Saturday January 8, 2011
Concerned reflections on another deer season
Editor of the Reformer:
The following is a letter which I wrote to the commissioner of Vt. Fish Wildlife Department.
Dear commissioner,
After another dismal deer hunting season it is about time the Fish and Wildlife Dept. address the root causes of the declining deer herd. From your own statistics the annual kill was down about 23 percent from last year’s figures, which were also down from the 2008 figures.
Having hunted in this state for over 55 years I have seen Vermont go from the premier northeastern state for deer hunting to the least desired in the northeast. At one time the total harvest for just rifle season was around 21,000, now we can’t even attain a figure of 4,000. With 9,609 square miles of land area this roughly equates to 0.41 deer killed per square mile. Truly a sad fact. A recent article released by the department suggests that the ban on taking of spike horns may be lifted. I believe this could be a ploy to temporarily up the figures, only to further decline in years to come.
I am greatly concerned about two major problems:
1) Doe permits have been issued now for an extensive period of time. At one point there was a need to reduce the herd in some parts of the state, however now there is no herd to reduce especially in southern part of the state. When hunters only see a very few or no deer at all in a season it seems
to me there is a problem. When a youth hunter spends a weekend in the woods and sees nothing he/she loses interest with the sport. How can we expect our hunting tradition to survive without the young enthusiasts? The doe population has been reduced to the point the herd cannot sustain itself. I wonder if the doe permits are only just another revenue source, which is short sighted. At some time in the near future the cash cow will be gone, no deer, no licenses sold, no revenue.
2. Coyotes are a definite problem. With the few does left to breed they can’t produce enough fawns to sustain the doe permits and feed the horrendous amount of coyotes now in the woods. It is sad to walk through the woods and see coyote tracks everywhere and no signs of deer. Maybe the Department should place a bounty on coyotes or implement a sterilization program or perhaps both to rid us of these vermin.
I hope the Department will consider eliminating doe permits, reducing the number of deer taken by each hunter to one buck only per year, at least for the foreseeable future and get the coyote population eradicated or at least under control.
David Berrie,
Williamsville, Jan. 2
Everyone is distracted
from the truth
Editor of the Reformer:
It’s interesting to me that the Tea Party types who are so agitated over governmental interference in their lives and constrictions of their freedom by unnecessary laws show so little concern over the much greater constriction of our lives and freedoms imposed under the iron-fisted rule of the mega-corporations. These corporations rule the very government that the Tea Partiers believe to be the problem.
Right in front of our faces and without any sleight of hand, the government took our money and gave it to the mega-corporations without asking a thing in return. So who ruled that transaction?
These multinational corporations, with an accumulation of wealth and power greater than most nation-states, rule the planet by using national governments as their hand puppets, by marketing in your face and ringing in your ears wherever you turn, filling in every gap, nook and cranny with worthless, demeaning slogans and jingles and robo phone calls designed to fire our imagination, by offering bad loans and seductive credit to create insurmountable personal debt, while withholding loans that could assist small businesses to survive and grow, and by outsourcing jobs and industry, while paying low wages, often without health benefits, to those dwindling few employees who remain stateside.
They rule. They win.
Yet the Tea Party faithful go on believing that “big government” or the so-called liberals or the Socialists, or the United Nations, or all combined, are the source of the diminishing quality of life, from which the corporate ruling class cunningly diverts our attention by the hypnotic presentation of cyber-goodies for our eyes and ears.
Yet as Wendell Berry correctly said, “You’ll never make life better by technological means.” True, the iPods and iPhones and the other i-nonsense, cell phones that take pictures and play music and go bang in the night, these nifty gadgets serve to foster in us a false impression that something is improving. The only thing improving is the sale of Prozac and Wellbutrin.
We tend to act like it’s no big deal while employment disappears as long as computer games and Facebook are substituted for them. We poo-poo advertising, yet continue to be inundated by it. We oppose war, yet continue to pay our war taxes and often work in industries related to war. We ridiculed the nonsense of “weapons of mass destruction” and “axis of evil” and “mission accomplished” yet woke up to find ourselves engaged in two immoral wars on the far side of the planet.
We make jokes about how everything is made in China, yet we buy everything that is made in China. Hollywood directors and writers laugh at the crap they make, yet continue to produce worthless, senseless, shoot ‘em up movies.
Hello, Tea Partiers. Would you like to take up arms and fight the real power? Or shall we go on preoccupying ourselves with our uncompensated faux employment as “prison guards over ourselves” (Michel Foucault)?
Michael R. Marantz,
Jamaica, Dec. 3
Instead of complaining,
get involved
Editor of the Reformer:
I see where Brattleboro’s Whiner-in-Chief is complaining again about the Selectboard. This time, he was insulted that someone on the board did not look at him while he was whining, and he called the selectperson uncivil.
This is not the first time we have heard this complaint from the WIC, nor, I’m sure, will it be the last.
While others have the courage to run for elective office and suffer the slings and arrows associated with such a decision, the WIC continually stands on the sidelines, spewing demagogic rhetoric, and, in general, sniping a those with the guts to back up their concerns by placing themselves in the public eye.
I recently challenged the WIC to grow some gonads and run for elective office. His response was to call me a horse’s ass.
I rest my case.
Bob Fagelson,
Brattleboro, Dec. 4
Town Meeting credibility called into question
Editor of the Reformer:
I commend the Stookeys for their public spirit. Their willingness to abandon plans that were clearly important to them and to absorb some of the costs they invested in good faith rather than to subject the town to litigation is a shining example in these contentious times.
However, as a member of the Representative Town Meeting, I am concerned that the public can not rely on the results of a proper vote on a duly warned item at Town Meeting. If the vote was within the legitimate authority of the town, then it seems to me that they should be reimbursed, “made whole” as it is known, for the all money they spent in good faith relying on the action of the Town Meeting.
If the vote was improper, then there is an even greater moral imperative to make the Stookeys whole. Anything less smacks of either extortion or robbery, and would seriously undermine the credibility of the Town Meeting.
Tom Franks,
Member of the Brattleboro
Representative Town Meeting,
Jan. 6
Return the bench
Editor of the Reformer:
Looking out our bedroom window this morning, we noticed that our six-foot cedar bench was missing from its usual spot overlooking the brook. We trudged through the snow to check if it had somehow blown down into the brook, but it had not. It appears that someone has taken it. I do hope that if you are the one who has it or if you know who took it, you will return it — it was my 40th birthday gift from my family and I think of them every time I use it. I hope you will do the right thing and return it to its place.
Kate Ullman,
Jamaica, Jan. 3
Confused cacti
Editor of the Reformer:
The snow-laden saguaro cactus depicted in Tuesday’s (Jan. 4) editorial page cartoon is confused about global warming. Understandably; as a cactus it lacks access to reliable news coverage regarding climate change; it doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather; it hasn’t seen the NASA website — http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ — depicting global temperature changes. Fortunately, people are better informed than cacti.
Charlie Laurel,
Dummerston, Jan. 4
Article source: http://www.reformer.com/ci_17039256?source=rss_viewed
Category: Cyber Wars