid in a classroom for 8 or 9 hours a day, all year round, is a serious quality of life issue. Some school is a good thing, just as some work is a good thing. Too much of either work or school damages one's quality of life.

I despise the attitude that the purpose of a child's life is the preparation for adulthood. Go to preschool 5 days a week so you can do well in Kindergarten. Spend 9 hours a day in school, 10 or 11 months out of the year for 13 years so you can get into a good college. Go to college and bust your ass for at least 4 years so you can have a degree to get a good job. Work all day long at your job, saving every penny you can so that you'll have enough for retirement 40 years later. Then maybe, just maybe you can have a few years of playing golf or something before your health gives out and you find yourself in a nursing home unable to do much of anything that you really wanted to.

When exactly, under the vision of American life proposed by people like Sec. Duncan, are we supposed to actually live? It's just one long race to buy the most comfortable coffin, isn't it?

Screw that. You listen to those people and do what they say and you will never be happy.

Childhood is an end unto its self. The purpose of childhood is to be a child. Kids do not belong in a state-run structured environment from dawn til dusk. They should be building forts in the woods, playing tag, racking up new high scores on computer games and throwing things at each other. Or whatever they feel like doing.

Enough damn school already. I'm already pissed off enough that my daughter has to be standing at the bus stop at the unholy hour of 7 am.

I can go along with having longer optional programs for kids at schools in areas that have high rates of poverty, where otherwise you've got a 6 or 7 year old coming home to an empty house in a neighborhood full of crime where they can't play outside and nobody is going to teach that kid anything outside of school. In those situations, I'm ok with that. It then has the effect of enhancing rather than diminishing quality of life. But as a proposed standard for all or most public schools in America, this is not ok.

Urban politicians needs to stop trying to shove their needs and values down the rest of the country's throats, just as suburban and rural politicians should not try to shove our needs and values down the throats of people in big cities. Whether its education or gun issues, people on all sides have no right to demand that the rest of America be just like them.

'Deer Hunting for Locavores™' - Book Update

My apologies for light posting recently. Within hours of leaving the country the motherboard and wi-fi capabilities of my laptop died, causing me to be essentially blacked out from the internet for the past 10 days or so.

I returned to an in-box full of email from people from all over the country attempting to sign up for my class on deer hunting for locavores. This morning I even wrote back to someone near San Francisco who wanted in.

Folks, I think that this enthusiasm is great and all, but not something to hop on a plane for.

The good news for these readers from around the country is that I am working on a book on this subject. Part of the reason for my trip to Germany was to get away from the usual distractions and get some intensive writing done (the fried motherboard was not helpful in that respect). So on the many airplanes that I ended up taking to get there (an emergency landing en route to Paris resulted in something like 5 or 6 separate flights to get from Charlottesville to Munich), people sitting near me on the planes would ask me what brought me to Munich. And I'd say that I'm trying to work on a book, and they would ask what the subject was.

Regardless of political persuasion, everyone thought it was a good idea. Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Greens, and Ron Paul types alike were all over it. Even the hard left people would start talking about Michael Pollan and how they are trying to eat locally and how either they or someone they know has thought about hunting for food but had no idea how to get going.

Hunting for food by ordinary people is not a right wing or a left wing activity. It is something that seems to be just inherently American.

We are somewhat unique in this respect, because when you look at most other countries they either killed off everything worth eating before the advent of the modern conservation movement (which was started by American hunters in the late 19th century), or they have a hunting tradition defined by people of noble birth. Those countries with histories of hunting rights only being granted to royalty tend to still have laws on the books intended to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for ordinary people to hunt for food.

I really like being in Germany and Austria. There is something very refreshing about not understanding a word that anyone around you says, on account of how so much of what usually comes out of people's mouths being so deeply inane and stupid. Not having any idea of what they are saying, I am able to think the best of them and feel generally benevolent towards them, owing to their beautiful culture of beer and precise machinery.

Yet it was also very good to come home to a place where I could walk outside on Saturday morning with my daughter, a shotgun over my shoulder, looking for squirrels and doves which we did not get but had a lot of fun looking for.

