MY LIFE IS A CONTINUAL STORM OF CONFLICT WITH THE ROYAL STATE OF NEW YORK
By Calvin of Oakknoll
“Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation” Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the Bill
of Rights.
Attempting to live a simple bucolic life in a remote region of
Chautauqua County, in the southwest corner of New York State, was
impossible for several reasons. The most prominent was the invasion by
force of arms of state-licensed hunters. These privileged characters so
vexed us that we were unable to safely use our land. We could not cut
firewood, go out at night to talk with owls, or even picnic in the
immediate vicinity of the house. Hunters’ bullets came zinging through
the air, snapping against the boughs of shade trees just above our
heads, right outside our front door.
Less immediately menacing was the economic squeeze put on us. The
economic screws included escalating real property taxes, gross
mismanagement of wildlife, and the bias of law enforcement favoring the
gunslingers. Prominent among the insidious pressures was the overloading
of our four hundred acres of land with an unnatural number of
white-tailed deer. The overload of the land with “big game” was caused
and maintained by the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC). The DEC should be adopted as a full subsidiary of
the National Rifle Association. It should be renamed something more in
tune with its true function – that of taking private land for the
special interest group that hunts. Perhaps “The Hammer and Sickle
Society for Expropriating Private Land” would be more fitting.
To that end, it markets a form of public use of private land,
trampling private property rights, which in theory give an absolute
right of quiet enjoyment of private land to the tax-paying landowners.
In England, form where our property law is derived, a vestigial
leftover from feudalism keeps the notion alive that the Monarchy owns
the whole country, and that common folk merely occupy private land by
the grace of the King or Queen who rules by the grace of God. In
America, however, where notions of royal privilege no longer prevail,
and Church and State are separate, citizens own land by absolute title.
I believe that confiscatory real property taxes and the confiscatory
infestational practices of the DEC are no less than armed theft of real
property rights and might be challenged in court. I have gotten
absolutely nowhere with my amateur pro se petitions on taxes and
property. Apparently it will require smarter lawyers, more altruistic
and insightful magistrates, and a more strongly aroused public before
changes are made.
The deliberate infestation of farms and forests with state-owned
deer, instigated by the greed of these state agents to raise money,
combined with the greed of the hunting lobby to take over private land
for their so-called “sport,” takes private property for public use
without just compensation in violation of the taking-clause of the Fifth
Amendment – a very important part of the Bill of Rights.
Achieving human sanctuary would also achieve the same sanctuary for
wildlife residents on private land.
There once existed in the wilds of New York, and in all of the
Northeast United States, prey-and-predator balance between the
herbivores and carnivores; but in abysmal ignorance, state and
provincial governments have seen fit to exterminate wolves, panthers and
cougar, so the deer population has grown substantially. The deer have
been left with no natural enemies, and into this weird situation, the
hunters suggest themselves as the fake heroes who would replace the
natural carnivores of yore, restoring the long-sought “balance of
nature.” Alas, the hunters shoot wide of their mark. They cannot
disguise themselves as having any role in the balance of nature.
Surely nature is enormously off-balance and the herbivores are
destroying the forests, allowing no seedling or sapling to survive; but
there are good reasons why a rag-tag army of hunters invading private
property are most unlike natural predators. First, the hunters are
obnoxious, arrogant and dangerous trespassers. They take land by force
of arms whether or not it is posted, endangering life and limb of
legitimate landowners. Wolves and big cats pose no such menace to
humans. Hunters always vastly outnumber landowners and enforcement
officers, and hunters are invited to abuse private property rights by
the sloth and convenient blindness of the state police and conservation
officers.
Second, humans hunt seasonally, while the wolves and big cats were a
constant and relentless pressure.
Third, the culling effects of human hunters are spotty and focus
usually in certain locations close to roads and cities. Cats and wolves
police the whole area.
Fourth, human predators kill trophy deer in their prime, rather than
sick and aged animals that natural predators would cull. This frustrates
and reverses natural selection upon which evolution and genetic
maintenance depend.
Fifth, far from thinning the herd down to a reasonable density over
the terrain, the orchestration of the length of the hunting season
(quite brief) with the orchestration of doe permits (quite restricted)
leave the deer-to-land density at such an infested level that the deer
starve, and it is impossible to protect orchards or field crops from
them. In the total process, the Royal State “takes” private property in
confiscatory magnitude to the utter exclusion of all other (private)
uses. This is far from any form of wildlife management; it is indeed an
agricultural enterprise of the state that “takes” private property for
public use in the shallowest disguise of “wildlife management.” The
state operated, state-owned herd of quasi-domesticated “wild” cattle is
orchestrated, like all agribusiness, to use the entire resources of land
for highest profit, allowing no quarter to other private or alternative
use, and ignoring the rights of tax-paying owners. Like the royal
fox-hunts of England, this outrageous taking of land by the States
tramples the common man’s crops, ignores his boundaries, destroys his
fences, and makes a mockery of private rights to property, all in the
arrogant spirit of royal amusement. This is most un-American!
Calvin of Oakhill can be reached at Wallkill Correctional Center,
81C0541 Box G, and Walkill, NY 12589-0286. He is serving a 25-year
prison sentence for shooting and killing a hunter in self-defense. The
hunter had trespassed on his property, refused to leave when asked, and
pointed his rifle at Calvin. Unbelievably, Calvin’s 400 acres were
confiscated and given to the hunter’s wife, leaving Calvin’s family
impoverished.
Note: The Bureau of Wildlife (BOW) of the DEC collected million of
dollars in fees from hunting licenses and federal taxes on lethal
weapons, contributes nothing to the general work of the DEC, uses the
DEC’s resources (offices, equipment, printing facilities, toilet paper,
coffee machines, secretaries), taps into the general fund, and lives off
whatever good reputation the DEC has. We suggest isolating BOW from the
rest of the DEC and demanding that they support themselves entirely. BOW
is like a private hunting operation that operates under the protection
and reputation (mixed as it is) of the DEC. This applies to all other
states, though the names are different (e.g., DEP, DNR, etc.).
