PORTAGE (WKZO-AM) — A Large crowd of well over 120 Portage residents turned out last night to learn what they can do about deer invading their neighborhood.
DNR officials and homeowners agree that one or two deer is sort of nice, but when you have roving herds living off your landscaping and messing on your lawn, and increasing the occurrence of car deer collisions, it’s not only annoying and expensive, it can be dangerous.
DNR Deer Specialist Chad Stevens told Portage residents last night that getting rid of them can be expensive, controversial and never-ending, because deer generally do better in suburban settings than they do in the wild.
They live longer, they live healthier and they reproduce faster, because there is a ready supply of food and no predators, other than the occasional Buick.
A deer survey of Portage undertaken as a class project by Students at Kalamazoo Christian High found that the problem varies from one part of Portage to another.
Some parts of town don’t have any deer. Other parts have as many as 200 per square mile, and it’s the most intense on the northwest side of the city.
The DNR’s Stevens says there are several options a community can take to limit a deer herd but few of them are successful for long, some are very expensive, some are not allowed, some are sure to draw protestors and none of them will become the consensus choice of the community.
Live trapping and transferring deer might be the least controversial, but it isn’t permitted by the state because of the fear of spreading disease, and Stevens says it would be enormously expensive.
Neutering them is also expensive, because each doe would have to be shot with a dart once a month during mating season, or captured live and surgically neutered.
That leaves culling the herd, which varies in expense, risk and controversy. Stevens says you could just open some neighborhoods to deer hunters during the regular fall hunting season.
A community could organize a registered hunt, screening bow-hunters, giving them some training and letting them reduce the herd, and contribute the meat to food-banks.
Stewart says other communities have tried this and it pays for itself, but it can take time.
He says the quickest way to do it would be to hire professional sharpshooters to reduce the herd, but there are only a few companies that do it, and they don’t work cheap.
Stewart says using deer repellants might work to keep them out of your yard but they don’t take care of the larger problem.
The Portage Environmental Advisory Board is just in the early stages of trying to develop a recommendation to the City Council.
Board member Tim Winslow says they have posted a survey on the city’s Website for any residents who want to comment.
He says they have a lot more research to do, and will have to hear from a lot more citizens before they prepare a recomendation.
The Portage City Council will make the final choice and find the funding if they decide to proceed.