Wild Elk Coming Back to Virginia?

DGIF is considering a new regulation to ban the hunting of elk in Virginia.

As someone who has made several extended trips to Wise County in order to hunt the elk (unsuccessfully), I actually like this idea.

The back story here is that the state of Kentucky began an elk reintroduction some years ago near their border with Virginia. Kentucky's herd has since blossomed to over 5,000 animals and is an absolute success. They issue about 500 tags to hunters each year, which has more than paid for the cost of bringing the elk back. Tennessee also has a smaller elk reintroduction program along their border with Virginia.

Those elk paid no attention to political boundaries and some of them wandered freely across the border into Virginia. The problem was that Kentucky obtained their 'seed' elk from an area of Arizona where chronic wasting disease was later identified among elk. Virginia is among the few states that has never had a single case of CWD in our deer population and we would like to keep it that way.

To prevent the entry of CWD, DGIF decided that an elk would count as a deer for hunting purposes. It became policy to encourage the killing of any elk that crossed into Virginia. Bear in mind that elk often have much larger ranges compared to deer and presented a potentially greater chance of carrying disease far into the Commonwealth than whitetail deer wandering over from Kentucky.

This was, in my opinion, a sound course of action. But now its been about 10 years and there has not been a single case of CWD among the Kentucky elk herd. We did the prudent thing and waited before allowing the elk to get established here. Now that it is obvious the CWD isn't going to be an issue, its time to let the elk come back.

Elk belong here. They used to be common in Virginia before getting killed off by settlers and farmers. The areas where they are crossing into the Commonwealth are perfect places for them. There is very little farming, so crop depredation should not be a big problem. The Thomas Jefferson National Forest provides a huge amount of habitat with very few roads to cross. Beyond the National Forest, its a lot of timber and coal country. Reclaimed strip mines happen to make excellent elk habitat.

The beautiful thing in this case is that we can have an elk reintroduction program for free. The habitat is already protected in spades and the elk have been provided for free by Kentucky and Tennessee. All we have to do is leave the elk alone for 5-10 years and they will naturally increase until we have a healthy population.

Once there is a large enough herd established, you can expect to hear me speaking in favor of having a lottery for residents to get tags to hunt them. Until then, lets leave the elk alone and let them get re-established.

In a 3 Way Race, Joe Kennedy Would Win

A quick thought here about the special election in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy. Rep. Stephen Lynch just officially threw his name in the hat, joining state Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The big question here is whether former Congressman Joe Kennedy II decides to enter the race. If Joe Kennedy gets in, he is immediately the guy to beat. Coakley is certainly Kennedy's most serious opponent. But what would be the effect of Lynch on the race if he decided to stay in with Kennedy in the race?

I figure that Lynch helps Kennedy. The wider the field, the safer that Joe Kennedy will be. Because the reality is that the first question most voters will ask, consciously or not, is going to be whether or not they want another Kennedy in the Senate. Then if the answer is 'no' they will decide which of the others they will support. Maybe only 48% of Massachusetts voters want another Kennedy in there right now. Which would give Coakley a 52% win in a 2 way race. But in a 3 or 4 way race, she will be stuck sharing out that 52% with whomever else is in the running. Giving Kennedy a win with a plurality.

The bottom line is that with both Coakley and Lynch having declared, Joe Kennedy's chances of winning have just gone up and you have to figure that this might encourage him more towards running.

[Photo courtesy of the House of Representatives. Its from the early 90's and he looks considerably less creepy now.]

Yeah, I Use 220 Grain Bullets in My .30-'06. Deal With It.

I'm on a roll today, so hows about some cartridge geekery? I'm going to throw something out that is probably going to piss off every hunter or rifle geek reading this. My readers who are not cartridge dorks will probably want to pass on this one.

Last season I did about 80% of my hunting with a .30-'06 loaded with 220 grain bullets. Ha. Yes. 220 Winchester silver tips. Elsewhere on the internet I have seen 220 grain loadings ridiculed and dismissed as useless at best and ineffective at worst. Practically nobody is speaking up for the 220 grain bullet and I'm worried ammunition companies will stop loading it.

