Future Grim for Deer Obedience School

You may have heard that the number of collisions between cars and deer in the Hamptons has declined dramatically in recent years. It’s not that there are fewer deer in the community. Indeed, you still see them often on back roads when you drive along. Strangely, however, it seems that they are more aware of cars and know to stay out of their way.    

This all has come about because of the existence of the Deer Obedience School. Located just beyond the fence alongside East Hampton Town Airport Runway 33, the school, now in its tenth year, rounds up deer at night and transports them to the nearby school for a rigorous five-week training program. You’ve probably seen the school’s cattle vans parked by the side of country roads from midnight to 4 a.m. so cowboys can lure deer from an adjacent field with plates of sweet corn, apples, and foliage to get them slowly over to the van and up a ramp into the back.    

You might also have noticed driving during the day that the especially alert deer on the roads have a brand on their rumps reading “DOS.” DOS stands for Deer Obedience School. And it reminds the roundup crew to not round up the branded ones. They don’t want to train the same deer twice.  

Now, however, it appears that the Deer Obedience School might have to close. And that’s not good for anybody.

“So many people who live out by the airport have complained about us,” said Amos Vanderhoof, the school’s director. “The school operates at night because that’s when deer are most alert. We hold deer encounters with special souped-up cars driven around and around a track. The deer learn to respond to the headlights and avoid them.   There’s loud music, floodlights, and cheers during our jumping competitions and heavy exercise workouts that build up deer muscles, confidence, and response time. Recently, we’ve been teaching them how to pick locks and open gates if they get caught between a field and the road. And yes, we blow whistles and use bullhorns and yes, the deer have gotten out of our compound from time to time.

“So finally, we’d arranged to move our operation to a much larger wooded site on the other side of the airport, an available 97-acre parcel — twice the size of our present campus — where there are only a few houses. At least we thought we’d made this arrangement. Now it looks like it’s not going to happen. The deal’s falling through. And we’ll have no place to go.”

This bigger parcel, 97 acres, has been the home of the Maidstone Gun Club, an outdoor firing range for those wishing to hone their shooting skills.

In 2022, however, the town shut the gun club down. Bullets from the range had hit the roofs of several homes a mile away. And after that, the town, which owns the property, declined to renew the shooting range lease, then asked for others in the community to bid for the property if they felt they could use it. And that’s where the Deer Obedience School stepped in. By last week, they were poised to sign a lease for this new location. But now, apparently the town has changed its mind.   

“It seems that gun owners have a strong gun lobby,” Vanderhoof continued, ruefully. “The town now says they will stay with the gun club.”   

This reporter spoke to Gladys Gooding, the Hampton Town supervisor, about this.

“Good people need to learn to shoot,” she told me. “There are bad guys out there. The community needs to stay armed. My husband, for example, has a gun. I have a gun. Our kids have guns. There’s no other place to learn to shoot straight. We think the club could just be run better.”

I asked her about the astonishing lease the gun club had. The town had been collecting only $30 a month for the use of this wooded property for all these years.  

“Well, it’s nonprofit,” she said. “Maybe we can get a little more.”

I also asked her about the bullets that allegedly hit the roofs of the homes.   

“We think those bullets might have come from the guns of hunters nearby. I know the bullets are identical to those used at the club. But the angle they hit suggests they came from another direction.”

I also spoke to Charles Wilson, the man in charge of the town-owned airport.  

“Yes, we’ve been getting many complaints about the obedience school.” he told us. “The noise in the night wakes people. It’s particularly noisy at the graduation ceremonies. One hundred deer sitting attentively. Their families and friends. There’s a band. There’s speeches. There’s the branding. This goes on every Monday at 5 a.m.   

“The deal-breaker was when deer began getting out on the runway.   Last summer, a lawsuit was filed against the airport by a company that flies helicopters in and out from Manhattan. On several occasions when choppers land and the doors open so the passengers can climb down to the tarmac, a deer committee wagging their little tails is there to greet them. It’s not what we want here.

“Vanderhoof is a personal friend of mine, and it was hard for me to tell him he would have to move. And he did find that place farther away.”

If the Deer Obedience School is forced to shut down, it will be a great loss for this community. Vanderhoof has a staff of 40, including instructors, truckers, barn maintenance people, cowboys, farmhands, drivers, groomers, cafeteria workers, deer pellet muckers, animal rights officials, and environmentalists. Now they will all be unemployed.

Worse, of course, is the future of the deer and the motorists they collide with. It will soon begin to increase to levels it was years ago.    

If you wish to help, contact Hampton Town Supervisor Gooding and register your complaint about the gun club and your desire to welcome the Deer Obedience School there.

AS WE GO TO PRESS:

Just got a phone call from Charlie Wilson at the airport. This morning, he signed a contract with Santa Claus to open a reindeer flying school on the property currently used by the Deer Obedience School. It will be the first such school in America. And it’s scheduled to open on Dec. 18.

The situation is dire indeed.