Commissioners,
I am sending this to you all and copying State Representative Dan Miller on his personal email since his "contact me" is not conducive to emails. Dan recommended that I send it that way. Let him tell you that when he was doing target practice in the military, the targets were 1,000 feet away.
If our goal is to come up with a deer management plan, and we all share a common goal of safety, please consider Kelly's nonlethal plan. It meets all of our goals.
The map below shows the bullet range of a stray bullet. The map is of a town in NY which is 1.5 miles in its widest point. It is conceivable that a shot could be fired on one border of Mt. Lebanon and travel all the way to the other side of Mt. Lebanon.
Elaine Gillen
It can be argued that Mt. Lebanon isn't level or wide open for a bullet to travel that far, but consider this. If a bullet can travel two miles, are you really safe if someone on your street wants deer killed on their property? Or if someone on the next street wants a deer killed in their yard? That bullet can cover a lot of ground.
A gun expert told me, aside from the absolute BS statistics that Linfante tosses around to justify a mass deer kill, there is also the liability faced by the township should anything go amiss. The commission cannot guarantee anyone's safety. It would be ridiculous for a sane person to even pose that question. It would be like asking the commission to guarantee there will be snow on Christmas Day. Impossible. How much would that cost? Whoops, there goes the "surplus." As for accuracy, this person is considered an "expert" shot but wouldn't pull the trigger within the boundaries of Mt. Lebanon. There is no controlling external factors or just plain having a bad day.
There is something that is really bugging me about this whole thing. Dave Brumfield would never vote for a deer cull unless the deer got to carry guns too. What has changed him? Did he sell out for a turf vote? In Kristen Linfante's own words, she is a lone wolf on deer culling. Suddenly she has two more commissioners "seeing the light." What gives? Three votes for a deer cull. Three votes for turf. Imagine that.
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