The way I see it, the big attraction of the thirty ought six is the wide range of bullet weights that can be utilized effectively, even with factory loadings. If you're going to stick with 150 grain bullets and dismiss anything over 165 grains, then you might as well be shooting a .308 Winchester. Performance with those bullet weights in the .308 is only around 100 fps slower, from a lighter and handier rifle that burns less powder to do the job.

What I like about the 220 grain bullets is that they send a great big can of whoop ass down-range. I'll take a heavy, slow bullet over a fast, light one on big game any day of the week. They do more damage and penetrate farther. With that greater penetration I am able to take shots from angles in relation to the deer that I might otherwise be inclined to pass up. Even if the bullet will have to pass through 18 inches of bone, muscle and internal organs to get to the vitals, I have the option of taking that shot. Which I have done with great success.

The downside of using 220s in a .30-'06 is the bullet drop over extended ranges. At 300 yards you're looking at about 6 or 7 inches of drop, making it very difficult to get one's holdover right. This doesn't mean a damn thing to me because I'm hunting whitetails on the east coast. We don't generally have 300 yards of open land to shoot across. It is a habitat full of deciduous forest. Moreover, I have no place to even practice a 300 yard shot and wouldn't take such a shot no matter what rifle and cartridge I was using. I just don't have the skills.

The farthest shot I have ever taken or made on a deer was just shy of 200 yards away from me. I made that shot successfully, with a 220 grain bullet from my .30-'06. At 200 yards with a 100 yard zero it only drops about 3 inches. Not particularly hard to figure for and even if one forgot to hold over in the heat of the moment, a shot aimed at the middle of the lungs would still kill the deer if it hit 3 inches low.

Everyone's rebuttal to any defense of the 220 grain bullet for the .30-'06 is that if you want to use bullets that heavy then what you should be doing is getting that weight through wider caliber rather than seating a .30 caliber bullet farther back in the case and reducing the volume of powder. Which is to say 'go get a .35 Whelen or a .338 Federal or something.' That sounds great and I'd love a .35 Whelen if anyone would care to buy one for me. I don't happen to have $500-$1,000 for a new rifle. So the next best thing is to buy a box of 220s for my .30-'06 when I need to pick up hunting ammunition anyhow. It makes a lot of sense, what with being $500 cheaper.

This is the whole damn point of a .30-'06 in the first place. Flexibility. With one rifle, I can choose from an array of bullet weights from around 80 grains or so up to 220 that typical twist rates of a factory .30-'06 barrel will properly stabilize. If I know I'm going to be hunting somewhere that involves a lot of long shots then I can zero the rifle for 150s and have a nice and flat trajectory pushing 3,000 fps muzzle velocity. Or I can use light 110 grain loads and hunt cottontail rabbits. Or 220 grains of bullet for broadsides on bison and elk or deer from an awkward angle.

The .30-'06 cartridge is as American as apple pie. If the American flag was a rifle cartridge, it would be a .30-'06. But if we start throwing away factory loadings at the high and low ends of its capabilities simply because there are more specialized cartridges for those jobs then we practically eliminate the raison d'etre of the thing. And the terrorists will have already won. So do the world a favor and try out a box of 220 grain factory ammunition some time.

What is Socialized Medicine?

I keep hearing people declare that the various health care reform proposals being tossed around consist of 'socialism' if they include a public option. Is this true?

The classic modern example of a socialist system of health care is the UK's National Health. Here's how the National Health works. The government owns and runs the equivalent of a national health insurance company which automatically covers everyone. The government also owns the hospitals, employs the doctors and decides whether someone is worth bothering to try to treat at all when they are old or extremely ill and unlikely to live for long. It is essentially a government monopoly of the entire health care system. That is the hallmark of a socialized system of medicine - a government monopoly, vertical and horizontal, on health care.

