Pleas for Weekend Hunt Ban
Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, asserting that residents are unsafe in the woods during hunting season, are asking the East Hampton Town Board to institute a ban on hunting on one weekend day.
Hunting rules and regulations are set by the state and enforced by state conservation officers, as well as by federal Fish and Wildlife agents where migratory birds are concerned, according to the town’s hunting guide for the 2018-19 season. While local municipalities cannot pass laws regulating hunting seasons, they can decide whether to permit hunting within their jurisdiction. Private landowners may also permit hunting on their properties.
Deer hunting with firearms was permitted from Jan. 6 through Jan. 31 this year. Bow hunting for deer was permitted from Oct. 31 through Jan. 31. Hunting for some types of smaller game and some birds extends into February and March.
A longtime state ban on weekend hunting was lifted four years ago. While the Group for Wildlife considers hunting inhumane, some residents are upset by the noise of firearms as well as what they say is a hazardous condition for hiking and other recreational activities, for themselves as well as their pets.
At the town board’s meeting last Thursday, Carol Saxe of Springs, who is the group’s representative to the town’s wildlife management advisory committee, asked the board to partially reinstate the weekend ban, suggesting that hunting be prohibited on Sunday.
“About 6 percent of the population in the United States hunts,” she told the board, and only around 1 percent consumes their prey. “The vast majority of East Hampton Town residents do not hunt,” she said. Members of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society had opposed the lifting of the weekend ban, she said, while others complain about gun noise, which she said starts around 5:30 a.m. “If you live anywhere near water . . . sleeping is out of the question,” she said.
Expanding hunting to reduce the deer population is unproductive, she said, referring to studies on “compensatory rebound effect,” the response by which a sudden increase in food resources, due to a sudden decrease in the population, induces a high reproductive rate.
A partial reinstatement of a ban would give hunters one weekend day to hunt while preserving a day for the public’s safe access to town lands on weekends, Ms. Saxe said. “We’re asking for one day of peace, quiet, and safety,” she told the board.
Ronnie Manning spoke of how gunfire disturbs the peace and frightens her dog when she is walking it. “It seems a majority of town land is reserved for the hunters,” she said, while harsh winter weather often precludes walking, and walking dogs, on beaches. “If you’re by yourself in the woods and have good control, there’s no reason not to let your dog run free,” she said, “except we have to be in fear that we could be in the crossfire. . . . Why can’t we share the land more?”
A ban on hunting one day per week represents a “fair and reasonable” compromise, Ms. Saxe said.
The Group for Wildlife’s proposal was discussed at recent meetings of the wildlife management advisory committee, Ms. Saxe wrote to the town board on Monday, and she asked that it be put on the board’s work session agenda for public discussion. But the feeling among her group is that hunters and their advocates dominate the wildlife management advisory committee.
“The committee is composed primarily of hunters and individuals who support hunting,” she wrote. “As a representative of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, I have a voice on the committee but no meaningful vote since I’m outnumbered by the imbalance of the group. I vote alone as the only committed voice for nonviolent and humane management of our wildlife.”
Only three members attended the most recent meeting of the wildlife management advisory committee, Councilman David Lys, the board’s liaison to the committee, said at the board’s Feb. 19 meeting, and two opposed reinstating a ban.
The sound of gunfire “travels for miles across the harbors and affects residential neighborhoods far and wide,” Ms. Saxe wrote to the board. “Gun noise is not merely disturbing, it can cause fear in young children and pets.” The board, she wrote, “must decide whether it represents only hunters or the entire community, and whether it will maintain safe, fair, and shared utilization of town-owned land.”
At the town board’s meeting last Thursday, only Councilman Jeff Bragman stated a position on the Group for Wildlife’s proposal, voicing support for a ban on hunting on one weekend day.