Public Menace

Stephen Mohr, one of the eight politically appointed commissioners who set Game Commission policy, including seasons and bag limits, has it right when he says, “Gary Alt could sell ice water to Eskimos.” From January 2000 to April 2004 Alt barnstormed the state, giving 225 lectures and slide shows, not backing up one inch for the noisy minority of hunters who interrupted him by stomping and jeering, who cursed and spat at him, who pushed him and threatened to kill him. No deer biologist before him in Pennsylvania or probably any state had his charisma or gift for language. At his presentations, video feeds had to be set up in gyms and cafeterias to accommodate overflow audiences. One of the first questions Alt would ask was “When you're hunting in the woods, how far away can you see a deer?” Invariably the answer was something like “150 yards.” His next question would be “Do you think there are too many deer in your area?” Invariably the answer was “No, there aren't enough.” Then Alt would show photos of healthy forests and explain why it's not good to be able to see for 150 yards.

Every time Alt's team of biologists came up with an innovative way of using hunting as a tool to reduce the herd and get more bucks into the population so they could compete for does, thereby contributing strong genes, Alt would get back out on the lecture circuit and sell it to the public. For four years Pennsylvania hunters shot more deer than they had in history, raising the annual kill to half a million, while at the same time improving the buck-doe ratio. At this writing, deer numbers remain critically high, and it's not clear if Alt's modest first-step goal of reducing the herd by 5 percent has been achieved.

Alt had been on the job only two years when Audubon Pennsylvania and a coalition of environmentalists and sportsmen called the Pennsylvania Habitat Alliance hired 10 eminent scientists to prescribe ecosystem-based deer management for the East, with Pennsylvania the case study. The group's 340-page report, released in January 2005, confirms everything Alt had been saying. “Hunting,” wrote the scientists, “is currently the only feasible method of regulating deer populations on a large scale.” Attesting to Alt's stunning success as an educator was the finding by the authors that 71 percent of Pennsylvania's citizens support deer hunting as the primary method of controlling deer, and that 70 percent of its sportsmen want more of their license dollars invested in nongame wildlife.

Alt and his mission were supported by the vast majority of sportsmen. The Pennsylvania Wildlife Federation gave him its Outstanding Conservation Professional Award and (along with Audubon Pennsylvania) named him Conservation Educator of the year. Outdoor Life magazine gave him its Public Service Conservation Award. The Safari Club International gave him its Conservation Award. And the Quality Deer Management Association named him Professional Deer Manager of the Year.

But enlightened hunters aren't the ones making the noise. Shrieking into the Game Commission's ears are people who don't “hunt” deer so much as they “shop” for them, who don't want to shoot does because a real man “gets his buck,” who long for the days—before Alt's increased hunting pressure sent their quarry to the swamps and ridgetops—when they could sit on stumps and blast away.

As it had done with all of Alt's predecessors, the commission started to slice away his legs. Eventually Alt wasn't even permitted to meet with his deer team without his superiors being present. “We'd get into a meeting,” he reports, “and every comment by the administrators and policy makers was that hunters were out of control, that we had to back off. I wasn't allowed to develop new ideas. It became obvious to me that there was no way the commission was going to hold the line. I always said that when the time came that I could no longer be effective, I would leave.” So on December 31, 2004, Alt ended his 27-year career with the commission.

Basically, Alt was a sock puppet in an elaborate and sinister plot hatched by Audubon Pennsylvania to eradicate the state's deer, thereby achieving its secret goal of ending all hunting and seizing control of public land, the better to raise dickey birds. Or so goes the mantra of the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania. The outfit has dozens of mouthpieces, none shriller than game commissioner Stephen Mohr and local outdoor writers Karl Power and Jim Slinsky.

Wrote Power in his January 16, 2005, column in the (Tarentum) Valley News Dispatch : “For me, the proverbial ‘red flag' immediately goes up any time the bird-watching Audubon people get involved in deer management. I once listened, in disgust, to an Audubon representative complain during a game commission meeting about how all of the deer were eating the low bushes where some songbirds build nests. Give me a break!”

Slinsky, who hosts a radio talk show in addition to writing a syndicated column for rural newspapers, and who claims (sans evidence) to be the most widely read outdoor writer in the nation, warns that Audubon has “infiltrated” government across the country, and he reports the following: “Alt's job was to reduce our deer herd to intolerable levels and force the game commission into chaos and financial turmoil. He did his job perfectly. It was never about improving deer hunting. . . . In essence, Alt gambled away his entire career in a political scheme to get promoted. . . . Alt made many, many mistakes in his quest for money and power. . . . Alt's lack of people skills became apparent as he alienated everyone around him. A Napoleon complex began to emerge.”

Mohr told me this: “It wasn't Gary Alt's program. What did Gary Alt know about deer management? Nothing! It was a program put together by the Audubon and a few other folks, and basically Gary Alt was the salesperson. The motive was to revert the land back to what it was in the 1800s, when you saw more species. The environmentalists are sitting back, chuckling at the turmoil we have the hunters in.” When I inquired which environmentalists these might be, he said: “The same folks that are with the United Nations biosphere agenda. They've already established themselves in Kentucky and Arkansas, and they're trying to establish here. When they do, everything's off-limits to humans.” Mohr claims to have it straight from the hunters he represents that deer are at near-record lows. “I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Pennsylvania hunter,” he told me. “He's a killing machine. When the Pennsylvania hunter comes back and tells you the deer aren't there, they're not there.”