Suffolk County Deer Management

07/21/2026

Summary of Public Comments received re: Changes in 2026-2027 Deer Hunting Regulations

1. DMP transfer & unlimited issuance
DEC will allow unlimited transfer of Deer Management Permits (DMPs) between hunters, arguing this removes barriers for hunters willing to take multiple antlerless deer. DEC noted four WMUs (1C, 3S, 4J, and 8C) have had unlimited DMPs for years without overharvest, and quotas will remain in some WMUs to prevent overharvest.

2. Expanded September antlerless season
DEC is expanding the nine-day September antlerless season. It cited no documented impacts to fawn welfare, harvest rates, or hunter safety since the September season began in 2021, and noted New York’s seasons are shorter on average than most other states per the National Deer Association’s 2026 Deer Report.

3. “Earn-a-2nd-Buck” (EA2B) system
This is the biggest change — hunters must take an antlerless deer before earning a second antlered tag, usable the same season. DEC’s own 2023 hunter survey found this would increase antlerless harvest more than most alternatives except Earn-A-1st-Buck, which was unpopular with about a third of hunters. Fraud concerns will be addressed via attestation requirements, photo submission of harvested antlerless deer, and carcass retention for paper/phone reporters. DEC downplayed impact on buck age structure, noting only 1.5–3% of hunters currently take two antlered deer per year.

4. Barbed broadhead definition
Clarified to prohibit some broadheads while reducing risk of non-lethal wounding.

5. Rejected alternatives
DEC declined a 1-buck system, EA1B, antlerless-only weeks, and expanded antler point restrictions, citing past evaluations showing minimal harvest impact or unpopularity.

07/15/2026

A trend has begun where hunters are being put to task. Will they succeed or will municipalities adopt locals only policies like Southampton, Shelter Island, Southold, Riverhead and East Hampton have?

Deer Management Program 2026/27 Archery Hunting Season

Effective immediately, the City of Rock Island will begin accepting applications for the 2026/27 archery deer hunting season, as defined by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Applications may be obtained from the front desk of the Police Department, Rock Island Parks and Recreation Office, or online at rigov.org. All potential hunters must return completed applications along with their proficiency card to the Police Department by 5pm, August 28th, 2026, to be considered for a permit. With City approval, deer hunting will be permitted on a select number of sites.

Residents with questions regarding the Deer Management Program should contact Lt. Norman Jacks at (309) 732-2708.

07/15/2026

Awaiting our FOIL appeal with Southampton Town, as well as, FOILs for East Hampton Town and others. Until then we will continue with our regular programming.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1JQfcaZHQW/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Last December, we paused targeted removal to work with hunters and landowners to identify a more sustainable path forward for deer and CWD management. As a result of that engagement and our continued evaluation, we have decided not to conduct targeted removals this winter and currently have no plans to resume this approach.

Instead, we’ll work alongside hunters, landowners, and other key partners to develop a localized approach in which hunter harvest is the primary tool to manage the deer herd and CWD during the regular deer season as we continue focusing on ensuring a healthy deer herd and a strong future for deer hunting in Missouri.

Read Director Jason Sumner's open letter: https://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/invitation-work-together-mdc-director-jason-sumners-our-shared-responsibility-future

07/13/2026

https://nypost.com/2026/07/02/us-news/rep-nick-lalota-doubles-down-threats-to-kill-federal-funds-for-east-hampton-over-new-laws-barring-local-cooperation-with-ice/

“I’m giving the town a choice, and they’ll have to deal with the consequences of their decision,” he told The Post about his ultimatum.

07/11/2026

SCDM has always been an advocate for hunters, property owners, and the expansion of hunting opportunities. We have supported the legalization and adoption of crossbows and other ethical implements. Our positions have always been guided by the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and the hunter's role in managing animal populations.

In this vein, we have maintained that recreational hunting is an important additive to any management strategy. But if the hunter fails to embrace that role, and populations continue to climb unchecked, hunting will become obsolete and the door will open to alternative population control methods.

