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My Favorite Local Saying

There's a noticeable difference between "hammer" and "hammah" as 

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<title>My favorite local saying: Hammer vs. Hammah</title>

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My favorite local saying: Hammer vs. Hammah

There&#039;s a noticeable difference between &quot;hammer&quot; and &quot;hammah&quot; as explained by this 6-year-old. To submit your Favorite Local Saying photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com.

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

June Jones was laughed out of the room. Even his most staunch supporters thought he was crazy. 

The year was 1998. The University of Hawai‘i football team had just gone 0-12. Jones, then the interim head coach of the NFL's San Diego Chargers, was offered the permanent role. He declined. 

Instead, he took a $250,000-a-year job to coach the Rainbow Warriors, sacrificing millions to take over a team that lost more than every other Division I football team in the country in 1998. His vision in taking over wasn't just getting the team back to bowl contention — it was about taking the program to new heights. 

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which debuted in 1998, was the new frontier for college football's elite. In his first day on the job, Jones said it was just a matter of time until Hawai‘i would get there. 

"All of us thought this man was a little bit eccentric, a little bit crazy," 

, a former player and coach under Jones at UH, told Aloha State Daily. "The press thought he was crazy. The fans thought he was crazy because you're taking a program that has been in the bottom of college football thinking about BCS games and being great."

In less than a decade, Jones' bold claim became reality. Less than a decade after going 0-12, Hawai‘i went a perfect 12-0 during the 2007 regular season, earning a bid to the Sugar Bowl, one of the five BCS bowl games at the time. Though he departed for SMU following the season, Jones left an indelible mark on the Islands. He remains the winningest head coach in Hawai‘i history at 76-41, as well as one of its most beloved. 

After a battle with Stage 4 cancer, Jones died in hospice care in Oregon on Thursday morning. He was 73. 

"It's really the state of Hawai‘i's loss," Miano said on Thursday. "He's a fighter. For 43 years he's been like a dad and like a mentor and somebody I totally looked up to in so many aspects of life. ... I've never seen anybody as a coach or an administrator make such a positive impact and stimulate this state like he did."

Born and raised in Portland, Ore., Jones began his college football playing career as a quarterback at Oregon from 1971 to 1972. He then transferred to the University of Hawai‘i, suiting up for the Rainbows in 1973 and 1974. 

Though he transferred to Portland State for the 1975 and 1976 seasons, it was there that he was first introduced to the run-and-shoot offense by Mouse Davis — a scheme Jones would eventually revolutionize and make his own, using it to much success across his stops at the college and pro levels. 

The first stop in Jones' coaching career brought him back to UH, where he was the team's quarterbacks coach in 1983. From there, he coached quarterbacks and receivers in the USFL, CFL and NFL. His first offensive coordinator job with an NFL team was with the Atlanta Falcons from 1991 to 1993. He was head coach for the Falcons from 1994 to 1996, going 19-29. After getting hired as quarterbacks coach for the Chargers in 1998, he was named interim coach halfway through the season. Then Hawai‘i came calling. After its winless 1998 season, UH went 9-4 in Jones' first year in Mānoa, finishing with a 9-4 mark that culminated with a 23-17 victory over Oregon State at the 1999 Oʻahu Bowl. 

"In terms of taking a struggling program that was literally the worst in college football, then having the biggest turnaround in NCAA history. There's no other person that could convince the players," said Miano, who was hired by Jones as the secondary coach before the 1999 season. "They're basically the same players. There's no other person that could convince coaches."

Jones' impact spans generations. Five of his former players at Hawai‘i are on the coaching staff for the current team, including head coach 

, who set the NCAA passing yardage record at 17,072 under the tutelage of Jones. 

On Thursday, an emotional Chang was in tears and had to collect himself before answering a question about his former coach and mentor. It was also Jones who gave Chang his start in collegiate coaching at SMU as a graduate assistant in 2012. 

"Playing is one thing, but when you're starting a new life, a new chapter, there's only so many doors that open for you," Chang said on Thursday. "June was that door for me. Not only as a player, but also as a coach, helping me and giving me an opportunity. What I get and love to do now, there's so many things that when I get to look back as a player and as a coach, how great he was, and how much that meant to me, a lot of the decisions I make and a lot of the base principles of who we are foundationally as a team come from there. I got to express that and talk about that with the team today, and that's what he is. He's a foundation builder, and I think that's where I really truly appreciate everything that he has done, not just for me, but for the school, the state, and football."

