By Anne Muller, New Paltz, NY
Updated June 2026
Across the years of hearing hunters and pro-hunting advocates continually providing fabricated reasons to kill deer, blaming deer for the decline of bird populations which stretches credulity to its limits. It is truly creative.
In 2018, the New York Times Op-Ed contributor, Prof. Cristol, was aware of the problems with wildlife management for hunting purposes, but who did he blame? The deer! He was blaming the victims!
Cristol touched on a few of the many disturbing practices of wildlife management, a practice that intentionally creates a large deer population, and “outs” the real goal of wildlife management agencies: to increase opportunites for hunters to find deer; but strangely, he then goes on to blame the deer for being more abundant than he would like.
Prof. Cristol knew full well that wildlife management agencies manipulate public and private lands to create overpopulations of “game species” at the expense of the many other animals that share the ecosystem. Nothing has changed since he wrote his piece in 2018. Shouldn’t we be putting the blame on the perpetrators of what we would call a “crime against nature”? Should the answer be to allow wildlife management agents to increase deer hunting? Or instead, shouldn’t we demand a change in the policies and practices of wildlife management? Why are we providing tax-payer support for agencies that continue to destroy our environment, ecosystems, wildlife, and even harming the economy? All of the energy and focus that go into providing a few species for hunters to kill is taken from all other species that are losing their homes and food sources. Those “other species” are 99% of all species.
By continuing to fail to protect land for wildlife watching, an animal friendly form of wildlife recreation, wildlife managers are losing an important source of income and will continue to harm whole species, individual animals and the public.
Let’s look at some of the details of wildlife management practices.
Prof. Cristol pointed out that public lands are highly manipulated to provide browse for deer at the expense of other wild animals. He also stated that private landowners are encouraged to allow their lands to be manipulated for the sake of growing high deer populations. He did not say why: The reason is that the sale of firearms and ammunition, and bows and arrows carry an excise tax that funds wildlife management agencies. Consequently, wildlife management agencies manage wildlife solely as targets for hunting rather than for peaceful, popular, and lucrative wildlife watching. Not much has changed in almost a decade.
What is not so obvious is that the guns and bullets that are used to kill people in cities also provide revenue for wildlife management agencies. The income is then used to creating more hunting. In other words, our wildlife management agencies benefit from crime committed with firearms. Shouldn’t that money at least be used to compensate the victims or their families?
Another deplorable aspect of having wildlife agencies that promote and manage for increased hunting opportunity is that of landowner abuse. It’s one thing to “encourage” property owners to develop their land for growing deer for hunting, and it’s quite another to try to impose hunting on property owners who do not want hunters trespassing on their land. The latter is happens all too frequently. Landowner abuse by hunters backed by state and federal agencies is taking place across the country.
Some examples from over the years:
In Pennsylvania, an attorney was charged with 5 counts of hunter harassment for telling hunters to leave her property; in South Carolina, a university administrator was charged with stealing a dog collar that she had removed from a hunting dog in an effort to locate the dog’s owner; in North Carolina, a mother and daughter were harassed by hunters while the Forest Service changed map boundaries to allow incursions onto their property; and in Michigan a teacher was charged with hunter harassment for collecting firewood on her property which allegedly disturbed a hunter.
These agencies basically serve only a small special interest group. Hunters are less than 5% of the population. Sadly, if you enjoy birding, photography, or other forms of wildlife watching, you are going to be very disappointed by what the government offers. All too often “wildlife watching areas” on public land are barren areas littered with garbage, without interpretive signs; wild animals that have been spooked by hunters are usually in hiding so that spotting them is an unfulfilled dream.
Our question is, why do we continue tolerating or suggesting even more hunting/culling and other forms of lethal aggression against wildlife when we need to take our anger out on the agencies and legislators who have created the problems?
We agree with Prof. Cristol that wildlife management practices have to change. We agree that it’s high time for wildlife watchers and the general public to have full use of public lands managed for all species.
Anne Muller is President of Wildlife Watch.
914-388-5221 cell
845-256-1400 office
New Paltz, NY
wildwatch@verizon.net