Backyard Bow Hunting
Is recreational.
Did not lower car collisions with deer.
The local police help hunters locate wounded deer at taxpayer expense. See police reports here.
Wounded and dying deer wander into adjacent backyards.
Endangers Families. Street locations where hunting took place during the previous hunt: Click here.
Lowers Your Quality of Life.
In 2020, the Environmental Commission asks for a pause on the hunt to evaluate its effectiveness. Member Vin Blehl reads this letter in 2021, reiterating the EC’s request for a thorough review.
We want to keep Saddle River the safe, bucolic town we all know and love. Since September of 2018, Saddle River held five hunting seasons. (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, & 2022). Residents have spoken out against the hunt at every meeting since 2015.
In 2023, Mayor Kurpis paused the bow hunt, telling a few it was to review the data.
On August 19, 2024, Mayor Kurpis oversaw the reinstatement of the bow hunt by signing a contract with the United Bow Hunters of New Jersey.
No formal review was completed. In fact, Open Public Records Act requests reveal that this review was asked for by residents, was promised in emails, but never done.
In 2020, a unanimous decision by the Saddle River Environmental Commission asked the Mayor and town council to pause and refrain from entering into any contractual agreements with UBNJ pending a thorough review of all aspects of the program.
The Saddle River town council ignored the unanimous vote by the Environmental Commission to halt the 2020 deer hunt to conduct a thorough scientific review. The following issues still need review:
No current baseline data, benchmarks, or scientific data regarding goals
Police data shows that auto-deer collisions increased after two years of hunting but hunting never lowered the number of accidents as promised.
No formal notification to residents living near hunting sites
The hunt is divisive—fueling ill feelings between neighbors creating apprehension
Discharging lethal weapons within 150' of our homes
A waste of taxpayers’ dollars (cost to facilitate the hunt, litigation)
Potential to lower property values
Residents and pets are at greater risk of injury
Current research debunks Lyme disease connection to deer
Don’t be duped. This is not a management plan. It’s a recreational sport hunt. Please demand that the Mayor & Council stop any future hunts, which typically run from mid-September through mid-Feb — to allow for this thorough review. Keep Saddle River Safe contends that this review will be eye-opening, leading to the town to utilize nonlethal methods that manage conflicts, not deer. For more information email info@keepsaddleriversafe.com.
To reach the Mayor & Town Council, please visit: www.saddleriver.org/mayor_council
Oppose the Deer hunt? Let The town Council Know
Please contact Mayor Albert J. Kurpis at drkurpis@saddleriver.org and the Council at Saddle River Borough Hall, 100 E. Allendale Road, Saddle River, NJ 07458 or call Borough Hall at 201‐327‐2609. Your message: You want Saddle River to end the deer hunt and implement safe, effective, and humane methods.
Attend upcoming Mayor & Council meetings.
Require the town to use humane, non-lethal methods to manage conflicts, not the deer population. There are dozens of effective, safe, and readily available methods. See below.
The town council is there to serve the public’s interest.
To keep Saddle River Natural and Bucolic, 10 ads were placed in the local newspaper, which generated a lot of new members and support. Ad #1, Ad #2, Ad #3, Ad #4, Ad #5, Ad #6, Ad #7, Ad #8, Ad #9, and Ad #10.
Concerned about Lyme Disease?
Read this cutting edge compilation that dispels and debunks the myth that Lyme Disease is caused by deer: https://aplnj.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/May-2021-Lyme-Disease-White-Paper.pdf
Nonlethal Deer Conflict Management
1. Early successional habitat management programs such as prescribed burns, clear-cutting, and the planting of various agricultural crops favored by deer must gradually stop. Such habitat management provides ideal breeding habitat for deer by increasing the quality and quantity of food available, thereby increasing the carrying capacity of the land to accommodate deer.
2. Ban deer baiting in affected townships and encourage legislators to enact legislation that bans the practice statewide. Baiting contributes to forest degeneration by concentrating deer, who in turn feed on natural vegetation, and small predators, who prey upon ground nesting birds. Baiting spreads invasive and exotic seeds. Baiting lures deer to baited areas, causes auto-deer collisions, and increases deer reproduction. Enact local ordinances that prevent deer feeding.
3. End practices that cause deer to leave their natural habitat. Deer leave or are displaced when:
there are too many invasive plants. Develop a plan to reduce or eliminate invasives.
they are hunted. Female deer expand their range by 30% due to hunting pressure. Eliminate hunting.
pushed out by development. Restrict or reduce development projects.
4. The installation of electric fencing as an exclusion method is effective and most kits are inexpensive.
5. Other fencing is also effective. In the following information, it showed that six foot woven wire, was the most consistently effective design for deterring deer throughout the study, with zero failures. https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/assistance/backyard/privatelandhabitat/woven_wire_fence_handbook_deer.pdf
6. Reduce the risk of vehicle/deer collisions by lowering speed limits in targeted areas, increasing lighting and signage and employing the use of road side reflectors.
7. Homeowner education regarding deer repellents and deer resistant plants. https://njaes.rutgers.edu/deer-resistant-plants/
8. Population control programs that reduce deer fertility.
1) Immunocontraception through vaccines lowers fertility rate is highly effective and available. lohvnj.org/DeerFertilityControl.pdf
2) Surgical sterilization is also an effective way to lower the fertility rate and even low numbers of sterilized females lead to success. Current projects:
3) Eliminate artificial food sources such as baiting, the planting of food plots for deer by farmers, and backyard feeding (corn, bird feeders, salt licks, etc.)
Don’t Live in Saddle River? Want to stop hunting in your town?
