PACKET EDITORIAL, Jan. 21
By: Packet Editorial
You’ve got to hand it to the folks who fought so long and hard against Princeton Township’s deer-management program. After consistently lobbing the wrong ammunition at the wrong targets, they finally figured out not only who had the best weapons to shoot down the township’s program, but where to find its Achilles Heel.
In the end, it wasn’t the animal lovers’ rallies, vigils, press conferences or nuisance lawsuits that brought the program to a halt. And it wasn’t the courts that ordered a stop to the sharpshooting and netting-and-bolting that effectively thinned the township’s deer herd the past two winters. It was the state’s hunters, fearful that other towns might follow Princeton’s example of hiring professionals thereby depriving them of their blood sport who stopped the program dead in its tracks. And it was the hunters’ handmaiden in Trenton, the state Fish and Game Council, that applied the fatal blow.
For years, animal rights groups have told anyone who would listen that the Fish and Game Council is a body that exists of, by and for hunters. When the council approved Princeton Township’s controversial program in each of the past two years, the animal rights groups didn’t mince words attacking not only the decision but the council itself, saying, in effect: What do you expect from a bunch of hunters and their sympathizers who have no qualms about killing innocent deer?
But this year, opponents of Princeton’s deer-culling program wised up. If you can’t beat ’em, they figured, join ’em and that’s just what they did, teaming up with their age-old enemies, the deer hunters, to lobby their age-old nemesis, the Fish and Game Council. Together, the people who like to feed deer and the people who like to shoot them got just enough votes to end the netting-and-bolting, end the sharpshooting and stop an experimental immunocontraception program before it even got off the ground.
So where does the township go from here? There are several possibilities:
Seek a revote: Township officials made the mistake of taking the Fish and Game Council for granted, allowing opponents to outflank them with a very effective lobbying campaign. The township could try again, this time making a more concerted effort to familiarize the council with the merits of its deer-management program.
Cut the program back: Eliminate the net-and-bolt and immunocontraception components, allow sharpshooting only and hope that at least one member of the council can be persuaded to switch sides and approve the scaled-down program.
Broaden the program to include hunting: The opportunity to shoot deer in Princeton is what the hunters really want (and the Fish and Game Council would surely approve it), so why not go ahead and allow hunting in the township? This would be considerably more dangerous and less effective at reducing the herd than hiring sharpshooters, but it also would be much cheaper and rich in irony for the gloating animal lovers who think that they, rather than the hunters, were responsible for the Fish and Game Council’s decision.
Let the animal rights groups run the program: After two years of culling, the township’s deer herd now stands at about 680, according to a helicopter count last month. While the optimum number may be half that, considerable progress has been made. For the next year or two, go with a program of nonlethal components reflectors, repellants, contraceptives, sterilization as the animal rights groups have repeatedly suggested. Get them to pay for it; they’ve said they would. Then compare the results.
Far-fetched? No more than the coupling of strange bedfellows that brought us to our present condition.