Hawai‘i associate head coach Chris Brown was the first player to sign under Jones in 1999. When it was his turn to speak about Jones on Thursday, he too wiped a stream of tears away before recalling some of the permanent marks his former coach left on the program. The green "H" and tapa trim logo the entire athletics department uses today was inspired by a rebrand spearheaded by Jones in 2000. So was the concept of all-black uniforms. 

"All the lessons and the stuff that he taught us, all we're trying to do is just replicate it in this day and age," Brown said. "It's not easy. You know where college football is these days, but you can never forget the foundation. You can never forget, the base of everything, and that is Hawai‘i — true Hawaiʻi football. Let's go score some points. Let's go play some some rugged defense. Let's put some excitement and fire in the stands, and when you see that black jersey come running, you know it's something that was started from coach Jones, and you I'm very, very proud that this team is still carrying on that legacy."

Hawai‘i offensive line coach Derek Faavi was the center and bridge between the program's two most prolific quarterbacks of all time in Chang and Colt Brennan. He walked on out of Campbell High School in 2001 and became team MVP as a senior in 2005, thanks in large part to the faith Jones put in him. When Jones was present at a 

live demolition event at Aloha Stadium in April

, Faavi approached his former coach and thanked him for all the memories. 

"I said, 'Coach, all of these memories in Aloha Stadium is because of you,'" Faavi said on Thursday. "When you strip all of those layers back and kind of think about everything that I went through with Hawai‘i football, it's because of him. It's a sad day. Sad day for all of us Warriors, and we love him."

Following his 2008-2014 stint at SMU, Jones briefly moved back to the Islands, where he was the offensive coordinator at Kapolei High School in 2016 and athletic director at Saint Louis in 2017. He returned to coaching as the head coach of the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats from 2017 to 2018, then went 5-0 as the head coach for the XFL's Houston Roughnecks in 2020 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut the season short. 

Jones made one last run at the Hawai‘i job when it opened in 2022, turning down a two-year offer from then-athletics director David Matlin. Despite his displeasure in the amount of years he was offered, he vowed to be a resource for Chang as he adjusted to the gig. 

"He always loved watching University of Hawai‘i football," Chang said. "He loved watching this team play. He was very complimentary. As the season went on this year, he always talked about how hard the boys played, and he said just keep sticking with it, keep staying with it, it'll come, and he was very encouraging  along the whole way that I've been here, and so I love him, and we'll miss him."

June Jones 102926

<title>Hawai‘i football visionary June Jones passes away at 73</title>

The former UH quarterback and head coach left an indelible mark on the program he spurned the NFL for in 1999.

Hawai‘i football visionary June Jones passes away at 73

Ray Tsuchiyama

Business & Tourism

Columnists

Maui ranchers have said for years that axis deer are eating them out of business. Now there are numbers.

 in Rangeland Ecology & Management Journal, the world’s premier peer-reviewed scientific journal dedicated to rangeland ecosystems (it serves as the flagship publication for the

, is the first to measure how much forage wild animals remove from Hawaiʻi’s working ranches and found forage loss at two-thirds of the 35 sites surveyed on Maui and Hawaiʻi Island. On Maui, cameras detected axis deer at 19 of 20 sites, in groups as large as 127 individuals. Where axis deer dominated, forage production ran about a quarter lower than in fenced-off plots. At the worst site, wild ungulates (free-roaming hoofed animals such as deer, pigs, and goats) removed 1,942 kilograms of forage per hectare over the two-week monitoring period.

The authors are careful. Monitoring was brief, it covered four ranches, and elevation influenced forage more than deer numbers did. But the deer effect was statistically significant, and it matches what ranchers describe. Fireweed, a toxic weed that crowds out grasses like Kikuyu, turned up at 70% of sites, and several sites sat in areas burned in the August 2023 Maui wildfires. Overgrazed land recovers slowly from fire.

My family’s roots on Maui go back to 1899. I served as a Maui County commissioner, worked at UH Maui College and contributed to the Maui County Department of Agriculture’s

. I have watched our working lands decline with growing alarm.

