Opponents of a new spring turkey hunting season pleaded with the East Hampton Town Board to opt out of the program until the last minute, but on Tuesday the board, as it had previously indicated it would, voted only to prohibit hunting during a five-day span around Memorial Day weekend.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced the spring hunt spanning the month of May, “consistent with management practices in New York State and the Northeast,” according to the agency. Hunting will be allowed from half an hour before dawn until noon with a limit of one male turkey per hunter. The new season is in addition to a youth hunt that this year will take place on April 22 and 23, and a fall hunting season that this year will span Nov. 19 through Dec. 2.
There are 18 properties in the town where small-game hunting is permitted, Councilwoman Cate Rogers said last month.
At the board’s work session on Tuesday, Bill Crain, president of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, was among four speakers to ask the board to change course. The D.E.C., he said, is “constantly expanding the hunting seasons,” adding that “people don’t realize how pro-hunting the D.E.C. is,” describing its meetings as “like hunters’ conventions.” Mr. Crain had previously told the board that opting out of the May turkey hunt would simply maintain the status quo, and not take away an existing right.
“If somebody said, hypothetically, that ‘the human population is growing at a rate that’s dangerous to the planet’ — it really is, that’s supposed to be sarcasm — ‘so let’s kill some humans for the sake of the species and the planet,’ we’d be outraged,” he said. “I urge you to let the turkeys live.”
Since the board took up the matter, several residents have cited ticks, which can transmit viruses that can cause severe illness, as a reason not to kill turkeys. The website Stop Ticks is among many stating that turkeys can eat 200 or more ticks in a day, but the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s website states that “turkey foraging has not been found to reduce tick abundance and they too can become hosts to a number of tick species.”
In a November “On the Wing” column on turkeys in this paper, however, Kevin McGowan, a senior course developer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said that he was not aware of turkeys eating ticks, and also that disease-carrying “mammal ticks don’t ride on birds.”
Yuka Silvera handed a petition to Carole Brennan, the town clerk, bearing 766 signatures, 300 of them state residents.
Last Thursday, Mr. Crain and Ms. Silvera were among those staging a protest outside Town Hall, an event that Mr. Crain said drew 17 people. “I’m here because I think that it’s completely unnecessary to kill turkeys in the month of May when hunters already have a period of time when they can do that in the fall,” said Jennifer Grossbach, who attended with her daughters. “Turkeys are intelligent, emotional, they have families. They’re having babies in May.”
“I like the fact that turkeys eat a lot of ticks,” said P.J. Delia, “and I think there’s going to be a lot of ticks this year because of the mild winter we had. . . . I just think this is an exercise in futility. And, a little less gunfire around Memorial Day weekend is also a good idea.”
Those in favor of the spring turkey hunt, including members of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, spoke at several of the board’s recent meetings, arguing that local traditions are under assault and that killing a wild animal for consumption is a vastly better practice than supporting “factory farming,” the high-density raising of animals in which billions are slaughtered every year.
On social media, the controversy took on biblical proportions, one could say, or a clash of Eastern and Western beliefs. After the Group for Wildlife posted pictures and video of its protest on Instagram, the Sportsmen’s Alliance posted a comment from the Book of Genesis. “The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands,” it said. “Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”
In response, the Group for Wildlife posted another video accompanied by a verse from the Dhammapada, an anthology of Buddhist teachings. “All beings tremble before violence,” it read in part. “All fear death. All love life.”
“See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?”
Back in the main meeting room at Town Hall, the board’s vote was perfunctory. Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who, in signaling her opposition to the spring turkey hunt, noted last month that Mother’s Day and Memorial Day both fall in May — “a time to put our guns down,” she said — was not in attendance. The vote was unanimous: The board “prohibits wild turkey hunting on all town parklands during the Memorial Day weekend each year, such prohibition to commence the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend and to continue to and including Memorial Day each year.”
