Blue over a deer hunt

Pity the poor state conservation and wildlife officials who each year have to deal with critics more interested in offering birth control to the deer population in the Blue Hills Reservation than in seeing a single one of them shot.

Yes, we’re having this fight again, as the plan for another controlled deer hunt in the Blue Hills has drawn the non-hunters out of their suburban dens. Some are still pushing the idea that injecting every doe wandering the 7,000-acre reservation with a shot of birth control is a better way to reduce the deer population. Others oppose hunting altogether — which isn’t really the discussion on the table.

“I think it is a waste of money and time having a deer hunt in the Blue Hills,” Dave Hodgdon of Blue Hills Adventures said at a public meeting on the proposed hunt last week, according to the Patriot Ledger.

Whose money and whose time?

It may not be his thing, but there are plenty of folks willing to pay for a license and spend their free time hunting during the very limited period of time it’s allowed in this state. DCR will allow bow-hunting for deer in limited areas of the Blue Hills for a few weeks in November. A four-day shotgun hunt will be permitted after Thanksgiving.

But this isn’t just about creating opportunities for hunters. High deer populations threaten forest health. DCR puts the population in the reservation at about 50 per square mile; the goal is 20 or less. A controlled hunt is an efficient and humane way for DCR to get to that goal.