Contrast that with the health care reform elements that appear most likely to become law. Under the public option proposals we have been hearing, the government would operate one health insurance company out of the hundreds that exist across the country. Hospitals would continue to be run by businesses and non-profits, doctors would continue to either be employees of the hospitals or self-employed and the federal government would have no right to order that someone be denied care on account of a short life expectancy.

There is really almost nothing in common between these two systems. Not that I'm saying the fact that this system would not be socialism doesn't mean that there couldn't be anything else wrong with it. Just that this particular criticism doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Personally, as a professional in the insurance industry, I look at this plan for a public option and see something pretty much identical to the FAIR plan in the market for homeowners insurance. The federal government created the FAIR plan to provide a market for people to obtain homeowners coverage on homes under a certain value in the event that the private sector is unable to meet their needs. At the time it was created there were people who said that the sky was falling and that this was going to drive private insurance companies out of business. But it didn't. The FAIR plan now serves as a market of last resort and has zero effect on the private insurance market in general.

Think about it: how much of a pain is it usually to deal with the federal government? Everything but the Post Office (which works surprisingly well, considering the scope of their mission) is usually a mess of bureaucracy and hassle. People don't usually choose to pay for services from the federal government when there is an option for them in the private sector. The customer service is usually better. If this public option is supposed to be so crappy and bureaucratic, as its critics charge (and government programs in general have demonstrated), then how is it going to put the private health insurance companies out of business?

The answer is that it's not. It will probably end up being a market of last resort for people whom private insurers don't want to cover. Just like the FAIR plan or the various state auto insurance plans. A public option is no more 'socialism' or a threat to capitalism than these other public options have been in the property & casualty business.

Hey You, Sign Up for Hunter's Education

Hunting season is starting to creep up on us. In fact, squirrel and September goose season already started on September 1st. Dove season opens up on Saturday. Next month archery season for deer begins in many parts of Virginia.

Anyone in Virginia who is interested in taking up hunting (you are never to old to learn) would do well to sign up for one of the many hunter education courses offered by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. These classes are free of charge. It is also mandatory that you take the class in order to obtain a regular hunting license unless you have previously held another hunting license (which one could only have gotten by taking some other approved hunter's ed course).

The focus of these courses is safety, rather than hunting tactics per se. So you will still need to study up on the natural history of your intended quarry on your own (unless you are among those signed up for my deer hunting class starting at the end of September).

You can find a class near you by entering your zip code on the DGIF website.

Even if you don't plan to hunt this particular year, it is still a good idea to take the class. I have heard so very many people tell me that while they have never hunted, in the event of some sort of natural disaster or prolonged lack of access to the commercial food supply they intend to hunt deer for food in order to survive. Usually these people have some sort of firearm and feel like they are fully prepared.

This approach is probably doomed to failure. It wasn't until my 3rd season of hunting that I finally managed to bag my first deer. This is not uncommon. It takes a long time to teach yourself to hunt if you didn't grow up doing it. Waiting for a major food shortage before learning how to hunt is sort of like saying that your plan for preventing your house from burning down is to run out and buy a fire extinguisher as soon as the flames appear.

If you think you might want to hunt for food at some point in the future as part of a plan for disaster preparedness, it would be a smart idea to take the free class from DGIF now and spend a little time hunting in order to have some chance of actually succeeding when you really need to. Otherwise you'd do better to pile up some canned food in the basement.

[Photo courtesy of Outdoor Texan]

There is No Such Thing as a Chupacabra

I dearly love the field of cryptozoology. The rate of global discovery of new vertebrates and even mammals during the last 10 years has been surprisingly high and there is every indication that there are all sorts of animals out there which have yet to be described by science.

That said, the chupacabra myth has to be the stupidest hypthosis of a cryptid that I have ever heard. Lately there's this thing in the news about a supposed chupacabra found and photographed in Texas. For some reason all of these news sites are acting as though there's just not telling what it could be.

