Highland Park is known for its left-of-center and often zany populace. Although political yard signs adorn most lawns in the region, if you look at the front yards in Highland Park, there are many yard signs protesting against the municipal deer hunt.
It is fairly well established that the deer population in the area is too high. The deer devour any attempts at gardening, create traffic hazards wandering through the streets, leave droppings all over the area, and often carry ticks that are spread to other animals in the Borough. And yet, many residents are concerned that hunting the deer is inhumane. They worry that a bow hunt leaves the deer to needlessly suffer, and they show up to planning meetings and city government functions to voice their opposition.
But Highland Park wasn’t always this way. And it wasn’t always deer that created the problems. Many people know there are many bears in New Jersey now, mostly concentrated in the northwest portion of the state. But in the early nineteenth century, bears wandered the banks of the Raritan in the area that is now Highland Park. And the residents—it was then Raritan Township—learned the hard way that they needed to take more decisive measures.
During one particularly troubling spring, there was a surge in the bear population. The bears attacked livestock of nearby farmers including chicken and sheep. They wandered around town rummaging through the trash. As they became more brazen, they went after household pets. And then one day, the bears attacked a small boy who was playing near his home.
The anguished parents and terrified population demanded swift action. Town leaders devised a response that included a bear hunt, as well as the placement of bear traps throughout the woods in the town. The traps were the kind with the jagged circular edges with a coil spring in the middle. A bear stepping on it would have its paw caught in the trap until it bled to death or was found and then killed.
While this was successful in the short term, the bear traps proved to have lasting side effects. In their rush to take action, the town leaders had hundreds, if not thousands of the traps placed. But no one bothered to record where the traps were placed or retrieved. And as the town expanded and the bears retreated, this created a hazard for the residents.
There are recordings of dogs or cats being caught in the traps well into the 1960s, when there was finally an effort to find the remaining traps and dispose of them. One of the workers assigned to that task was a man named Ronald Hanna. Hanna plugged away at the remaining traps, retiring over 200 of them. But it only took one unfortunate event. It had gotten along towards autumn of 1963, and the leaves were already falling, concealing some traps on the ground. Hanna stepped on a trap and remained stuck in the woods for three days before making the excruciating decision to cut his foot off with the utility knife he had on his belt and crawling three quarters of a mile to what was then the edge of town.
The funny thing was, they never found his severed foot. Authorities believed it was simply carried off by a scavenging animal like a fox, or maybe it was eaten by vultures. But hikers in these woods have been known to hear footsteps behind them if they are in the area, only to turn around and see nothing.
This cache is part of the Socially Distanced Halloween series. A number is listed on the log sheet that will allow you to find the bonus mystery cache, The Mysterious Outbreak of 1720. This cache only has room for a log, so BYOP.
The rest of the series is here: