Urban deer are not a new problem, they’re just one that’s getting worse.

Last year about this time I was stuck at the maddening intersection where you turn to reach NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, Va.  Like a lot of intersections in Northern Virginia, this one is congested and at least a bit life-threatening.

While I sat there numbly staring at an endless line of blinking left-turn signals, I noticed a dead doe in the grassy median.

What I feel when I pull the trigger on a deer is between me and the animal, but the sight of a road-killed doe at a frenetic urban intersection bothers me.

But what’s much, much worse is that it’s not just the deer that get killed in these collisions.

AP has reported on a study that found human fatalities from vehicle crashes with deer and other animals have more than doubled in the last 15 years.

Most people don’t normally think of deer as being a cause of human death. But 223 people died in animal-vehicle crashes last year, up from 101 in 1993.

Of course the non-fatal crashes are increasing, too. State Farm says there were 1.2 million claims for crashes with animals in the 12 months ending June 30 this year, a 15 percent increase over the last five years. And such collisions cost more than $1.1 billion in property costs.

Yet every time some urban community starts considering hunting to mitigate this problem—and it’s often a tightly-controlled bow season, not even a gun season—anti-hunting groups start screaming about the danger to residents.
 
Note to antis—More than 200 people a year are dying in deer-auto collisions.  Know how many people died in hunting accidents last year?

The answer is 19, according to the International Hunter Education Association. And of course, some of those accidents did not even involve a gunshot.

So, people are roughly 10 times more likely to die in a vehicle collision with a deer than from a hunting accident.

I await the anti-hunters’ response to this simple question: How can you oppose hunting as a solution to urban deer, when more people die in deer-auto collisions than from hunting accidents?

How would you feel if you built a permanent blind on a public lake, and arrived it one morning to hunt--only to find someone else in it? Or, suppose you built a permanent blind and one day found someone else building another blind--practically on top of you?

Those are some of the factors that led the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to make a recent announcement prohibiting hunting from or within 30 yards of permanent blinds on four public lakes—Jackson, Iamonia, Miccosuke, and Carr which, combined, have over 500 blinds. The rule will be in effect this season.

Florida’s current waterfowl regs describes these blinds as “a source of territorial conflict among hunters.” That is a really good term to describe what would ensue if I got to a blind I’d built and found someone else already set up in it. But since it’s on a public lake, would I really have the right to object?

Either way, a rule that essentially locks hunters out of 500 blinds is incredibly drastic. Temporary blinds may still be used on those lakes, but I asked Diane Eggeman, FWC’s Director of the Division of Hunting and Game Management, how this decision came about, and what other options had been considered.

"There is a long tradition here of building permanent blinds on public lakes,” Eggeman said. “But we got complaints that people were using the blinds to claim priority access to public waters, asserting that no matter who was there first, the blind builder should have the right to hunt that area over all others. We did not want not to make this a regulatory answer,” Eggeman continued. “We tried to find a cooperative solution first. We tried to contact hunters and encourage the use of temporary blinds. But complaints increased and we had to address them. We sought input from waterfowlers and held public meetings, but no feasible alternative was offered.”

The final nail in the coffin was when FWC found out that the blinds violated structural statutes on sovereign waters, anyway. That fact had been largely overlooked since it was a Department of Environmental Protection rule, not one of FWC’s.

Asked if she thought that locking hunters out of 500 blinds would actually drive hunters away, Eggemen said. “I don’t think so. I certainly don’t want to lose any hunters.” She reiterated that the four lakes in question still allow the use of temporary blinds, as do many public hunting areas in the state.

Florida isn’t the only state with an overcrowding problem on public waterfowl areas. What do you think? Are temporary blinds the best answer?

I read a story today about senators on the Pennsylvania Game and Fisheries Committee who want to create a mentored hunting program in the state—for adults.

The program would be similar to existing youth-mentored hunting activities, which allow a youngster under 12 to hunt certain game under the guidance of a licensed adult, before he or she takes a full hunter education course. A number of special rules are usually in place for such programs, such as allowing only one gun between the two hunters.

The adult version of the program would also postpone (not eliminate) hunter education, and allow purchase of a one-time, one-year license at a reduced cost. The adult “student” still has to find a mentor, and other details remain to be worked out as well.

But the idea of making it easier for adults to hunt makes a lot of sense. To a degree, they have been overlooked in the hunting community’s zeal to create new opportunities for kids and adult women. NRA’s Youth Hunter Education Challenge is one of the most established and well-known youth hunting programs, but it’s hardly the only one. NRA-backed legislation has created youth apprentice hunting programs in several states, and special youth-only hunts for deer, ducks, pheasants and turkeys now abound nationwide. NRA’s Women On Target program, and others like it, make it easier than ever for women to gain hunting experience.

But adult men have not had the same kind of opportunities. Maybe the world thinks there is something in our DNA that makes us born hunters, or maybe it’s just that some men might be reluctant to go through the learning curve hunting involves. Sure, an adult male who has never hunted can sign up for hunter education, buy a gun and a license and go look for a place to hunt. But without some kind of help, he will probably not be successful and it won’t be long before he simply gives up.

