By Ron Baker
Can you always believe what you see? In the popular
movie THE RECRUIT, first released last winter, Walter Burke,
senior instructor of the CIA career trainees, informs his charges: “You
have all just walked through the looking glass. What you see,
what you hear, NOTHING is what it seems!”
This principle is often true of life, and it is
certainly true of commercial wildlife management. Likewise it
is also true of a research project at Mohonk Preserve. The preserve
is a privately owned natural area divided into two sections.
One portion, which includes the Spring Farm section borders lands
owned by the Mohonk Mountain House, includes a total of about
3,000 acres. This encompasses woodlands on adjacent Mountain
House property and is located between the town of New Paltz and
the village of High Falls in southeastern New York State. The
second section of the preserve is the Shawangunk Mountains about
a dozen miles west of New Paltz. This portion of the preserve
consists of about 5,000 acres.
The Mohonk Preserve land was separated from the
Mohonk Mountain House property to become a non-profit nature
preserve. The Mohonk House is surrounded by an approximately
200 acre buffer zone between the house and preserve. At $350
a night, the Mohonk House is a popular, and very expensive historical
landmark hotel frequented by those who can afford it. The preserve
is technically a land trust but actually a corporation, overseen
by a board of directors and headed by executive director Glenn
D. Hoagland. Since the preserve is a private enterprise, it is
necessary to purchase a day pass or an annual membership permit
to use these lands.
Your writer is a preserve member, and therefore
has had ample opportunity to use preserve lands and closely observe
the flora and fauna that are found there. Deer are among the
animals that live on the preserve. Not surprisingly, each autumn,
deer are legal game. They are hunted with shotguns on weekdays
during three weeks from mid-November through early December.
C.A.S.H. has periodically protested deer hunting on the preserve
but to no avail. (Hunting is not permitted on woodlands owned
by Mohonk Mountain House.) [Editor’s note: Although the Mohonk
House says they do not allow hunting, the Mohonk House applies
for and receives “nuisance” permits to kill deer on property
that belongs to the House. They charge hunters to hunt on their
preserve lands which attract non-consumptive enjoyers of the
outdoors.]
One important reason that deer are hunted on the
preserve is that there is a very close relationship between the
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (including
members of the New York State Division of Wildlife and Sportsman
Education) and most members of the preserve’s eighteen person
board. Indeed, the southwestern portion of the preserve borders
Minnewaska State Park where deer hunting is also permitted. By
the board’s own admission there is an annual average of only
about one deer per ten acres on Mohonk preserve. Your writer
has had four and a half months this year to closely study Nature
on the preserve and it is his estimation, based on sightings,
deer tracks, other deer signs, and the unmistakable sound of
retreating deer, that the deer population density on the preserve,
even after fawns were born early this summer, has actually been
about one deer for every twenty or twenty-five acres. Your writer
has observed only about a dozen deer on preserve woodlands these
four and a half months. His hikes in various portions of the
preserve have averaged four to six hours a day, two to three
times a week. There have been other deer sighted in open fields.
Presumably most of these deer enter woods by the time frosts
have killed most plants and a majority of the leaves have fallen,
reducing available overage prior to gun hunting season. This
may increase deer population density on the preserve by no more
than one deer for every five to ten acres.
The foregoing information is essential if one is
to understand the curious aspect of a small portion of the Spring
Farm section of the Mohonk Preserve. If a hiker walks from the
parking lot, up the Spring Farm Road through a field bordered
by woods, and thence into woods along the wide Spring Farm hiking
trail, and then onto Cedar Drive Trail; approximately seven-tenths
of a mile along this trail the observant hiker, looking to his
or her right may see a fenced enclosure about a hundred feet
into the woods. The fence is about seven feet high, too high
for a deer to lean over. A sign on the fence says: “DEER EXCLUSION
ENCLOSURE…”
Theoretically this fenced area was designed by
preserve research personnel to monitor the results of deer foraging.
Presumably, the enclosure area would be compared to surrounding
woods to determine whether deer were heavily browsing undergrowth.
Most of the interior o the enclosure consists of belt to chest-high
saplings. One might conclude that these are a result of the absence
of deer in the enclosed area. Outside the enclosure the ground
is barren of undergrowth except for this year’s seedlings (mostly
red maple).
However, only the ground in the vicinity of the
enclosure is barren of low-growth deer browse. If one observes
the ground surface about seventy feet behind the enclosure he
or she will find an area about fifteen by thirty feet brimming
with high saplings like those found within the enclosure. Likewise,
about 150 feet in front of the enclosure, one will find an even
larger area of chest-high saplings created by gaps in the overhead
leaf canopy. So what is one to conclude? In view of the low deer
population density here: 1) there may be phantom deer chewing
the low-growth browse that may have previously existed around
the enclosure, or 2) the enclosure may have deliberately been
placed around a small area of high saplings in a larger area
devoid of such saplings, or 3) there may be even more suspicious
activities. It’s an excellent scenario for a conspiracy theorist.
But it isn’t difficult to become a conspiracy theorist when one
is familiar with the ins and outs of commercial wildlife management
and “wildlife research.”
Those interested in official explanations may,
as the sign indicated, contact the Daniel Smiley Research Center
at 845-255-5969.
However, be forewarned that what you may be told,
like what you may see in the woods around the deer exclusion
enclosure, may not be what it seems.
Interior of research plot
Outside of plot from interior of fence
Immediately outside of research plot
Sixty to seventy feet behind the plot. Some small saplings have winter-killed
tips. They were not eaten by deer or other animals.
About 150 feet in front of the plot. The saplings look like the interior of
the plot.
Ron Baker is the author of The American Hunting
Myth.
Ron was a founder and editor of the Backwoods Journal
for 17 years, and homesteaded in the Adirondacks for 27 years
in both his cabin, which was built of indigenous materials, and
in tents until the weather no longer permitted it.
C.A.S.H. is honored that Ron has allowed us to “reprint” his
entire book on CD and make it available to the growing number
of people who rely on this factual and heavily footnoted book
for information about hunting and wildlife management.
Please see our new addition to the Catalog.
NOW ON CD
THE AMERICAN
HUNTING MYTH
BY RON BAKER -
Produced by C.A.S.H. – Committee to Abolish Sport
Hunting.
$7 + $3 Shipping. Mailed in jewel case.
Label design by Eva Machauf