Consider these positions against our recent posts. As a Southampton Town taxpayer, a residents-only bowhunting restriction across the five eastern towns would benefit my business and me personally, but the truth is that most recreational hunters would rather watch 100 deer pass their stand, rather than fill a tag on anything less than a shooter buck. That approach is not sustainable and is counterproductive.

Ignoring the hunter's role, while restricting access, weakens the herd and produces inferior specimens. It also decreases recreational hunting opportunities, while elevating professional deer management operations like SCDM. Short-sighted policies get short-sighted results.

In fact, the core legal framework guiding the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is built on seven core principles, including opportunity for all: "every citizen has the freedom to hunt, subject to state and federal rules and regulations."

A residency-only restriction doesn't just limit access. It breaks from the model itself.

North America’s approach to wildlife management is unique to the world, as wildlife – primarily in the United States and Canada – are managed as public trust resources for the benefit of all citizens. The Model holds that sound science guide wildlife management decisions and regulations, which...

07/08/2026

How We Got Here

This didn't start with rumors about a hunting registry or resident-only restrictions. It started with dead birds at Sagg Pond and Long Pond.

In spring 2026, SCDM held a valid contract with the Southampton Town Trustees to remove and dispose of waterfowl from a mass mortality event at Sagg Pond and Long Pond, work authorized under an emergency Trustees resolution recognizing a public health risk from suspected avian flu.

Per our Notice of Claim, now on file against the Town, a Marine Patrol Officer generated and spread false information about that work and relayed it directly to Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara. McNamara then convened a Town emergency work session to question both the public health threat and our contract's legitimacy using that same disputed information. That officer, working with others, including McNamara's own husband, is alleged to have organized an unauthorized cleanup at Long Pond after our contract was already in place and known to them. Dan McNamara's outrage over the contract's cost even made it to social media before the ink was dry.

What isn't an allegation is what came next, because we have it in the Town's own words.

Once we started filing FOIL requests to understand what had happened, we found a residency-restriction hunting policy that predates our contract dispute entirely:

In September 2025, CPF's own internal notes record that "Cyndi wants to amend Town Code to limit hunting in Southampton to Town residents."

-In February 2026, McNamara's stated rationale for rejecting even a limited guest-permit system was that it "would allow for guide businesses to operate."
-Town staff privately acknowledged that the setback standard chosen for public maps would "dramatically impact" how much land was actually available to hunt.
-Three years earlier, in February 2023, a CPF analyst directed staff to obtain our confidential client list.

None of this reads as an isolated dispute. It reads as a pattern, documented in the Town's own records, aimed at limiting who gets to hunt on public land and which businesses get to operate there.

We've spent the last several weeks laying that pattern out here, post by post, straight from FOIL. Southampton Town has already left critical records out of what it's produced.. and we are far from done.

Cyndi McNamara should resign.

07/06/2026

Let's get back into it...

Southampton Town produced two "Potential Hunting Opportunities" maps this year: one showing public parcels of 10+ acres using a 500' buffer, and one showing parcels of 5+ acres using a 150' buffer. These are "buffers for buildings within 500' and 150' of public properties" which would shut down hunting within the buffer (notated in the color cyan on the maps).

Here's what the Town fails to explain. The 500' discharge setback is for fi****ms, while crossbows now have a 500' discharge setback and longbows carry a 150' discharge setback. These are the legally controlling distances a hunter must maintain from a dwelling whose owner has not granted permission to hunt within the setback. Southampton Town does not have the authority to set these distances that authority belongs to New York State, under the Environmental Conservation Law and NYSDEC's regulatory jurisdiction. Yet the Town is using the more restrictive firearm discharge setback to disqualify CPF properties from hunting, closing off a significant percentage of already-accessible hunting land.

It's difficult to view this as anything other than deliberate: Southampton Town is using an outdated, legally inapplicable discharge setback standard from fi****ms to make it look like less land is available to hunting than the law actually allows. If the Town succeeds in forcing hunters into a newly created Southampton Town Deer Management Hunting program, "resident-hunters" will be left with even fewer properties to hunt.