There was a time, of course, when one assumed that adult males had at least been exposed to hunting when they were growing up, even if they ultimately left the sport. But with hunter numbers in decline now, that is no longer true.

The Pennsylvania Game and Fisheries Committee deserves a lot of credit for coming up with this idea. However, there is no need for us to wait indefinitely for this legislation to reach our state. If you know an adult who’s never hunted but wants to, get him into hunter education and invite him to go with you.

Everybody in outdoor writing is sick of that phrase—“with hunter numbers in decline now.” If even a quarter of America’s 12.5 million hunters took just one guy hunting, we could all look forward to writing, “with hunter numbers on the increase…”

I was surprised to see Chicagotribune.com run a story about Strongs, Michigan being named the official Black Bear Capital of the state. The story related a number of anecdotes from the town’s century-long bear hunting history, such as the woman who killed a 605-pound bruin with a single-shot 20-gauge! So Irene Lawless, a bear hunter herself and husband of a man who killed his first bear at 16, wrote the state legislature and built a good case for designating the town Michigan’s Black Bear Capital. The legislature agreed, and officially approved the designation on September 10.

Just think what this is going to do for Strongs’ local economy.

Also interesting was a story on ABC’s KTKA affiliate about all-girl hunts conducted by state agencies around the country. As usual whenever mainstream media writes about females and hunting, they centered the story around the same inane theme: “Hunting is dying and recruiting new hunters is an attempt to save the sport.”

It isn’t exactly front-page news that the overall number of hunters is down, but this idea that industry and state agencies and hunting groups are “going after” women to save hunting is not entirely true. NRA’s Women On Target program was launched in late 1999—because so many women kept calling us, asking for help learning how to hunt and shoot. Many of the callers asked about women-only training sessions, and that is basically why Women On Target came about—because women wanted it.

Of course it’s good for hunting to have more women involved, but I wish mainstream media could get it through their heads that there is more to it than a recruiting effort. More women are hunting now because a lot of them have always wanted to, and there are finally more opportunities and more encouragement for them to learn how.

The KTKA story wraps up with a quote from Heidi Prescott, Senior Vice President of Campaigns for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS): “We at the Humane Society of the United States want to see children respect animals, we want to see them love animals and not go out into the woods and kill animals,” Prescott said.

It’s no surprise that Prescott is blind to the conservation benefits of hunting, but it’s astonishing she can’t see any benefits at all for the young girls involved in these hunts. The girls are getting outside—in a time of nationwide acknowledgement that kids are not getting outside enough. They are spending time with their families, in a time when most kids don’t even eat dinner with their parents. They are learning something about wildlife and self-sufficiency and outdoor skills and responsibility.

 And yes, as KTKA points out, they are doing something that girls don’t normally do. The story opens with a reporter asking a nine-year-old girl what she thinks of Barbie dolls. The girl says, “They’re not much fun.” But I guess keeping girls stuck in Barbie World is just what Prescott wants.

A story in the October 7 edition of the Casper Tribune relates the death of a bear hound owned by an Idaho couple, Brent and Connie Ottosen. They believe it was killed by wolves, although the state DNR has not confirmed that.

Confirmation notwithstanding, it isn’t hard to believe. In Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, wolves are taking a serious toll on livestock, deer and elk—and yes, dogs, too. In Idaho alone last year, wolves killed 52 cattle, 170 sheep and six dogs.

As has been widely reported, wolf populations in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana now far exceed the recovery goals set for them by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, which officially removed them from the Endangered Species List in March of this year. The move would have turned over wolf management to those three states, all of which planned to go forward with badly needed hunting seasons.

But a posse of anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting that decision suspended by a federal judge in July, and ultimately, Fish and Wildlife was forced to put wolves back on the list. Anti-hunting groups howled with triumph, of course. Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife, said, “This is a great victory for wolf conservation in the Northern Rockies, and everyone working for wolf conservation.”

In truth, the people who want and need true wolf conservation most are the residents and the hunters in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, along with the wildlife management experts in those states’ respective DNRs. But that does not matter to Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States, and the other groups that filed suit to restore protection to wolves. To them, “wolf conservation” apparently means “Wolves Unlimited.” When referring to the wildlife management plans being developed by the three state DNRs, these groups routinely used words like “wolf slaughter,” “extermination,” and even “declaration of war.” They deliberately tried to make people believe that a regulated, controlled hunting season would spell extermination for the wolves. And of course it wouldn’t. All the states’ wolf management plans had to be approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Strict controls were in place to ensure a healthy population of wolves in better balance with their habitat—true conservation, in other words.

But the antis got their way. And while their legal experts can go have another veggie burger at their favorite Washington, DC restaurant, Idaho residents like the Ottosens have to cope with the loss of a dog. Maybe that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. "It's just one dog," I guess Defenders of Wildlife would say. But as Mr. Ottosen said when commenting on the dog’s death, “All three of our kids bawled. I don’t know if that counts for something. But it should.”

How about it anti-hunting groups? You’re the ones who always fall back on emotion. Does that count for anything?