Activists target duck hunting as dangerous Hunters, officials note long history without injury or damage

Staff Writer

By sherry conohan

Activists target duck hunting as dangerous
Hunters, officials note long history without injury
or damage

They express abhorrence at the "senseless" killing, concern about the safety of their children and pets and annoyance at the noise from the gunshots.

They are the opponents of duck hunting on the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers who have responded by e-mail, letter and coupon to an ad in The Hub and Atlanticville newspapers calling for an end to the sport in this area.

Duck hunters just as avidly defend their sport, asserting it’s safe for those who live along the water and contending that they are the true conservationists.

They take issue with a quote from a "Two River Area resident" used in the ad that their 11-year-old found three spent shotgun shells in the front yard. The hunters say the shells must have been found by a child and dropped there.

Municipal officials, by and large, have a laissez-faire attitude on the issue.

The woman who placed the ad, and who doesn’t want her identity revealed for fear of reprisals from hunters, said she has received approximately 100 responses, all but a handful supportive of the "Coalition to Stop Hunting Now" that it boasts. She said the first three responses she got were hate mail.

But that cuts both ways. One of the responders supporting the coalition vowed to become the hunters’ worst nightmare — "if I don’t kill them first."

The woman said she intended to hold a meeting after the hunting season, which ended Jan. 19, for those who responded to the ad to organize a campaign to get the state Legislature to ban duck hunting in the two rivers area.

Carol Russell, who lives on Paag Lane in Little Silver, said she hopes to catch her neighbor, state Senate Co-President John O. Bennett III (R-12), in the yard when he’s not so busy in Trenton to try to enlist him in their cause.

"I’m waiting for the right time," she said. "I don’t know how he feels about it. If we need help from him, we’ll definitely ask for it."

Russell said her 12-year-old son found three spent shells in their yard a year ago, one near the sea wall and two by some bushes. She said she worries about him and his friends playing in the yard during the hunting season.

"Sometimes we can look straight out and the decoys and camouflage boats are right out our back window," she said. "My husband has watched them turn the gun toward the house and shoot at ducks over the house that were flying."

However, she added, hunters know the rules and abide by them "pretty well," staying 450 feet away from her house and restricting their activities to the permissible hours for hunting.

Still, Russell is concerned about water skiers, like the ones who were out on Dec. 7.

"We asked them if they knew the hunters were there, and they said they couldn’t hear them," she reported. "That’s dangerous.

"We’re just trying to figure out how to make the public safe," she added.

Russell Crosson, who lives on Osprey Lane in Rumson, said the area has been built up to a point at this time that there are probably safer places to hunt.

"During the season, I hear them constantly in the early morning," he said of the hunters. "They wake us up. … It’s just too developed."

Steven Balavender, who lives on Myrtle Avenue in Oceanport, also finds the noise of the gunshots annoying. He said he’s not concerned about the safety of his family because their home is located in a cove, which doesn’t attract hunters, but he’s appalled to see a duck blind.

"I have two young children and find it difficult that I have to explain to them why local hunters are shooting the ducks that they enjoy feeding and watching off our dock," he said.

Rich Tocci, a resident of Mara Vista in Monmouth Beach, who has been hunting ducks since he was 13 and is now 59, said the anti-hunting group had nothing to fear from the shooting from the duck hunters. He said the effective range of a shotgun — in which a duck can be killed — is 30 yards and, while the pellets will travel further, they will do no damage to anyone or any house 150 yards (450 feet) away.

"I would stand 60 yards away from you and let you shoot at me all day because you won’t hurt me," he said. "Occasionally pellets fall around my house, but they won’t cause damage.

"They wouldn’t even hurt a sparrow," he added.

Tocci said the duck hunters all hunt out of their boats. He said they pull their boats — Barnegat Bay Sneak Boxes — up on the islands in the rivers and then camouflage them with grass.

"I have never heard of a duck hunter hurting anyone," he said. "We’re too far away from each other."

Mike Kantor, another longtime duck hunter, who lives on Gooseneck Point Road in Oceanport, claimed that duck hunting is safer than driving a car.

"There’s usually one person killed a year in duck hunting, and that’s from drowning after falling out of a boat," he said. "I’ve been hunting since I was 16, and I don’t know of anybody, who got shot duck hunting.

"Duck hunters shoot up into the sky," he continued. "They don’t shoot ducks on the water because that’s not sportsmanlike."

As far as anybody finding spent shells from hunters on land, he said bluntly: "They’re lying."

Kantor said, by contrast, jet skis, so common on the rivers, are very dangerous and have been involved in many accidents and deaths.

Tocci suggested the complaints about noise from gunshots of the duck hunters were exaggerated. He said duck hunting involves a few shots in the morning and a few in the afternoon. He said the same people who complain about gunshots of the duck hunters don’t complain about the noise of the "quail walks" — skeet shooting — at the Rumson Country Club every weekend.

Kantor said he only shoots ducks that he will eat. He said different ducks taste different because of the different food they eat — some corn, some vegetation, some fish and clams.

He said he enjoys all the preparations leading up to the hunt, beginning the summer before. He said this has included building his own boat, making his own decoys, loading his own shells, and raising his own Labradors to retrieve the ducks he shoots.

"The killing of the duck is the most minuscule part," he said.

Tocci and Kantor point to the conservation side of their sport. Both were founders of the New Jersey Waterfowlers Association, which engages in conservation activities, and Tocci said the $15 he pays each year for a federal migratory duck stamp and the $5 he pays for a state migratory stamp go to conservation to nurture the duck population.

"I love the sport and do what I can for the sport and conservation," Kantor said.

Both Tocci and Kantor said duck hunting has not been good this year, a result of the warmer weather, which has hindered migration, with which some municipal officials would concur.

Suzanne Castleman, the mayor of Little Silver, said she usually gets a few complaints each year during the hunting season, but had not received any calls this year. When she does get complaints, she said she turns them over to the borough police. She has her concerns.

"In all the little peninsulas that stick out, there are a lot of little children, and it’s dangerous," she said.

But Little Silver Chief of Police William Wikoff, who also reported he had received no complaints about duck hunters this year, said he wasn’t concerned for residents’ safety.

"It’s perfectly legal for them to be out there," he added, referring to the hunters. "They’ve been hunting out there for years and years. There have been no incidents with injuries."

Mayor James P. McConville III of Monmouth Beach similarly said he hadn’t received any complaints about duck hunters this year and wasn’t aware of any problems.

Still, Michael Gianforte, executive director of the Two Rivers Water Reclamation Authority in Monmouth Beach, who has taken no side in the controversy, prefers to err on the side of caution.

The sewer plant where he works is located on the Shrewsbury River in Monmouth Beach.

"During the duck hunting season," he confided, "I don’t walk along the edge of the property."