Why police can kill deer near your home with consent from Utah wildlife officials

Utah’s mule deer hunting season is long over. However, for a handful of contractors, police officers and volunteers in some cities, they can harvest deer until Dec. 31 as long as the animals are within city limits.

It’s all part of the Utah Wildlife Department’s Urban Deer Program, which aims to control urban deer populations so they can better coexist with humans, said Chad Wilson, the department’s wildlife coordinator.

As Utah grows and cities grow, conflicts increase as more deer abandon their bucolic natural habitat for residential streets. Deer cause car accidents, eat gardens and, in general, cause trouble, which is why the program was created about a decade ago.

We don’t have enough manpower to go to every city and solve this problem.so [the program] “It’s our way of saying, look, we’re never going to be as efficient as you want us to be,” Wilson said. So if this is a big problem, here are some tools to help solve it.

Methods for removing deer vary from town to town, but most involve baiting, trapping, and then killing them with a silenced rifle.Each municipality is responsible for formulating its own Develop a lethal removal plan and report deer mortality statistics to the wildlife department each March, Wilson said.

Last year, urban hunters killed about 150 deer through the program, mostly This is true because women drive population growth more than men. But the number of deer killed through the program also varies by location. Last year, Centerville had the most with 48 cases, followed by Springville with 37, while Pleasant Grove and Manti had five fewer cases. starting or less.

In Bountiful, where city officials have been working on some kind of relocation plan for about a decade, 24 people were trapped and killed last year.

Generous City Manager Gary Hill said officials developed a plan based on complaints from residents. The city’s goal is to kill about 50 people a year.

“Our goal is not to eliminate all the deer in Bountiful,” he said. It’s just to maintain the population if you can help it.

How does this program work?

Hill says In Bountiful, interested residents can contact the city to set up deer traps on their property. About 30 residents have requested the soft-sided mesh cage traps, he said.

These traps are usually baited between August and December to avoid taking young deer in the spring and summer and to avoid harming the deer that come down from the mountains in search of food and water in the winter.

In Bountiful, Hill said they progressively limit trapping based on proximity to the mountains. The closer you get to the mountains, the shorter the trapping season is. Residents who live above the golf course and North Canyon Park are simply not allowed to fall into the trap.

Hill said city staff regularly checks traps and notifies residents if a deer is trapped. A team of police officers then responded and shot the animal with a .22 caliber rifle.

Wilson said many cities choose police officers to dispatch this lethal force because officers have extensive firearms training. But not every city is like this.

something instead Wilson said working with local sportsmen’s shops to find willing archers. Springville contracts with a company to make such reductions. Police Lt. Warren Foster said next year they will be hiring a seasonal employee who has years of experience and already understands the program to continue the abatement program.

Is killing the deer the only option?

When the program began, municipalities had two options: They could choose to kill the deer, or they could capture and relocate them.

That changed in 2019, when wildlife officials learned that about half of the deer in the program participants did not survive the relocation, according to the release.

Deer born and raised in cities have proven difficult to adapt to rural life, Hill said.

Officials are also concerned about the spread of diseases such as chronic wasting disease. Wilson said some deer also have ticks, and wildlife officials don’t want them to spread into the countryside.

“We just felt very uncomfortable,” Wilson said. We don’t want to be the reason for spreading some deadly disease to other parts of the state.

The wildlife department also found that relocating deer did not appear to control deer populations because relocation efforts did not significantly change public responses to conflicts with urban deer, they said in the release.

Foster, of Springville police, said his city participates in the program some years but not others. Foster said when someone doesn’t cull urban deer, they see more car-deer collisions and residents notice more large herds of deer gathering together.

When a deer is killed through the program, officials ask that it not be wasted. First, it is tested for disease and, in many cities, donated to people who can use the meat.

In Bountiful, people can email the city to ask to be put on the list, Hill said. When a deer is killed, city officials send an email and the deer is given to the first person to respond.

“Virtually every deer we’ve harvested over the past few years has been donated to a family in need, which is truly amazing and gratifying,” Hill said.

Another way to deal with problem deer is to make your home less hospitable to them.the most effective way For example, the wildlife department recommends that to prevent deer from eating gardens and landscaping, build tall fences that are at least 7.6 feet high.

The wildlife department advises that repellents, outdoor lighting, noise makers and even thorny plants won’t deter hungry deer. Residents can protect the most susceptible plants by wrapping them in burlap or plastic.

The good news is that most plants have recovered from deer grazing, and growth can even be stimulated once the weather warms, and native plants have largely adapted.

For more information about living with mule deer, visit wildlife.utah.gov/md-home.html.

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