Community Corner

Couple To Hold Hunger Strike

Bill and Ellen Crain will protest deer hunting season for a fourth year.

A Montauk couple will go on a three-day hunger strike for the fourth straight year in protest of East Hampton's firearms deer hunting season.

Bill and Ellen Crain will begin their fast on Monday, the opening day of the hunting season, on behalf of their organization, the , founded in 2004. They have sought alternatives, such as deer contraception, to hunting.

As they begin their fast, they will stand in front of the on Monday from 11 a.m. to noon. 

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"We have found that hunger strikes are difficult," Bill said in a statement on Friday. "They cause headaches and physical weakness.  But we hope the hunger strikes express the depth of our feelings about hunting.  And the ill effects that we experience are nothing compared to the horror the deer go though."

The firearms hunting season starts Monday and lasts all month, though hunting is only allowed on weekdays.

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Last year, Bill a jam-packed town board meeting wearing a sign that read "Hunger Strike for Deer" around his neck.

He was upset that the board added 89 acres for the bow hunting of deer, "even though numerous studies around the country have found that about half the deer hit by arrows are wounded and left to die slow, agonizing deaths," the Crains' handout said.

The Crains' activism is not just limited to deer. In early December, , where he was protesting a black bear hunt. According to The Star Ledger, Crain refused to move from the front of the a Sussex County weigh-in station. Crain later told reporters it was an act of civil disobedience.

A photograph shows Crain had a handmade sign around his neck that read" "Mother Nature is Crying."


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