White Buffalo’s Tony DeNicola is too busy to worry much about the hate mail.
By: Rachel Silverman
Tony DeNicola isn’t sleeping much these days. When he isn’t busy designing firearms or opening hate mail, Mr. DeNicola spends his days and his nights suspended from tree trunks, waiting for the elusive white-tailed deer.
The Princeton deer, you see, don’t come around these parts too often anymore. The deer already thinned from previous rounds of culling have recently become wise to their human predators.
"Hunters have been active for four months before we get here," Mr. DeNicola explains. "It makes the deer a bit smart."
So, with rifle and Nextel phone in tow, the sharpshooter sets up a post for the long, lonely haul ahead. He prepares the bait site with corn, puts on layers of warm clothing and stations himself for another 12- to 15-hour shift in the bitter cold.
But Mr. DeNicola is no stranger to long, grueling nights on the job. As president of the deer-management group White Buffalo, Mr. DeNicola has followed such a schedule for the past nine years. In this time, he and his staff have worked on deer culling, relocation and site-evaluation projects everywhere from Connecticut to Montana.
"We’re on the road for most of the year," he says. "We stay in residence inns."
Mr. DeNicola has also worked overseas a goat-eradication project in the Galapagos Islands, a boar-management initiative in Bhutan, an argali sheep-preservation initiative in Mongolia. He’s trained national park personnel on animal trapping, worked with zoological foundations on saving endangered species and secured millions in financial backing for projects from organizations like the Global Environmental Facility.
In fact, Mr. DeNicola spends only about two to six weeks a year on Princeton’s deer-management project, which the township has commissioned him to work on for the past five years.
But despite the brevity of his stay here, Mr. DeNicola has come to know Princeton quite well at least on matters deer-related.
And after a five-year stint in town, he can sum up Princeton’s deer-removal project in one short, somewhat surprising phrase.
"It’s not a textbook case," he says.
One thing that sets Princeton’s management program apart, Mr. DeNicola says, is the communitywide effort involved. Unlike other projects White Buffalo has handled, Princeton’s initiative includes an over-arching deer-management plan.
"It’s one of the only places in New Jersey where a comprehensive effort is taking place," Mr. DeNicola says. "We’re not just shooting deer individually, it’s a townwide effort, and we’re having population impacts."
Princeton’s deer program is also unique, Mr. DeNicola continues, because of its fertility research component. While most fertility programs are executed in rural park space, Princeton’s land is much more developed.
"No one’s ever done fertility research in a true suburban environment," Mr. DeNicola said.
Another distinguishing feature of Princeton, Mr. DeNicola says, has been the sheer number of fists raised in opposition to culling.
"It was unique, initially, in level of resistance from a small faction," he says.
And this should mean a lot, coming from a man who receives angry, hate e-mail on a weekly, perhaps daily, basis.
But it’s not really the hate mail or additional research that’s keeping Mr. DeNicola up nights; the company president just has so much to do, and so many roles to play.
Mr. DeNicola is part educator, working to teach the public, in his own words, "why there are deer with ear tags and radios on running through their neighborhood."
He’s part Ph.D. researcher, speaking softly in academic terms like "diminishing returns" and "periodic recalibration."
And yes, Mr. DeNicola is part sharpshooter. White Buffalo has killed over 1,000 deer since the culling began in Princeton. And the vast majority of those deer about 80 percent were females or fawns.
Those who loathe him will be happy to know Mr. DeNicola will bid Princeton Township adieu in less than two weeks’ time.
But for those who’ll miss the fellow, take solace in the fact that after five years of work, Mr. DeNicola’s job here, at least for this season, will finally be done.
Then maybe just maybe Tony DeNicola will get a bit of rest.