This is one of the photos right here. Morons. This is just a dog with advanced sarcoptic mange. Period. With a photograph of the open mouth of the dead animal, anyone with half a brain can easily search for a diagram of the teeth of domestic dogs and see very plainly that this is an ordinary canid. It's not even a 'hybrid' anything. It's just a dog with no hair. Probably 90% of the supposed 'mystery animal' photos that you see on the news or on blogs can be identified in a few minutes by looking at the teeth. The people who pass this stuff around, including the so-called journalists who report on it, clearly know absolutely nothing about comparative anatomy and can not be bothered to spend 5 minutes studying the subject.

On Tea Parties and the Future of the GOP

I heard a very good point made about the 'tea party' and 'birther' folks today. A point which I would like to offer without any intent of insulting anyone involved in any of that. I should start by saying that I have met some very good, intelligent people involved with this stuff one way or another and I offer all of this as constructive political criticism rather than an indictment of their character.

There was a protest yesterday about a block from my office by a rabble of people with assorted signs associating them with the tea party people, Ron Paul and such. They were mostly carrying these hand-lettered signs that were full of misspellings, insults and random sorts of ad hominem attacks against the federal government and health care in general.

I know what they were talking about because I am a political junkie. They are opposed to a set of health care proposals on the basis of a particular philosophy as to what is and is not appropriate for government to get involved with. Some of them have a good case to make on various issues. But to the typical observer they just looked like a bunch of raving lunatics who hate something to do with doctors or the government or something.

The comparison I heard today was to the WTO protests of the early 2000's. Remember those? Hundreds of thousands of people had very principled, defensible views in opposition to policies of the WTO and the IMF. They formed what could have been a powerful political bloc, but instead of doing anything useful with their numbers they ended up waving around poorly-spelled signs, chanting incoherent personal attacks and eventually breaking windows and setting things on fire.

What appeared to be a major political movement at the time thus collapsed into nothing. The major reason for this was that the WTO protests were put together, for the most part, by people with little to no experience in political organization and messaging. On a grassroots level these people did not have leaders with backgrounds in mainstream party politics or communications. They were undisciplined and lacked a clear message as to what exactly their gripe was and why mainstream Americans should care. I confess that I cannot recall a single specific issue that they were going on about. The messaging was that bad.

The same thing is unfolding among the tea-party people, although I am pleased to see that nothing has been set on fire yet. There are some among them who make a very good case for some of their points, but there is no competent leadership.

They have failed to seriously consider what their events look like to mainstream Americans. Essentially a bunch of old white people who hate the government and can't spell and start yelling at the drop of a hat. The viewer shrugs and flips the channel after seeing this mess on the news. They aren't convincing anyone of anything.

It is a tremendous loss to the Republican party that this is the direction that right-wing activists are being directed into. This should be a perfect moment of opportunity for Republicans and for conservatives generally. We are living in very conservative times. I cannot take credit for this idea either, but one way of looking at the gay marriage issue is that a huge number of people previously associated with free-wheeling bohemian lifestyles that rejected social norms have decided to embrace the core of conservatism. The primacy of the nuclear family. Gay people want to get married and start families through adoption or other means. They want to live conservative lifestyles, and Democrats have largely taken this up as a cause to promote.

Consider also how many of the Democrats elected to the US Senate in the last few cycles have been truly conservative people. Jim Webb, John Tester, Mark Warner, etc. Even in New York state, Hillary Clinton was not replaced by a far-left NYC liberal but rather an upstate Congresswoman with an A+ rating from the NRA.

Americans are electing more conservatives today, not less. The problem is that the Republican party stopped talking to most of them years ago, while Democrats have welcomed them.

This should be a perfect moment for the Republican party. What they need to win elections and legislative battles is a clear message about what conservatism is and how this relates to the typical American. This needs to be coupled with the grassroots activism of the most motivated people on the right.

Presently both the message and the grassroots energy of the Republican party have been hijacked by a bunch of well-meaning political neophytes who are flushing it all down the toilet. The whole 'birther' thing has been utterly rejected by mainstream Americans. The tea party events and protests are making the right wing look like the equivalent of the WTO protests.

Personally, I keep expecting to see William Jennings Bryan walk out amid cries of 'free silver!'

