Oh, deer! We've got a problem! But the city isn't doing enough to solve it

The city of Roanoke has a deer problem. The deer population is growing at a rate faster than we can currently control it. That means deer are spilling over onto our neighborhood streets and busy highways like U.S. 220, causing accidents and narrow misses. They are in our yards eating the vegetation and leaving behind their droppings and the threat of E-coli where our children, dogs and cats play.

In addition, many deer starve during the winter months because of overpopulation and the lack of food for such large herds, and this drives them into the city even farther.

Many agree that the humane control of the deer population benefits both humans and deer. Even city councilman Dr. Rupert Cutler, known for his natural resources background and his very environmental stance, agrees.

To address the problem, the city formed the Wildlife Task Force in 2002, made up of citizens, city staff, police staff and regional experts.

Unfortunately, Roanoke has only implemented some of the recommendations of the task force, so current efforts have fallen short.

Peter Via, a South Roanoke resident who deals with this problem nearly every day, is frustrated with the city’s slow movement on culling the deer. “There are certain things I expect from city government, and one of them is preventing packs of deer from roaming freely into our neighborhood and destroying my yard,” he said.

The initial test program utilized three retired police officers to hunt the deer within city limits, and was clearly not enough to solve the problem, as they only shot 109 deer of the 976 they saw. That wasn’t enough to even keep up with the population growth. City officials and task force members agree that a one-season deer culling is not going to solve the problem. The program must be ongoing.

In this ongoing effort, city council this week voted to take a next step and allow for baiting, which draws the deer into specific areas to be shot.

The decision to allow baiting now opens the door for the next step, which is to contract with a company out of Connecticut called White Buffalo to bring in their team to bait and shoot deer. City estimates show that White Buffalo will charge $150-$200 per deer. Multiply that amount by the approximately 1,000 deer that were seen this year in the city (and all the others that were never spotted), and you’ve got a bill that can approach $150,000-$200,000 every year.

The Wildlife Task Force recommended much cheaper (free) and more practical methods, but the city manager and city council are ignoring them.

Task force member and 25-year hunter Joe Schupp says the group recommended the baiting and sharpshooting, but only when supplemented by an urban archery program. He never remembers the committee recommending bringing in an outside contractor, and he thinks that’s much too costly of an option.

Urban archery allows those private citizens with proven proficiency in archery to obtain special hunting licenses through the police department to help control the deer population in the city. (Archery is preferred over guns because arrows have a much shorter range than bullets.)

Schupp says that without an urban archery program, the culling is doomed to fail, unless the city wants to keep paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in these outside contractors every year.

He says there are many highly-skilled local hunters who would participate in the program for free. Urban archery would serve multiple purposes, including allowing more people to work on population control, saving money using willing volunteers instead of hiring more paid sharpshooters, as well as providing more deer meat for needy Virginians through the Hunters for the Hungry program.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries established a special urban archery season two years ago for this very purpose, and several localities are taking advantage of it and allowing local hunters to get permits to help control the urban deer population. These localities include Lynchburg, Christiansburg, Radford, Blacksburg -- even Fairfax County in northern Virginia. Urban archery has proven safe and effective since its implementation two years ago in Virginia, and for several years in West Virginia and a number of Midwest states.

In addition, now that baiting is allowed, deer can be drawn into a secure area where they can be hunted with minimal disturbance to the surrounding neighborhood.

Some people may ask, “Why don’t they just catch and release the deer somewhere else?” The problem is that many deer die or become severely injured during transport, and those that survive would just come back.

Some say it’s cruel to bait and shoot deer, but the deer are shot by experienced hunters who take care to make the first shot a kill shot whenever possible. The real cruelty is watching deer starve in the winter because the land cannot provide enough food to support the population. The real cruelty is watching a deer suffer after it has been hit by a car. The real cruelty is watching children get sick from E-coli poisoning from just playing in their backyards.

Unfortunately, city manager Darlene Burcham reiterated Monday that she does not want to allow proficient citizen-hunters to obtain licenses and assist with the effort through an urban archery program -- a program many see as the most efficient and cost-effective method. As has been her history, her preference is to bring in outside contractors. Many hope that council will override that decision. As has been council’s history, that’s highly doubtful.