Actions Everyone Can Take to Stop Deer Hunts in Fairfax County Public Parks

This should concern you no matter where you live.

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY AND CALL OR EMAIL TODAY!

ISSUE: Fairfax County, the largest, most prosperous county in Northern Virginia (which borders Washington, D.C.) has been turning its public parks into hunting grounds for bow hunters. After sneaking plans past public scrutiny, the Park Authority initiated bow hunting in Colvin Run Park and has expanded it to 20 other Fairfax County Parks.

ACTION: Please call or e-mail Sharon Bulova, Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors immediately at:

chairman@fairfaxcounty.gov  (fairfaxcounty.gov)
phone: 703-324-2321

Please mention that you and your friends, family members, and children would like to enjoy our public parks and do not want to be exposed to the horrors of bow hunting.

Please call or e-mail one, two, or all the officials listed below.

Not sure which district you live in? Click here for .pdf map.

Please be polite and use these talking points in your call or e-mail:

Bow hunting is dangerous and unpredictable. Visitors to the parks and residents in the surrounding area can be injured by this brutal activity.

Even the “best” bow hunters seldom kill the deer immediately. The hunter waits 45 minutes or more for the deer to run, bleed out and become exhausted. Then the hunter attempts to follow the blood trail to find the deer and kill him or her, possibly in front of children or other visitors to the park. This exposes children and adults to extraordinary animal cruelty and teaches them that killing animals is okay.

Bow hunters have a high rate of injuring, rather than killing deer. This leaves the deer to die a slow and agonizing death. There is no way to know how far a wounded deer will run, if or when she will die, or where her final suffering will occur. Deer sometimes scream when in pain. Local bow hunters have expressed delight at such suffering. Is this really what we want in our community?

In its November 11, 2009 letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wrote:

"The HSUS does not believe that lethal control is either a socially acceptable practice nor, in the long term, the most ecologically sound approach to resolving conflicts with deer. Deer culling programs generate an endless succession of removal and replacement in which animals die unnecessarily while the root causes of problems go unaddressed. As long as attractive habitat remains, other deer from surrounding areas will move in to occupy the newly vacant niche resulting in a perpetual kill cycle."

Many County residents do not know what Fairfax County has unleashed in our parks. The public has had little opportunity to weigh in on this important matter.

Additional Contacts:
We ask that you contact your auto insurance agent/company to inquire whether Fairfax County has informed them about the bow hunting, which the County has cynically packaged as an “urban archery program”. Hunting greatly increases the risk of deer vehicle collisions since panicked deer will and do flee from hunters.

You may also wish to contact your Virginia State Senator and Governor Bob McDonnell’s office to inform them of your feelings about our public parks becoming bow-hunting parks.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell:
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm

Mailing address:
PO Box 1475
Richmond, Virginia 23218

Street address:
Office of the Governor
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219

Office of the Governor
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219
Phone: 804-786-2211
Fax: 804-371-6351
TTY/TDD (For the Hearing Impaired):
1-800-828-1120, or 711

Outreach focus:
We suggest you urge them to develop a safe, effective deer management policy for the County (and State) that does not utilize extreme animal cruelty.

Please cross-post and distribute to everyone who may be willing to participate in the effort to compel Fairfax County to stop this ineffective and inhumane practice. Our representatives must begin the process of developing a policy that reflects the citizens' expectation that our County take a leadership role in this issue and move forward, not backwards.