Deer and people clash in Minnesota
A yearling buck leaps a fence in a St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood.
Manage Alerts | What Is This? ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- So many deer inhabit the area around Pig's Eye Lake just east of St. Paul that one frustrated local official has compared them to unwanted vermin.
In a recent aerial survey of the 11-square-mile, mostly residential area, county biologists expecting to find about 100 deer instead counted more than 500. Some of the hoofed creatures have been wandering into town, showing up at places like the emergency entrance of Regions Hospital and in front of the pro hockey arena.
Most notably, a big buck broke several windows at the state Capitol before bounding just a few feet away from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his startled security detail.
"They're just everywhere. You see them every day," said Kathy Lantry, a city councilwoman who represents the area Pig's Eye Lake area. "They've become like rats."
The problem of deer encroaching on cities and suburbs is not new, with some communities considering everything from hiring sharpshooters to deer contraception to cut down the populations.
Earlier this month, a man in Bentonville, Arkansas, struggled with a deer for nearly 40 minutes after it crashed into his daughter's bedroom, ultimately killing it with his bare hands. A few days earlier, authorities in Helena, Montana, killed four deer that had harassed a newspaper carrier.
Deer flourish in forest areas where there is development but no sport hunting or natural predators and food is plentiful in the form of weeds and residential landscaping.
John Moriarty, natural resource manager for St. Paul's Ramsey County, said residents of deer-heavy areas usually start out liking their hoofed neighbors because it seems a little exotic.
"For a long period of time, people were willing to tolerate a little bit of damage, but then you hit people's breaking point," he said. "Then they become the bad, nasty deer that everyone wants to get rid of."
Deer wander on to highways and get hit by cars, 15,000 a year in Minnesota alone. They also damage gardens, lawns and crops, spread Lyme disease and disrupt habitat for species ranging from nesting songbirds to forest vegetation.
"You can't plant anything. They eat it all," said Ann Mueller, who until recently lived near Pig's Eye Lake. At certain times of the year she said she saw deer daily.
Later this month, a sharpshooter hired by Ramsey County will take to the woods to thin the herds around Pig's Eye Lake, a Mississippi River backwater. The goal is to kill about 200 does to both bring down current numbers and reduce future reproduction.
There will be little sport to what Tony DeNicola, president of Connecticut-based White Buffalo Inc., will do when he carries out the project.
For several weeks, he will drop bait at the same time each day to train deer to come to areas where can safely shoot them. He said he typically shoots from a tree or vehicle.
If 200 deer are killed, that means about 10,000 pounds of venison for local food shelves, Moriarty said.
But some oppose this means of thinning the deer population.
In Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, residents a few years ago formed the "Coalition to Save Our Deer" after the state Department of Natural Resources proposed letting bow hunters into a fenced-off reservoir where a herd of deer had been trapped by post-September 11 security measures.
Hoping to avoid controversy, states like New York and Ohio have had some success shooting does with darts charged with contraceptives. Animal rights groups have advocated wider use -- but that in turn has prompted criticism.
"It just takes forever and it's expensive," said DeNicola. "You contracept a deer and it's still out running around in the field, it can still get hit by a car."
However, John Hadidian, director of urban wildlife programs for the Humane Society of the United States, said he believes the strongest opposition to deer birth control has come from hunters who are afraid populations will decline too much.
"That gets enabled by state fish and game agencies that depend on hunting license revenue for their operations," Hadidian said.
A yearling buck leaps a fence in a St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood.
Manage Alerts | What Is This? ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- So many deer inhabit the area around Pig's Eye Lake just east of St. Paul that one frustrated local official has compared them to unwanted vermin.
In a recent aerial survey of the 11-square-mile, mostly residential area, county biologists expecting to find about 100 deer instead counted more than 500. Some of the hoofed creatures have been wandering into town, showing up at places like the emergency entrance of Regions Hospital and in front of the pro hockey arena.
Most notably, a big buck broke several windows at the state Capitol before bounding just a few feet away from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his startled security detail.
"They're just everywhere. You see them every day," said Kathy Lantry, a city councilwoman who represents the area Pig's Eye Lake area. "They've become like rats."
The problem of deer encroaching on cities and suburbs is not new, with some communities considering everything from hiring sharpshooters to deer contraception to cut down the populations.
Earlier this month, a man in Bentonville, Arkansas, struggled with a deer for nearly 40 minutes after it crashed into his daughter's bedroom, ultimately killing it with his bare hands. A few days earlier, authorities in Helena, Montana, killed four deer that had harassed a newspaper carrier.
Deer flourish in forest areas where there is development but no sport hunting or natural predators and food is plentiful in the form of weeds and residential landscaping.
John Moriarty, natural resource manager for St. Paul's Ramsey County, said residents of deer-heavy areas usually start out liking their hoofed neighbors because it seems a little exotic.
"For a long period of time, people were willing to tolerate a little bit of damage, but then you hit people's breaking point," he said. "Then they become the bad, nasty deer that everyone wants to get rid of."
Deer wander on to highways and get hit by cars, 15,000 a year in Minnesota alone. They also damage gardens, lawns and crops, spread Lyme disease and disrupt habitat for species ranging from nesting songbirds to forest vegetation.
"You can't plant anything. They eat it all," said Ann Mueller, who until recently lived near Pig's Eye Lake. At certain times of the year she said she saw deer daily.
Later this month, a sharpshooter hired by Ramsey County will take to the woods to thin the herds around Pig's Eye Lake, a Mississippi River backwater. The goal is to kill about 200 does to both bring down current numbers and reduce future reproduction.
There will be little sport to what Tony DeNicola, president of Connecticut-based White Buffalo Inc., will do when he carries out the project.
For several weeks, he will drop bait at the same time each day to train deer to come to areas where can safely shoot them. He said he typically shoots from a tree or vehicle.
If 200 deer are killed, that means about 10,000 pounds of venison for local food shelves, Moriarty said.
But some oppose this means of thinning the deer population.
In Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, residents a few years ago formed the "Coalition to Save Our Deer" after the state Department of Natural Resources proposed letting bow hunters into a fenced-off reservoir where a herd of deer had been trapped by post-September 11 security measures.
Hoping to avoid controversy, states like New York and Ohio have had some success shooting does with darts charged with contraceptives. Animal rights groups have advocated wider use -- but that in turn has prompted criticism.
"It just takes forever and it's expensive," said DeNicola. "You contracept a deer and it's still out running around in the field, it can still get hit by a car."
However, John Hadidian, director of urban wildlife programs for the Humane Society of the United States, said he believes the strongest opposition to deer birth control has come from hunters who are afraid populations will decline too much.
"That gets enabled by state fish and game agencies that depend on hunting license revenue for their operations," Hadidian said.