None of this is new. Just nine axis deer were released on Maui in 1959 and 1960. By 2011, the herd was estimated at 12,000, and former Mayor Alan Arakawa warned that many farmers, unable to afford full fencing, “may literally lose a crop overnight.” The state has since issued 29 emergency proclamations on axis deer, beginning under Gov. David Ige, with the latest on

A kupuna cattleman who has ranched Kula, Kaupo and Kihei for more than half a century described the losses to me. “Five deer drink the equivalent water of one cow,” he said. In droughts, thousands of deer compete with his cattle for water and feed, and he has imported emergency feed at tens of thousands of dollars a month. Ranchers told the study’s authors they have cut livestock by 25% to 30%. A statewide producer survey put annual damage, control, and repair costs from wild ungulates at $3.6 million to $7.5 million, plus more than $2 million in upfront fencing.

The burden falls unevenly. Fences protect individual pastures but do not reduce deer numbers, and the study’s authors warn that excluded animals simply shift onto neighboring unfenced land. That means smaller farms. Coffee growers and family ranches near homes often cannot hunt because safety distances rule out rifles. They cannot afford the expensive fences and cannot use the guns.

Hunting helps, and the UH team calls for expanded community hunting access along with large-scale removal by trapping or aerial shooting. But hunting tends to favor bucks, and a federal-state modeling study found that holding Maui’s herd down takes removing 20% to 30% of it every year, with a heavier share of does. UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) professor Melissa Price told

 that targeting does can reach the same population goal while removing far fewer animals overall. Night shooting near working pastures carries its own risk: some ranchers reported losing cattle to stray bullets and never getting reimbursed.

The scale is daunting. Herds can grow 20% to 30% a year, so roughly a fifth must be removed annually just to hold numbers steady. Depending on whose count you trust, that is about 5,000 to 12,000 deer. The state put $6.1 million into a 2024-25 control program paying landowners $25 to $50 a deer yet harvests still trail growth.

Rules compound the problem. When cattlemen proposed infrared-triggered water-trough traps that can capture 50 deer in a night, they ran into meat-inspection requirements. As ranchers describe them, a certified inspector must be present at harvest before venison can go to a food bank. The Legislature created a meat-processing task force to fix this, and it was still asking for more time.

Underneath it all is a data gap. In 2011, Maui’s herd was estimated at 12,000. A survey in 2021–22 put it near 47,000, shortly after a drought crash. State wildlife officials estimated 34,000 in late 2023 and 26,000 across Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi in 2025, while the governor’s proclamation cites about 60,000. In 2024 the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University estimated that the total deer herd across Maui County (which includes the islands of Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lānaʻi) was between 145,000 and 167,000 individuals. The ASU study broke this total down as 60,000 to 70,000 deer on Maui, 60,000 on Molokaʻi, and 25,000 to 37,000 on Lānaʻi (on the latter island, there are only 3,300 human residents).

Different dates, geographies, and methods mean no one can say whether the herd is shrinking or growing, set a credible removal target or judge any program. No agency publishes a single dashboard combining population estimates, DLNR culling permits, rancher reports, and poaching estimates. Without one, agencies play defense while working ranches burn through capital.

Deer have also fed Maui families for generations, so any solution must work with hunters. But if leaders mean it when they call agriculture and food security priorities, they must stop relying on what has not worked on its own: hunting that skips the does, and rules that keep venison out of the food supply. Without change, Maui’s small ranches and farms will not survive.

In Column Two, we look at how Arkansas and New Zealand turned deer into protein and revenue, and what Maui County can do next.

ay Tsuchiyama’s series explores one central question: How does Hawai‘i use the wealth and land it already has to create its next economic future? He can be reached at 

Axis deer i Stock 2189595444

<title>Maui’s Deer Crisis: Science, Strife, and Inertia (Part One)</title>

By some estimates, there are nearly as many axis deer as there are people across the three islands of Maui County. Roving herds can wreck a farmerʻs entire crop overnight and crowd out livestock ranchers. ASD columnist Ray Tsuchiyama breaks down the problem and explores solutions in this two-parter.

Maui’s Deer Crisis: Science, Strife, and Inertia (Part One)

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday, Nov. 26. Whether you’re dining out or looking for an at-home feast, check out the following options:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"100 Sails Restaurant & Bar"}]

: The Thanksgiving dinner buffet costs $109 per adult ($54.50 per child ages 6 to 10 years old). Highlights include kiawe-smoked prime rib that’s carved to order, kiawe smoked brisket, ‘ahi poke, assorted sashimi, snow crab legs, salt and pepper shrimp, caramelized mushroom linguini, roasted turkey leg and turkey breast, holiday stuffing, temaki sushi, Prince bread pudding, pumpkin crunch haupia crunch pie and more.

