Fair enough and most of that makes perfect sense. My only question is can bow hunters really make a difference on Staten Island in particular? It seems to me that even if it were legalized, permitted, guided, or what have you, there are a variety of obstacles not present in rural NJ, PA, or NY. Food and lodging being the most obvious to me.
Apparently all this is moot anyway because the city's vasectomy plan seems to be quite effective thus far. I wonder what trapping or darting (I'm assuming this is a term) a buck on Staten Island pays?
Still, shooting bows in a backyard in Paterson is hilarious to me for some reason. One of these days I'll get around to learning how to shoot something.
I love shooting. I started at 4 years old and started competing at 9 years old.
I come from a family of archers. It's really worth a look.
But on the hunting...
Most whitetail deer hunting is done by locals. There are really no infrastructure needs. No one is going to spend money to come hunt Staten Island from much further than NJ. But those who live within an hour drive of a small woodlot will gladly pay the NY State licenses fee and a local permit fee for the opportunity to hunt....
Now think about that for one moment.
People are willing to pay for the opportunity. In the sterilization scenario, which really does not work, the municipality is going inccur a major expense.
Say a municipality can charge a $50 fee for a special permit, say they institute a rule that says any participant must have a certain amount of liability insurance to buy a permit and say the municipality picks the exact spots that are open and how many people can hunt there...this is how many of the municipalities run "special hunts" in NJ. The municipality actually creates a revenue stream and solves a problem as opposed to incurring an expense with an extremely high likelihood of failure.
In the hunting scenario I can tell you approximately how many deer will be removed based on the number of permits sold and historical success rates before the hunt even begins. These type of programs exist all over New Jersey and many other suburban and urban places. They are usually conducted quietly as not to drawn the ire of activist. They work and I have personally participated in a few such programs.
But another issue with sterilization is without adults males to breed adult females, an almost impossible scenario to create, but even you could, male fawns would start to breed adult females. It happens in captivity all the time.