Contact the Animal Protection League of New Jersey (APLNJ) at info@aplnj.org. APLNJ can do a nonlethal deer conflict management presentation in your town.
Saddle River History:
On November 8th, 2016, 59% of Saddle River voters let town officials know that they supported effective, nonlethal, and already fully-funded deer control and opposed ineffective and dangerous lethal methods.
In 2020, a unanimous decision by the Saddle River Environmental Commission asked the mayor and town council to pause and refrain from entering into any contractual agreements with UBNJ pending a thorough review of all aspects of the program. Environmental Commission member, Vin Blehl spoke at the July 19, 2021, Mayor and Town Council meeting, reading this letter, showing the full support of the EC to pause the deer hunt.
Dangerous Law:
In 2009, a law was passed that reduces the hunting safety zone around occupied buildings from 450 feet (a football field and a half) to a mere 150 feet. Bow hunters are also not required to retrieve any razor-sharp arrows that may fall on a homeowner's property.
Should a child pick up or step on an arrow, they could become injured. To give you an idea of how sharp the arrows are, hunters use a special wrench to attach the arrow to the arrow shaft, to avoid cutting themselves.
Bergen County is among the most populated counties in the state. Its people are among the most educated. Both of these are great reasons why residents have said NO to deer hunting.
Biased Agency:
Don’t be fooled by thinking the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife—which argues in favor of opening the town to deer hunting—is neutral. This agency is funded largely by the sale of hunting, trapping, and fishing licenses.
Need more information? Read on. . .
Opinion: NJ deer policy needs more honesty, less schtick
By Susan Russell, Special to The North Jersey Record — Published 6:09 a.m. ET Feb. 9, 2019
Tied to an agency captive to the industries it is supposed to regulate, New Jersey’s mismanagement of its deer has failed the non-hunting public. “Community” hunts, some approaching their fourth decade, are technical failures that result in resurgent deer, often rising auto collisions, increased effort and expense to kill fewer deer, significant taxpayer expense -- and perpetual hunts. When forest regeneration fails to materialize, the stock response is to claim “success” and kill more deer – with the same results.
Yet in jokey, artfully dishonest “presentations,” Division of Fish and Wildlife personnel blame deer for everything but dandruff and schmooze Bergen officials in hopes of gaining backyard access for fellow hunters and clients. Let us in, they say, we’ll fix it. (“What to do about deer in New Jersey?” (northjersey.com, Feb 4).
Part of the schtick entails knocking down issues we don’t raise (trap and transfer), and ignoring the ones we do (the division’s habitat management and baiting). Another is the “Lyme disease” canard.
Disease ecologists have long absolved deer of any significant role in the transmission of Lyme disease. The Cary Institute’s Tick Project (partners include the Centers for Disease Control) says that deer have gotten “a false rap.” Meantime, Harvard’s School of Public Health warns that “killing deer is not the answer.” The Yale School of Public Health reports that the rate of human infection was not significantly different before and after deer hunts. After deer kills, said Harvard, Lyme infections “went up.”
White-footed mice and abundant acorn crops, not deer, are the cause of recent spikes in infection. The humble opossum, says the Tick Project, is an “unsung hero” in the battle against Lyme, hoovering up to 5,000 ticks per week. In International studies, foxes and other small predators whose mere presence reduces mouse density break the cycle of infection. Hunting and forest fragmentation contribute to the dwindling of small mammal predators, say researchers. The state’s ignorant and antiquated policy promotes fur trapping of both beneficial animals. The skin of the unsung hero, the opossum, fetches all of “$2.”
Baiting, banned in New York and Pennsylvania and encouraged in New Jersey, increases deer density, reproduction, and conflict. The division’s logging and management for “small game” creates deer breeding habitat and more deer.
The conservation vogue of scapegoating deer, of applying glib generalities and “potential” damage to all situations, has earned smack downs from world-class authorities. Yale University studies (2010) determined that deer density was not a leading factor in determining variation in vegetation impacts in Connecticut: "The empirical basis for presumptions that white-tailed deer cause forest regeneration failure is limited.”
Oswald Schmitz, Ph.D., the forest ecologist and director of Yale University’s Institute for Biospheric Studies, refuted a claimed need to kill deer in Rock Creek Park, Maryland. Adverse effects were “patently overstated,” wrote Schmitz. “The study shows the opposite, that deer eat tree seedlings in the Park, but that this particular reduction in the number of tree seedlings has no measurable effect on forest regeneration.”
If, far less frequently than presumed, reduction is necessary, fertility control can humanely reduce the herd in 5 years or sooner in appropriate situations.
The Washington Post reports that non-lethal is catching on. San Jose saw a 40 percent drop in black-tailed deer within two years and was ultimately too successful, erasing reproduction entirely. In Maryland, the National Institutes of Health had “overwhelming support, with many employees applauding what they saw was a humane approach to our problem.”
Hunt managers should disclose that the negative Cornell paper they cited in The Record was produced by the “Human Dimensions Research Unit,” the wildlife-use think-tank that represents hunting agencies and weapons manufacturers waging Titanic battles against non-lethal competition. State agencies, say researchers, are the “single greatest barrier” to non-lethal progress. The Cornell paper is an outlier with unexplained anomalies not seen in other projects.
The Wildlife Society, another pro-hunt source quoted in The Record, is dominated by state managers.
New Jersey needs to focus less on how to reduce deer and more on mitigating problems. Going forward, disclosure of conflicts and industry affiliations should be mandatory. Unelected game managers cannot continue to summarily deny townships the modern and humane deer management desired by voters.
Susan Russell is Wildlife Policy Director for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey.