REMEMBER WHEN?
The Peterborough Crown Game Preserve
Apsley – In an 11th hour announcement last November (1987) the Ministry of the Environment gave the green light to a controlled deer hunt in the Peterborough Crown Game Preserve (PCGP) with the added stipulation that “no more hunts will occur until an Environmental Assessment (EA) has taken place.”
That EA process began mid-June. A Planning Committee of MNR personnel will pass their proposals on to an Advisory Citizen’s Committee who will then “give their input to the MNR for deer management in the PCGP.”
The time line called for open houses, public consultations and plan revisions. Optimistically the plan would be finalized and distributed by early spring. The decision ‘to hunt or not’ should be in place in time for the MNR to prepare an ’88 PCGP controlled hunt.
Fundamentally it comes down to the question: “Is hunting an effective management tool for controlling deer populations?”
As one veteran hunter lamented: “These people (anti-hunters) don’t want us to shoot the deer. They’d rather see them starve to death.”
One anti-hunter who admitted to hunting deer in his native state of Pennsylvania is opposed to ‘the hunt’ because “this is a Preserve.”
Perhaps that question must be resolved as well. Are game preserves anachronisms?
Hunters aren’t asking for this controlled hunt for the wanton destruction of deer.
In his Hunt Camp Newsletter Howard (Cam) Mulholland, Co-ordinator and Wildlife Officer, Bancroft MNR wrote: “A combination of good winters, the selective harvest system and co-operation of the deer hunting public is credited with the wealth of deer throughout the deer range.”
As mentioned previously the controlled deer hunt in the PCGP went ahead. Prospective hunters applied for the draw to win the chance to participate in this controlled hunt. What has never been told, until now, is that I was asked to pick the names of those participants from the many submitted applicants. Of course 35 years later computers do that; and not without controversy. For example, would be elk hunters ask how some applicants managed to win an elk tag more than once, sometimes two years in a row? FYI
This geographical area also includes The Petroglyphs. Peterborough is also historically spelled “Peterboro.”