Lower Makefield Township, in my area, has a deer problem. Since the Township Supervisors were soliciting bids, a group of archers from my club put in a bid to reduce the deer numbers through bow hunting, rather than sharpshooters.  Last night, the Lower Makefield Board of Supervisors voted to stick it to the archers, and go with the “professional” sharpshooters:
Supervisors Pete Stainthorpe, Teri Appelson and Greg Caiola voted to award White Buffalo Inc. of Moodus, Conn., a $59,900 contract to conduct the sharp shoot. Board chairman Matt Maloney and Ron Smith voted no on the motion. They agreed a hunt was necessary, but favored a proposal from a local group called Big Oak Whitetail Management for an archery hunt that would have cost a maximum of $15,000.
Get that Lower Makefield residents? Your township supervisors just voted to spend 45 thousand dollars of taxpayer money to hire professional sharpshooters when bow hunters were willing to do it for a fraction of the price. Congratulations to supervisors Maloney and Smith for following the old adage about gift horses and mouths, and voting to save taxpayers some money. What made them go with the more expensive bid?
Stainthorpe, Appelson and Caiola all said they felt a sharp shoot would be the quickest, most effective and most humane way of reducing the township’s deer population. They feared the possibility of deer shot with arrows suffering for prolonged periods, or at least longer than they would if shot with a rifle.
I’ve seen our archers shoot. They won’t miss. An arrow will kill a deer just as surely as a bullet will. If the Pennsylvania Game Commission finds bow hunting sporting and humane enough to have a season for it, why isn’t it good enough for the Lower Makefield Board of Supervisors?
*sniff*
Anyone else catch a whiff of ‘kickback’ here?
No proof, of course, but generally in the corporate environment, I’ve discovered that wining and dining with a few ‘extras’ tossed in can get the shittiest products purchased.
Government isn’t any different.
What’s better, Robb, is that one of those supervisors expected the NRA endorsement for higher office after he refused to respond to their survey. Now he’s sticking it to hunters and wasting tax dollars – and he’s a Republican! Yay!
Some politicians just really do not get it. But, I agree with Jim Geraghty that we need to take this fight to the local guys. Lower Makefield Township residents need to show up and tell the supervisors to reverse the decision. It’s not set in stone since they still need state permission. They need to demand that $45,000 go back into town coffers and either be refunded to residents or used for something more useful like road repairs.
I was just looking through the agendas of our town meetings today to see if there was any mention of stimulus money worth protesting, and from the minutes, it sounds like they were questioning expenditures as little as $5,000 to make sure they understood where the money was going. Go them.
Get good people in at the ground level and try to help them rise to the top.
We had that problem recently (well, last 3-4 years) at a park in Cobb County. Deer had basicly stripped the vegetation as far up as they could reach, and were struggling for food. The county granted licenses to hunt the deer using bows (surburban area, etc), which the hunters did, IIRC, gratis. Deer were turned over for processing at a local processor and the meat donated through the Hunters for the Hungry program.
Of course, Google (or my googling skills) completely fail me now to find a link to PROVE this….
I say someone shoots one councilmember with an arrow, and one with a bullet, and then they can determine scientifically which way is more humane, and make their decision based off the result. To do it properly, though, you’d need a larger sample size, so I say we all pitch in to compile these obviously important and necessary data.