It's Bear and Deer Hunt Season in New Jersey

By Alan Caruba

The last time there was an effort to suspend a bear hunt in New Jersey, Jon Corzine was Governor and Lisa Jackson, the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was the head of the State’s Department of Environmental Protection. They both opposed the hunt.

Corzine served from 2006 to 2010. It was a bad idea because the bear population had surged and became an even larger problem for folks in the northern counties. Gov. Chris Christie had promised to reinstate the bear hunt when he ran for office. Previously there had been bear hunts in 2003 and 2005. A legal challenge thwarted a hunt in 2007.

As a recent Wall Street Journal article noted, “New Jersey could be considered a bear’s paradise. It has mild winters and an abundance of acorns, berries, hickory nuts and other species favorites.” We might also mention bird feeders and easily accessed garbage cans. Those in bear country tend not to feed the birds and have garbage cans that can survive a WMD.

If you don’t think the sport of hunting is not popular in America, it’s worth noting that of the estimated 7,000 permits issued for this year’s hunt, some ten percent were snapped up by those from out-of-state and the first of some 200 bears killed on Monday, December 5, was taken by Robert Melber of Apache Junction, Arizona. He hadn’t been in the woods of the Delaware Water Gap for more than a half hour before he bagged one.

Need it be said that an environmental group, the Animal Protection League of New Jersey had filed and lost a court case to stop the hunt? Two dozen or so bear-huggers showed up to protest at a weighing station in Franklin on Monday.

To put this in perspective, the Wall Street Journal reported that “New Jersey’s bear population was 3,278 last year, up from 1,447 in 2003 according to DEP estimates.” It further noted that “Bears can live into their 20s and have an average of three cubs per litter, with a female able to give birth to 21 babies over her lifetime.” You do the math.

The deer hunting season coincides with the bear hunt and, in the county of Essex, hunters bagged 339 deer. To put this in perspective, Essex’s county seat is Newark and it is wall-to-wall suburban communities separated in some parts by two large reservation areas, a 2,049-acre South Mountain Reservation and a 408-acre Eagle Rock Reservation. I live within a two minute drive of the former.

There were so many deer in the South Mountain Reservation at one point they were literally killing the ecology. Rarely mentioned is the fact that deer are major vectors for Lyme disease, spread by infected deer ticks. When the ticks migrate they can infect humans enjoying the nature preserve. The county now has annual hunts and over the last four years the program has culled an estimated 1,089 deer.

Deer pose another problem as well. The NJ Department of Transportation says that more than 4,700 deer were killed by vehicles in the first week of November when the males are in rut and looking for love. Last year’s total was about 6,000.

It always strikes me as absurd that animal lovers probably think nothing of having steak or lamb for dinner or taking the family out to a local McDonald’s for a juicy hamburger. These are the same people who look forward to eating a big turkey on Thanksgiving. They no doubt eat a lot of chicken throughout the year. The vegans get a pass as they have to make do with tofu.

Suffice to say that the bear and deer hunters have probably saved more than a few lives and helped to keep the State’s wildlife population to a reasonable level. As is always the case, the animal rights crowd is utterly indifferent to the safety of the State’s human population because facts and logic have nothing to do with their wailing about how “inhumane” the hunts are in their view.

I hope one of the hunters sends a nice bear steak to Gov. Christie. And no, it does not take like chicken. It tastes more like pork.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Saturday Night is Bath Night

Up to Our Elbows in Bears

By Alan Caruba

You know there’s a problem when The Wall Street Journal devotes an article to the fact that there are too many bears in New Jersey. That’s what it did over the July 4th weekend, noting that there have been “1,250 sightings” thus far this year.

Some of those sightings were up close and personal with one of the estimated 5,000 bears in the Garden State. In a scene from “The Sopranos”, Tony is in the backyard of his home when he spots a black bear ambling by. Fortunately for Tony, he had an arsenal in the house to deal with the intruder.

People in the northwestern part of the State, near the Pennsylvania and New York borders are accustomed to seeing bears, but this year they have been spotted in all twenty-one counties, right on down the Delaware border. That only means one thing; the competition for food among the increased bear population is forcing them to wander far and wide.

In Kinnelon a couple discovered a mother and two cubs living under their porch this past April and, in May, police tried shooing away a bear that had entered a house for food. When it returned a few minutes later, they shot it. In Hopewell Township a bear was seen walking along, appropriately, Bear Tavern Road.

Typically, in New Jersey where everything is considered worthy of regulation, when it comes to wildlife, there’s a Fish and Game Council and there’s also the Department of Environmental Protection. The Fish and Game folks understandably think that a bear hunt every so often is a good idea.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In 2006 a bear hunt had been scheduled to address the growing bear population and the rise in reported sightings and incidents. It was cancelled by the then-DEP commissioner, Lisa Jackson. If the name sounds familiar, it is because she has since been tapped by Barack Obama to be the present administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A bear hunt in 2005 had bagged just short of three hundred bears. It was—are you ready for this—only the second hunt in 35 years! Two years later in 2007, 328 bears had been killed by hunters after there had been 1,407 sightings. In 2005, biologists had estimated there were about 3,200 bears. Five years later, that estimate had increased by two thousand!

In 2009, the number of sightings had jumped 41.5% from 2005 with time-out in 2006-10 to breed a whole lot more bears courtesy of Lisa Jackson.

The 2003 and 2005 hunts were accompanied with protests by people who likely have never seen a bear unless it was in a zoo or on television.

The Jersey bears even have their own advocacy group, the Bear Education and Resource Group. “They’re trying to dupe the public into believing that the bears are dangerous and at fault,” said Janet Piszar, its director.

The head of the state Sierra Club chapter, Jiff Tittel, blamed the bear problem, not on bear fecundity but on trash. “Hunt or no hunt, we will never resolve bear programs until we deal with trash.”

Tell that to the folks who spotted three bears wandering in Wayne in May not far from the campus of William Patterson University and St. Joseph’s Wayne Hospital.

By 2010, the bears have not only increased their population and spread to every county in the State, but the Fish and Game Council was gearing up to initiate a six-day hunt in December.

One reason New Jersey has a new Governor is that the previous one, Jon Corzine, was insistent that non-lethal methods be used to deal with the bears, i.e., no hunts. By contrast, Gov. Chris Christie, has vowed to end Corzine’s ban on bear hunts.

The lesson one can draw from this is that, left to the environmentalists like Lisa Jackson, Jon Corzine, Jeff Tittel, and the loonies that don’t see any real threat to the human, taxpaying residents of New Jersey, there would be no bear hunts.

Whenever and wherever Greens and the “animal rights” groups get involved, humans and their expectation to be protected from bears anywhere and everywhere in New Jersey comes in a poor second to the bear population.

© Alan Caruba, 2010