Both instances are wrong as far as I'm concerned. There is no "good" involved.
One generally considers preventing human starvation as a "good" - but there are those who consider (with some justification) that the human herd needs culling.
I do attach a higher value to the buck. Most deer mangement activities often involve reducing the female population to control the amount of herd growth where the land can not support the rising deer population. Techniques also include culling out the bucks that are older or exhibit certain antler producing qualities.
Do you attach a higher value because of some societal status you attach to the antlers? Perhaps that's where attitudes need adjusting.
I agree that the more effective way to control the herd numbers is to cull the females. Ironically, that argues that if you want to maintain numbers, you should shoot the bucks and not the females. So a poacher who shoots a buck does less damage to the population than one that shoots a doe (if maintaining/increasing herd size is the goal.) I suspect that was part of game management 30 years ago - shoot the bucks, preserve the herd.
I would make allowances for someone truly in need who is willing to work a little for what they get. Hunting often entails work. I know less fortunate people who want deer meat from me... but only after I package and freeze it. Like welfare, they simply have their hand out and I pay for it one way or another.
Fair enough.
Where in PA was that? There are areas in PA that have high whitetail populations. I don't doubt that nuisance permits are granted in certain areas.
It was a rural area outside Allentown.
Incidentally, I also recall newspaper accounts of deer permits being issue to hunt deer
within the city of Philadelphia. The permits were only issue to LEOs, but IIRC, they could take along two "hunting buddies". When deer become so numerous that areas inside cities are overrun, you know that the game management has succeeded to the point of failure!
Some PA hunters apparantly liked the old way of deer starving and seeing the available browse reduced to nothing during the winter.
And that's pretty much the point. Why bother with any game (deer) restrictions when the alternative to hunting is starvation (of both deer and humans)?
You have clearly never lived in an area that has a low whitetail population. Poaching there would cause a lot of damage to the future growth of the herd. Deer are not migratory animals like ducks. They pretty much live and die in the area they were born and may perhaps broaden their range if food supplies dwindle.
And in such areas, the laws may be different. But in the PA example I gave, Joe Hunter couldn't get a 50-head permit. Only a person with a "nuisance deer" problem could - and then, they could not keep the deer they killed. Under such circumstances, it's clear that even the state recognizes that deer have gone from game animal to nuisance... maybe even to varmint.
I have not experienced any significant police activity that was outside the law.
Check out the front page of KeepAndBearArms.com. Most days they have a half dozen or so examples of cops gone bad. Saturday's issue had two accounts of cops being arrested for theft, one of obstruction of justice, one who got probation for two counts of tampering with records and one count of obstruction of justice, and one ICE agent confessing to embezzlement. Usually there's a rape or three and a murder thrown in for good measure. Friday's issue had coverage of Miami paying out $500,000 to compensate a victim of cop rape, an admission by a NY cop that he framed people on drug charges, and an indictment of a cop on three felony charges.
Once you tune in to these cases, you start to realize that there are an awful lot of bad cops sucking up taxpayer money while acting like gang members in blue.
Tag fees are based on what the state wildlife folk needs in revenue, history, and their interpretation of supply and demand in the market.
I'd say that their interpretation may be as bad as Bernanke's.
Deer are viewed as a resource of the state and not "owned" by the land owner unless the property is "high fenced" to keep deer out and manage the population of animals that reside inside the fenced area.
I've addressed the issue of "ownership".
