As geese increase … a-hunting we must go

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 3, 1997 | by Woody West

Forget for the moment the fuss over reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park or the feds pondering a similar restoration of "biodiversity" into the Adirondacks and other Northeastern areas. Those essentially are abstract matters for policy wonks.

A more immediate issue for the densely huddled masses is beast and bird as urban pests -- primarily deer, but also Canada geese that have come to realize that migration is a drag.

What makes this a fractious debate is that it partakes of two "higher" values - the environment and animal rights. At base it represents the antihunting passion as contemporary cause -- primarily for those who've never hunted anything outside a shopping mall and are offended by the very idea.

As more and more Americans evolve into implacable urbanites, those who hunt and fish increasingly seem alien. (Because the evolution to wall-to-wall urbanism isn't complete, politicians still nod to hardier tradition -- recall President Clinton toting a 12-gauge, wearing camis and displaying a dead duck.)

Protection and preservation of the outdoors -- with humankind's banished from the wilderness so far as is politically feasible -- has been embraced as a theological concept by the dominant media. From thence it has propagated in public sentiment. In California, for instance, voters rejected a ballot question that would have instituted a very limited hunting season for mountain lions, despite a resurgence of the species and even a number of recent attacks on joggers and hikers (in at least one attack the victim, a young woman, died).

As a result of the attitude that nature essentially is a Disney film writ large, we now confront the interesting phenomenon of wildlife as nuisance and worse -- this false deification has distorted the conservationist role of hunting into a threat to Bambi and an index of perversity.

When urban as well as rural drivers begin colliding routinely with deer, sometimes coming out second best; when homeowners find their ornamental plantings reduced to sticks; when suburban park visitors, condo owners and golfers slip and slide in goose doo, then the juxtaposition gets attention.

A number of municipalities have considered resolving the matter of too many deer and geese by old-fashioned means -- which is to say, lethally. When that is contemplated, however, the bird-and-bunny legion switches to red alert.

Often as not, public officials nimbly retreat. And deer and auto continue to come in contact, and "resident" geese continue to proliferate messily.

"Managed harvests" is one reduction technique. In Maryland's Montgomery County (which abuts the nation's capital and is one of the most upscale and loudly liberal in the country), desperate local officials forged ahead with such a plan - with much lamentation about how awful it all was. The hunt took place in a park that can support about 100 deer, officials say, and where the herd is on the way to 10 times that.

Lots were drawn and 50 hunters selected for each of the four days. The affair was rigorously controlled, with monitored hunting stations and shooting lanes. However, the bag was disappointing: 60 head or so. Deer ain't dumb and the antlered elders quickly reckoned what patches of forest were ideal to avoid.

It's apparent, however, that these sorts of hunts and longer seasons will be unavoidable if the deer-population boom is to be curbed -- short of the cruel starvation that eventually will cull these herds. About all the antihunting zealots can suggest is sterilization (for the deer), ludicrous on its face.

Where the Canadas -- gorgeous birds and, as it happens, delectable -- have become increasing annoyances, some states have instituted special "resident-geese" hunting days. The problem is that the avian refuges often are close to housing developments and even careful hunters might bag a poodle or kitty-cat. Hard to know what to do about the lovely birds in their unlovely urban numbers.

There is, of course, a generational component here. As the urban concentration becomes denser, fewer youngsters are being initiated into hunting. Noting the decline, "junior hunter" days are being inaugurated, for instance, though it's still unclear how effective this may be.

Here's another idea: Replace, or complement, the ecoidiocy indoctrination in the schools with courses in hunting, woodscraft and associated skins. As we lose an older knowledge of the outdoors, such classes would be a healthy outlet for properly instructed and supervised young men and women.

Hunting may be as imbedded an instinct as exists among those of us who trudge about on two feet. That it no longer is necessary for survival does not mean that it is not legitimate -- with profound lessons for humans and nature.

Hunting is not primarily about killing. It is about skills and manners and appreciation of the natural world. All of those qualities could constitute a useful ethic among young urbanites today -- many of whom seem in radical need of one.