Deer Conservation?

I was recently talking to a hunter and former sporting goods dealer from Pennsylvania and I discovered something quite interesting...the hunters and PETA have a mutual enemy, Automotive Insurance Companies.  It seems the deer herds from Maryland to New York are dwindling except in the extremely remote ares of the states due to one common item, salt. 

Now what does this have to do with the AIC's bringing hunters and animal rights activists together? Well deer like salt and during the winter when the state has ice on the roads guess what they like to use to on the roads? That's right SALT!  So here we have a volatile mix of deer on slick roads and drivers not being able to stop.  Guess who ends up forking the bill for this one? EVERYONE!!! Oh the insurance companies would like nothing better than to see every deer eradicated while hunters and every animal rights groups want to see them flourishing so who gets in the middle the Sate governments.  This former small businessman and many like him wanted to stop selling doe licenses thus allowing the herds to grow so what does, specifically the Pennsylvania Game Commission decide to do? They threatened the store owners with pulling their ability to sell ANY license including fishing, trapping and others as well as flooding the market with doe licenses the following year through Wal-Mart, Bass Pro Shops etc.  This man and many like him packed it in and hung up his rifle knowing he couldn't fight the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

I don't begrudge any company from making a profit but I'm also a hunter and a conservationist, as most hunters are but this is a travesty of political proportions.  I recommended that this hunter and those who he knows should start a campaign to combine their efforts with those of groups like the NRA and PETA (never thought I'd put those two in the same sentence let alone as allies) and toss out those in the state capital of Harrisburg who supported the insurance companies.  But alas the hunter is old and had neither the time or the resources to pursue this avenue though he did like the idea.

This is the problem with the voters today in general, they are but sheep waiting to be slaughtered.  How does that old quote go; "For evil to flourish all that is needed is for good men to do nothing." Apathy is the road to an end of things as we know them.  The northeast is loaded with good men and women, all interested in saving the whitetailed deer population even if the dollars of the insurance companies are being stuffed into the pockets of the respective game commissions.  If only there was a group that they could fashion themselves after that has made a difference in elections as a grass-roots orgainiztion; oh there is the Tea Party. 

The bottom line is this, yes insurance companies are allowed to make a profit but not at the expense of a species being brought to near extinction in areas where they once were as many as the stars in the sky.  When men hunted with their sons and daughters in the bitter cold of a snowy morning.  When a couple who have not hunted for venison in many years watch as the deer eat apples beneath the tree in their yard at dusk.  Or the children afraid in their summer night beds as they hear the snorting  of a deer beneath their open window.  This is one area where profit must be second to that of the future good for all people.

Doc