The numbers don't lie. A 500' buffer around a single dwelling that borders CPF land closes off hunting access to approximately 18 acres. Reduce that to the previous 250' crossbow discharge setback and the closed-off area shrinks to about 4.5 acres. Apply the 150' bow discharge setback, and only about 1.6 acres around a dwelling bordering a CPF property would be off limits. This is the difference between a map built on the NYS law that actually governs archery hunting, and one that isn't.

In fact, this is not a new legal challenge. In Hunters For Deer v. Town of Smithtown, the Appellate Division held that municipalities cannot impose hunting restrictions beyond what NYS Environmental Conservation Law and NYSDEC's own regulatory authority already occupy, a decision affirmed by the New York Court of Appeals.

Southampton residents should ask why the Town's public messaging is built around a setback standard that does not apply to most of its own hunters, at the same time the Town is proposing new residency restrictions and a Cooperative Hunting Area registration system on CPF land.

07/02/2026

Southampton Town CPF Staff Tried to Obtain SCDM's Confidential Client List

On February 7, 2023, Southampton Town Community Preservation Fund Senior Environmental Analyst Juliana Quant sent the following to CPF Director Jacqueline Fenlon, Environmental Technician Beth Fellini, Assistant Town Attorney Daniel McCormick, and CPF staff on official government email:

"Mr. Tessitore has a list of properties where he takes people, claims to have access to info about hunting permissions when properties are purchased. We will look into acquiring this list (Beth)"

For the record, SCDM does not take people hunting... we operate a membership-based deer management program and nuisance wildlife business. Again, we are not a guide service.

A Southampton Town government employee, on a government email server, directed CPF staff to obtain the confidential client property list of a licensed NYS NWCO whose owner is a Southampton Town taxpayer. What we have here is a rogue government office conducting intelligence gathering on a private wildlife management business serving residents, taxpayers, and municipalities across all five eastern towns.

This email was sent in February 2023. Three years before Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara stated on record that she opposed guest hunting permits specifically to prevent guide businesses from operating. SCDM has been a target for a long time and this document dump is concerning.

Have a safe 250th!

07/01/2026

Southampton Town Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara's Recusal Is Calculated.

On April 21, 2026 at 8:01 PM, SCDM submitted a formal letter to the Southampton Town Board naming Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara for her role in attempting to restrict hunting on CPF lands to Town residents only, a policy specifically designed in her own words documented in official meeting notes to, "prevent guide businesses from operating."

*For the record SCDM is not a Guide Service.

Sixteen minutes later at 8:17 PM, McNamara forwarded that letter to Town officials with one line:

"Forwarding this as you are both named."

Two days later on April 23, 2026, the same day our FOIL request was formally routed to her office, McNamara sent this to Town staff:

"I just wanted to let you know that I will no longer be involved in the discussions regarding hunting on Town properties. I don't want any perceived conflict with my involvement to impact it."

She didn't recuse herself when she was driving the policy... and she clearly didn't recuse herself when she stated on record that she opposed guest permits specifically to block guide businesses. She recused herself the moment she was named in a formal legal complaint and a FOIL request landed on her desk.

That's not ethics... it's damage control.

06/30/2026

Juliana Quant is a Town employee working as Senior Environmental Analyst for the Town of Southampton. She is not an elected official and has no authority to draft legislation unilaterally.

The CPF office she works for manages a real estate transfer tax fund and makes recommendations on land preservation purchases and water quality initiatives. It does not own the land it helps purchase, and it has no authority to set hunting regulations or policy without town board approval.

FOIL records show the CPF office initially questioned whether the 2015 Deer Protection and Management Plan had ever been formally adopted, until confirming that it had been. Rather than enforcing that adopted plan and supporting hunting as a management tool, the CPF office focused on limiting hunting to a residents/landowners-only restriction, reducing the pool of eligible hunters on CPF purchased land, regardless of the township's deer overpopulation needs.