Deer hunting puts town at risk
Editor, Townsman:
Recent events involving deer-hunting tragedies raise again the issue of whether the town of Andover's deer-hunting program presents unacceptable financial - and personal - risk to citizens.
Last month an Andover resident residing off Bailey Road, near the Pheasant Ridge Green Area, found a dead deer on his front lawn with an arrow through it. While the location was not adjacent to town conservation land where deer hunting has been approved, the disturbing incident nevertheless raises serious concerns.
Bow hunting, with it's 50-percent "kill rate," enables wounded animals to travel distances from the kill site before dying. Under the town's current program, where hunting borders on school playing fields, the risk of children encountering seriously wounded and dying deer is real. When only half the time the deer are actually killed where shot, and, as the program's participants admitted, it is not uncommon for hunters to wait until later before tracking down and killing the wounded animal, the likelihood that our children might encounter dying "Bambis" while at school should make us pause before re-approving this program for next year.
But not only are we faced with encountering dying deer on our front yards — as did this town resident — the end of the year hunting "accident" in Norton further warrants caution. A 66-year-old woman walking her two dogs as usual in the woods behind her home was shot by a state trooper who mistook her dogs for deer. The Norton shooting was the fifth hunting incident investigated by the state Environmental Police since September. Last year a star high school athlete was shot by a hunter while jogging on his town's trails. And a few years ago in nearby Lowell a woman's dog was killed in similar fashion. Significantly, in the Norton incident, the hunter was a state trooper, a person trained to use weapons skillfully and carefully. Thus, even under optimal conditions, hunters make mistakes and injuries occur.
As we commented several months ago, "There are substantial financial risks to the town's taxpayers of allowing hunting to go forward. As town counsel advised at Town Meeting, the town is not protected from suits for alleged injuries associated with hunting...." We regret that our concerns have been shown to be well-founded. Once again we suggest that, based on a rational risk-verses-benefit approach (and we believe facts show any benefits to our forests to be negligible and less effective and more costly than other alternatives), allowing deer hunting with bows on town conservation land just does not make sense.
Lois Karfunkel
22 Orchard Crossing
Diane Sullivan
North Andover
Carol Van Doren
Kristen Burns
Deborah Cummings
