Some hunters to get rewards
Hunter Beau Payne cautioned the Deer & Tick Committee to find a way to track deer kills to ensure rewards go only to those who deserve them.
Nine local hunters will find themselves with an extra holiday gift this month thanks to a decision by the town’s Deer & Tick Committee Wednesday morning.
The rewards will got to those who have taken at least two deer during the year.Along with receiving a $100 gift certificate to purchase sporting goods for future hunts, the hunters will get letters thanking them for their past efforts and informing them that future incentives are being explored.
The gift certificates are intended to pay for such items as ammunition, arrows or other hunting equipment. The aim is offset those costs without paying outright for hunters to kill deer — something the state Department of Environmental Conservation prohibits.
The committee is also seeking input from the hunters about what incentives they would like to encourage them to take more deer.
It’s a first step in what Deer & Tick Committee members hope will be an increased amount of money they receive to cull the herd. The current budget allocates $8,000 for deer reduction management, but $4,000 of that covers costs of butchering the animals so meat can be distributed to those in need.
Councilman Ed Brown, who is usually a dedicated budget hawk, told the committee that if an incentive program can be shown to work effectively, he would lead the charge with his fellow Town Board members to find more money for deer management.
In his discussions with others who hunt, Beau Payne told the committee “everybody’s eyes light up” with discussions about incentives, but no one offered any suggestions for what kind of incentives would prompt them to increase their efforts.
He warned the committee to develop a way to track the number of deer killed.
“There are obviously unscrupulous people out there” reporting kills that never happened in response to an incentive program launched during this year’s hunt, he said.
Besides offering meat to soup kitchens, committee members want to get the word out that anyone who wants meat can arrange to get it from a food locker maintained at the Recycling Center. Often, there is more meat there than what’s requested and Mr. Payne said he wants to see greater effort put into distributing meat to those who need it. A wider donation system needs to be established, he said.
Committee chairman Mike Scheibel said the New Jersey legislature is contemplating a bill to allow sale of venison shot by hunters there.
The possibility of increasing the Deer & Tick Committee from its current seven members to nine to add Mr. Payne and Nick Ryan, the town worker handling the four-poster systems on the Island, is a possibility.
The idea came from member Jim Colligan as both a means of making it easier to get a quorum for meetings and to ensure wider input from the two men who are integrally involved in the issues surrounding deer and tick management.
The committee has seven members and would grow to nine unless any of the current members opt not to continue. Terms are staggered, but three members — Mr. Colligan, Steve Lenox and Marc Wein have terms that expire in late June 2015. Members Vincent DiGregorio and Scott Campbell have frequently been able to participate only by telephone and Mr. Wein has done so as well.
Dr. Campbell was at Wednesday’s meeting and told his colleagues that when he does phone in because of his work commitments, he finds it difficult to hear all comments or fully participate in the discussion unless questions are specifically addressed to him. He said he can’t always hear all voices in the room.
His work as lab director at the Suffolk Country Department of Health Services and as a member of the Suffolk County Legislature’s committee examining problems with tick-borne diseases, makes him a critical member of the committee, Mr. Colligan said. The same goes for Dr. DiGregorio, a physician, Mr. Colligan said.
Because the committee is appointed by the Town Board and takes no final votes of its own, it’s not subject to the open meetings law per se, according to Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Department of State’s Committee on Open Government.
But a committee that votes does have to have a quorum present, either in the room or via video conferencing, not telephone, he said.
For the Deer & Tick Committee that generally doesn’t vote but simply discusses issues to offer a consensus of opinions, it can do as it pleases with respect to how it conducts its meetings, he said.
