DEC was right to leave stranded deer alone

Linda Whitehead has a few errors in her bashing of the Department of Environmental Conservation especially in regard to the deer in the river incident. DEC has some very knowledgeable biologists on board. I have known some of these as well as quite a few officers over the years. I can tell you every officer has a deep respect and love for all wildlife.

In the case of the deer, what did she expect them to do? If they had approached that animal, it would have tried to flee, jumping into the water and surely drowning. It was already weak from standing there several days. They couldn’t really do anything but what they did, and that was just to let nature take its course. Deer are survivors. That thing wasn’t going anywhere until it felt safe in doing so. Luckily the deer made it off safely and the deer survived.

Thankfully some other do-gooder didn’t try a rescue on their own, which would surely have been tragic also. Give DEC some credit for standing by and doing the right thing. They are the experts here.

Imagine the public relations impact if DEC had tried a rescue and botched it. What would she be writing about then? How stupid the DEC is?

In her assessment about hunting license sales being down, take a look at the median age of today’s license holder. It has gone up yearly. Why? Not for the reasons she gives. Give a kid the choices between a hunting outing and a day of sitting in front of a TV with an X-box and see which one they choose.

Now the DEC officers could go into each household and confiscate all the electronic gadgetry, but you would probably not like them for this either.

Lynn Truesdell

Watertown