Well it didn’t take long after Mayor Ashton’s re-election to jump back on the deer cull bandwagon.
What I find funny is that the cull is going to cost $150 per deer at taxpayers’ expense. In other words, us taxpayers that are against the deer cull will also be paying for it. Gary Litke said, “People running around with guns, as qualified as it may be, is a recipe for trouble.” I think it’s the other way around. City council running around with taxpayers money is a recipe for trouble.
Cranbrook has a higher deer population than Penticton, way higher, and they expect us to believe they solved their deer problem by culling only 25 deer? I hope they got the right 25 deer that were causing the problems there. I respect those people’s opinions that are against hunting and I have respect for those citizens that are for the deer cull, but they make it sound like it’s going to be a piece of cake to solve the problem.
Every story I have seen on the news or read in the paper where a deer has attacked someone’s dog or other pet has always been based on the same thing. It’s a mother deer protecting its fawn from what it thinks is danger or senses as danger. Even us as parents have those instincts. I remember a program they used to have years ago where you could hunt for a person in need. You picked up the papers from the Ministry of Environment and filled out the hunter section with our hunter numbers. You then handed those papers to the person in need whose social worker at the Human Resources office would complete the rest. We then mailed those papers off and we would get a permit to take one deer in a certain area for two weeks in February.
Once the animal had been harvested, the whole animal got delivered to the person that you were hunting for and they could do whatever they pleased with it, whether keep it for themselves or share it with whoever. Keep in mind that not every applicant received a permit to do this so there was no fear of overkill and depleting the deer population in any one area.
The best part about it was it didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime, as us hunters were donating our time to help someone in need. They could run this program again and focus it on the areas that have the highest problems with deer. In my honest opinion, I think what they have planned for the cull is not going to have the results they think it will, but I wish them luck just the same and to prove me wrong.
Gary Murray
Penticton