The brunch buffet costs $111 per adult ($55.50 per child ages 6 to 10 years old). It includes many of the featured dinner buffet offerings — including kiawe-smoked prime rib, kiawe smoked brisket, roasted turkey leg and turkey breast — but also includes breakfast offerings like Prince fried rice, a waffle station and an omelet station.

: Dinner buffet 5 to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 26-29; brunch buffet 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Nov. 26

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"53 By the Sea"}]

: 53 By the Sea’s Thanksgiving take home packages are available for pre-order online and via phone.

The standard Thanksgiving dinner set ($250) is designed to feed four people and includes:

The deluxe Thanksgiving dinner set ($750) is designed to feed eight people and includes:

: In-person pick-ups from 8 a.m. to noon on Nov. 26

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"C4 Table by Colin Hazama"}]

: fishcake Honolulu, 307C Kamani St., Honolulu 

: C4 Table’s Thanksgiving holiday menu ($370) is designed to serve four to six people. It includes:

: Pick-up from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 25 at fishcake Honolulu 

: Email pre-order with name (first and last), telephone contact number, number of meals/additional sides, and preferred pick-up time slot to 

: Chart House Waikīkī’s traditional turkey dinner ($65) includes butter and sage roasted turkey, savory cornbread stuffing, mashed or baked sweet potato with rum butter, pan gravy, creamed spinach and cranberry relish. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hy’s Steak House"}]

: This Thanksgiving ‘ohana feast to-go ($585) is designed to serve eight to 10 people. It includes:

: This special Thanksgiving dinner ($40) includes butter herb roasted turkey, homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, green bean casserole, candied yams with toasted marshmallow, grilled corn on the cob and a dinner roll. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Merriman’s Honolulu"}]

: This Thanksgiving prix fixe menu costs $140 per person ($45 for children ages 12 years and younger). It includes:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"MW Restaurant"}]

: This Thanksgiving family feast ($725) is designed to feed six to eight people. It includes:

Pre-orders must be placed by Tuesday, Nov. 24.

: Pick-up from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 26

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Plumeria Beach House"}]

: The all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffets will include a carving station, chef specialties and a variety of desserts. They cost $145 per adult ($55 per child ages 6 to 12 years). 

: Nov. 26, brunch buffet 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; dinner buffet 3 to 8 p.m. 

: This Thanksgiving package ($285.95) is designed to feed four to six people. It includes sliced roast turkey, turkey gravy, housemade stuffing, pineapple-glazed ham, garlic mashed potatoes, spicy ‘ahi on sushi rice, fresh cranberry sauce, and pumpkin crunch squares.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Buffet at Hyatt"}]

: Hyatt Regency Waikīkī Beach Resort & Spa, 

: This Island-inspired Thanksgiving buffet costs $110 per person (50% off for children ages 6 to 12 years, $5.99 for children ages 5 years and under).

[{"type":"text","text":"Buffet highlights include:"}]

discount is not valid for holiday menus. 

The Royal Hawaiian, a Luxury Collection Resort, Waik

: This Thanksgiving takeout feast ($595) is designed to serve eight to 10 people.

: Pick-up from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 26.

Upon arrival, guests should pull into The Royal Hawaiian porte cochere (valet) and check in with the team; staff members will bring your Thanksgiving feast directly to you. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Umi by Vikram Garg"}]

: Halepuna Waikīkī by Halekūlani, 2233 Helumoa Road, Honolulu 

: This special Thanksgiving dinner features a three-course ($110 per person) or four-course ($150 per person) menu.

The three-course menu features a soup or pasta (premium upgrade optional), main course and dessert; an optional wine pairing ($50) is available. The four-course menu includes an appetizer (premium upgrade available), soup or pasta (premium upgrade available), main course and dessert; an optional wine pairing ($70) is available.

[{"type":"text","text":"Featured dishes include:"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Zippy’s Restaurants"}]

: Zippy’s is offering a variety of Thanksgiving packages to choose from:

[{"type":"text","text":"Whole turkey package, $214.95; serves eight to 10 people"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Half turkey package, $124.95; serves four people"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Whole turkey only, $95.95; serves eight to 10 people"}]

: Pick-up Wednesday Nov. 25 or Thursday, Nov. 26

My favorite local saying: Hammer vs. Hammah

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My favorite local saying: Hammer vs. Hammah

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ASD Staff

Reporter

More in My Favorite Local Saying

My favorite local saying: Hard for pick just one

My favorite local saying: 'Broke da mouth'

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