I realize that the tea parties are not Republican party events. That much is painfully clear, because if the GOP was behind them they would be equipped with proper signs and there would be some degree of discipline and messaging resulting in onlookers having some clue as to what is going on. But this has become a defacto face of the Republican Party to that party's great detriment.

The tea party and birther folks need to understand that presently they are a very vocal minority. Their ranks could eventually swell high enough to secure up to 15% in an election if they managed to field a candidate. But they will never be numerous enough to win; only enough to throw fights that a mainstream Republican could otherwise have won. Ordinary Americans simply do not get that angry over budgets and health care and they really don't care whether a given government program is labeled as 'socialist' or not. I bet that less than 50% of Americans could even define that word. I wish that ordinary Americans did get that angry more often, because certainly I have watched my government do a great many things that deserved that kind of anger. But they will never share the tea party passion. They see this stuff on TV, think 'bunch of lunatics' and change the channel.

To paraphrase a clever general whose name I can no longer find on the internet, 'America is not at war with the Obama administration. The tea party people are at war with Obama. America is at the mall.'

The more that these people shout and wave signs, the farther away they will drive mainstream conservative Americans. Five or ten years from now, this whole thing will be a footnote in Safire's Political Dictionary. Nobody will even remember it. An anvil around the neck of the GOP, and all for nothing.

Urban Archery Political Debate in Leesburg

The town of Leesburg is having a debate (sorry, login required for the WaPo and they don't offer a perma-link) right now that has become very common in eastern states over the last decade. They have more deer than they want and would like to get rid of them.

Sooner or later, most towns or homeowners associations face up to the fact that the only way of accomplishing this is in fact through hunting. Leesburg has gotten that far. The complaints and comments being expressed by citizens are typical of what comes up in these debates, so I'm going to run through them briefly with answers for each of them.

"I envision little girls on little ponies getting shot at," said Terri Young, the owner of Clairvaux.

That is certainly an understandable fear. In practice, this almost never happens. Hunting accidents involving non-participants are very rare. Over 12,000,000 people go hunting every year in America and there are fewer than 100 deaths annually. Those deaths include hunters falling out of tree stands or somehow managing to shoot themselves. A few months ago I had occasion to dig (look at the comments section of that entry as well) through state and national statistics to calculate the odds of someone getting shot during a proposed elk hunt with 6oo hunters in a national park. The math worked out to one five thousandth of one person being killed in a hunt involving 600 hunters.

In Leesburg, I suspect that there will be far fewer than 600 hunters. To a non-hunter, I realize that it all looks terribly dangerous. In practice, accidents are very rare. Our training, habits and rules are designed to minimize any chances of accidents. Mistaken identity is probably the rarest of all causes of hunting accidents. There is a Hollywood stereotype of hunters shooting at everything that moves, perpetuated by people who don't actually know anything about hunting. The reality is that deer hunters in particular are at times obnoxiously choosy about what they shoot at. Many hunters obstinately refuse to use up a tag on any doe, holding out for an exceptional-looking buck. A girl on a pony looks absolutely nothing like a deer if they are visible enough to even consider taking a shot.

"Or what happens if a hunter misses and there is a deer running around with [an arrow] stuck in it to horrify the kids?"

She answered her own question right there. If that happens, then people would see a deer with an arrow in it. That sucks, but its not the end of the world. Personally, I have a real problem with hiding the reality of where meat and food in general comes from. I think it is best to face up to the fact that all meat is the result of a murder. Do what you will with that. Either come to terms with it or stop eating meat. Personally, I came to terms with it. The idea of trying to stop a hunt from taking place because of the remote possibility of people having to come to terms with their food sounds idiotic to me.

