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Facts get lost with deer debate
(by Dave Lange - May 04, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Facts get lost with deer debate
With the deer debate unabated -- especially in Solon, which spent $735,000 over three years to shoot and butcher 1,327 of them -- I feel a responsibility as an animal lover and a meat eater to cull some myths.
First of all, you do not have to produce a long-form birth certificate as proof of Solon citizenship in order to speak against the city's deer program. But you may have to produce your driver's license if one of them jumps on the hood of your car as you drive down SOM Center Road (Route 91).
Killing deer with rifles or crossbows is less painful and more efficient than running into them with Hummers or Escalades. It is less stressful for the deer than getting eaten alive by cougars or wolves, even though that may be considered natural and more humane.
Deer are no more or less deserving of long, happy lives than chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs or tuna. So if you are a vegetarian, feel free to sign one of those petitions being circulated by a group of Solon residents to put an issue on the November ballot that would prohibit the city from using any lethal means of reducing the local deer population. Also, feel free to feel superior to those who eat venison and veal.
Residential and industrial development in Solon over the past 40 to 50 years did not displace deer from their natural habitat. Hunting for subsistence and deforestation to make way for agriculture virtually wiped out Ohio's deer population by 1900. When Solon's growth spurt began in the 1950s, there were an estimated 15,000 deer in the entire state. When that growth accelerated in the mid-1970s, the Ohio deer population was about 85,000. It is approaching 700,000 today.
People who insist on decorating their yards with delectable landscaping and then feel downtrodden when it gets eaten by wildlife are not entitled to a government bailout.
Don't blame the lack of natural predators for the deer population explosion. Mountain lions, black bears and their ilk were gone for more than 50 years before deer started their comeback, which actually was initiated by a state restoration project to boost hunting opportunities.
Also, don't blame hunting restrictions. According to Scott Peters, Ohio Department of Wildlife assistant wildlife management supervisor for Northeast Ohio, the state's deer-hunting season is one of the longest in the nation, running from the end of September through the beginning of February. Furthermore, the current statewide bag limit of 18 deer is among the most liberal in the country and is more than most hunters care to take. What Ohio needs is more hunters, not less regulation.
Finally, irresponsible scare tactics diminish both sides of this debate. You're much more likely to get shot by one of your relatives than by a hunter, including Dick Cheney. You're more likely to be killed by a bee buzzing around your flower bed than by a rutting buck running across the road.
And while Lyme disease is nothing to sneeze at, only 40-some cases were reported in Ohio last year, most of them easily treatable. Solon residents are more likely to become ill from city officials fawning over constituents' hedges and the tax dollars they spent on transient sharpshooters than from the fearsome deer tick that has yet to be detected anywhere in Northeast Ohio.
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