AAA Advises Hitting Deer on the Roads

Every year about this time, articles appear in the newspapers about the need to reduce the deer population due to car-deer collisions. Press releases from the usual suspects, game agencies, and hunting related clubs and enterprises, are printed just about verbatim.

One such article, titled Love-Struck Bucks a Danger for Drivers, may be read at this link:
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/traffic/commuter-life/2014/09/18/love-struck-bucks-danger-roads/15834789/

The following perceptive letter was written in response by wildlife rehabilitator Marilyn Leybra to the Journal News in Rockland County, NY

This JN reporter quotes only the repeated age old rhetoric from a DEC big-game biologist regarding increased deer-car collisions in October and November as being due to deer mating season. She makes no mention of deer being pursued by bow hunters in October and gun hunters in November, and therefore being in a high state of tension ready to flee in an instant in fear for their life, including onto roads. This is like denying that wild animals, who survive by their wits are not aware to this new danger in the once peaceful woods. The same interviewed big game wildlife biologist goes on to say that due to high deer population density, “… state efforts in recent years have focused on reducing the deer population …”

‘Recent years?’  To my knowledge, this deer reduction effort thru hunting has been going on year after year for the last 50 years yet the deer population (since being built up to one million) never wavers.  A good question for this same big game wildlife biologist would’ve been to ask him to explain the ‘maximum sustained yield principle.’  Because no, deer do not breed ‘litters’ two or more times a year like rabbits or rats, and their population naturally is meant to vary with available food supply and habitat, harsh weather, disease, etc..  Given that, PLUS yearly being killed off by an army of seriously armed predators, time to ask the same ‘official wildlife biologist’ why we still have the same million deer we’ve heard about for years, causing all these deer/ car collisions. Yes?

AAA should be ashamed of itself for not standing up to the game agencies for permitting hunting near roads, especially at dawn and dusk!  Instead they recommend to drivers that they just hit the deer on the road that are being driven out by “rut” (rather than hunters).  The article quotes AAA NY spokesman Robert Sinclair who said, “You shouldn’t swerve. The simplest advice is if you see a deer in the road, hit it. People say, ‘You are killing Bambi.’ I would rather kill Bambi than a family.” Instead of playing along with the hunting fraternity, they need to bring a lawsuit against the game agencies for endangering the public!

To read more about this subject, visit C.A.S.H. article:  ERIE INSURANCE COMPANY REPORT PROVES THAT HUNTING IS A MAJOR CAUSE OF CAR-DEER COLLISIONS!

The article was written by David Cantor of RESPONSIBLE POLICIES FOR ANIMALS.