That said, the odds of any deer actually running around through the neighborhood with arrows sticking out of them are pretty low. There are no scientific studies that have been done on this, but anecdotally I have heard from wildlife biologists involved in monitoring such hunts that nobody other than the hunters tend to see wounded deer. This makes sense because a wounded deer capable of moving will usually head for the thickest cover it can find, often running in an arc that would eventually bring it down-wind and behind their starting point. This behavior is presumably practiced in order for the deer to do three things. First, to prevent the unseen predator from scenting it; secondly, to catch the scent of whatever 'bit' it and know what they are dealing with; third, to get back to the last place where the deer felt safe (probably in some cover a few minutes before the hunter shot it).

A wounded deer will, almost by definition, hide. This behavior will tend to prevent people in the area from seeing it. That is not to say that nobody will ever see such a thing. Out of every, say, 1,000 deer shot in urban archery seasons I would expect that at least one of them is going to get spotted by someone at the edge of a field with an arrow in it. But its rare.

The vast majority of Beacon Hill homeowners support bow hunting of deer. But residents who oppose it said the community could be sued if a hunter accidentally hits a person or a horse.

This is something very much worth looking at. Virginia has a wonderfully enlightened law addressing this. Any landowner that allows a hunter to hunt on their property for free is generally absolved of liability for any injuries to the hunter, or inflicted by the hunter on others. The exceptions would be for situations of gross negligence or actions that are otherwise criminal. Like if the land owner deliberately hit the hunter in the face with a shovel, or if they set the field that the hunter was in on fire without telling him that this was about to happen.

The problem in this case is that they aren't letting local volunteer hunters come in and bowhunt. They are hiring a professional company to do the job for money. Which means that the homeowners association is on the hook for any liability. The smart thing to do would be to let volunteer hunters come in and do the job for free. Just require that they present proof of a hunters education certificate. Or they could ask their local game warden (oh, I know we're supposed to call them 'wildlife police officers' now, but I can't get used to it) to recommend experienced bowhunters who would be willing to hunt there.

Professional hunters who do culling operations like this are certainly very good at what they do. But there are hordes of non-professional deer hunters who are just as good. Understand that there is a whole nation of whitetail fanatics out there who spend all year practicing with bow and rifle, watching deer in the wild and reading the latest research on deer biology and behavior. Why the hell would anyone think they need to pay people to hunt deer in America?

If this association is in fact dead-set on paying people to do what other competent people will gladly do for free, then they can still manage the liability risk. In the first place, it is a very small risk. In the second place, they can write a provision into the contract that the culling contractor is required to have liability limits of $X or greater, also requiring that the homeowners association be named as an Additional Insured on the policy. Problem solved. The contractor should have a general liability policy anyway and the cost of adding a client as an Additional Insured is usually only going to cost about $100 (disclosure: I am a licensed insurance agent, although in practice I am professionally an insurance wholesaler who does not deal directly with the public).

I have one final observation. Consider the complaints about the deer in the first place:

Homeowners in Beacon Hill, a sprawling neighborhood of more than 200 houses, have long complained of deer trampling manicured lawns, eating flowers and ruining community landscaping. They also have expressed concern about the spread of deer ticks that carry Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is serious stuff and I have written in depth about deer and Lyme disease on this blog in the past. Two of my dogs have tested positive for the antibodies so I know that the disease is present right here in my area and that it is a risk. This is among the many reasons why I personally hunt deer. However, lets not just go assuming that deer always equal Lyme disease. If there have been documented cases of the local deer carrying the disease then there you go. But they should find out first, because this is the only really good reason cited for hunting those deer.

It is one thing to shoot animals in defense of crops or livestock that one depends on to make a living or to eat. The same thing goes in terms of hunting for meat. There are quite a lot of good reasons to hunt, including the prevention of starvation among a population of deer that no longer have natural predators. Your flower beds and manicured lawns are not among those reasons.

This is ethics 101 here. You like having a plant in your backyard to look at. That's great, but your aesthetic pleasure does not outweigh an animal's need to eat and to live. I find it outrageously vile that someone would ask that an animal be killed for so minor an offense as nibbling on their lawn, and yet take offense at the idea of having to see the same animal with an arrow sticking out of its chest. These people are hopelessly conflicted and apparently lack a clear moral compass. They are exactly the people who need to be confronted with exactly that sight.