A2 City Council calling for deer slaughter
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
By: Wendy Welch

Will your dog be caught in the crossfire?

As nine of 11 Ann Arbor City Council members are now in favor of hiring sharpshooters to kill deer in the city (and it only takes six votes), we're concerned-- and not just for the deer.

A rare, white buck was accidentally shot in Kensington Metropark as part of a local deer cull. Natural resources director Paul Muelle, said sharpshooters were told to avoid white deer, and that this shooter did not notice its antlers or coat agains the snow. He further went on to say that while this deer was an "unintentional kill," no one did anything wrong.

Could your dog become an "unintentional kill" during a cull?

Culls are done at night, in the middle of winter, under a veil of secrecy.  There is no recording of what happened and no official monitoring.  Only this summer, when residents started asking questions did the culling company admit they had accidentally killed the white deer-- last winter. Recently, when City Council asked the culling company how many times they have to take two shots, chasing an injured deer down to take the second, they said “very few." 

Are you comfortable with the terms "unintentional kill" and “very few” when it comes to sharpshooters in the community?

State law requires a 450 foot safety zone-- meaning you cannot discharge a firearm within 450 feet (nearly 1 1/2 football fields) of an occupied dwelling. This is good news for humans and dogs who haven't strayed from home, but not for the people who are hoping the deer killed by the cull are the ones in their backyard.

Safety when using lethal methods isn't the only thing at stake; there are questions as to the efficacy of culls, too. By official accounts, the cull is not for public safety or health concerns (according to the public health department, there is not one case of locally contracted Lyme disease).  Council members support culling both to address residents' concerns about damage to gardens and landscaping, and to protect the environment; others mention deer-car crashes.

The city of Jackson, despite eight straight years of deer culling, remains one of the worst cities in the state for car-deer crashes, according to Michigan State Police database. Yet state-wide, car-deer collisions have declined.   

As Muelle himself said regarding the Kensington Metropark cull, "We've been doing this for 16 years now." 

Are we ready for years upon years of sharpshooters in our parks and city?

"The proposed cull is not a 'mercy killing' to put down suffering animals. The DNR has not verified that we have a true “over-population” and is completely neutral on a cull in Ann Arbor.  A true over-population means the population is starving and sickly, and our city deer are neither.  Furthermore, the aerial survey only counted 168 deer including those on University of Michigan property and bordering the outside of Ann Arbor. What we have left is an expensive and risky proposal that needs to be repeated every year, on the tax payer’s dime, for the purpose of resolving conflict between the deer and those community members who are frustrated with them near or in their yards," says Tanya Hilgendorf, HSHV's President & CEO. "And yet, culls can’t guarantee the removal of specific deer that are seen as a nuisance in their neighborhood. But there are humane methods that work."   

Wouldn't you prefer safe, effective and non-lethal methods of deer management?

Dogs accidentally get loose and stray from home every day.  If sharpshooters accidentally shot an all-white deer, how can we say with certainty that they won’t accidentally shoot someone’s Labrador Retriever?  And, how would we ever know if someone’s dog was shot and disposed of if everything takes place in secrecy and there are no other ways to verify what happened?

"We’ve seen night cam video taken privately during a cull where a doe is shot but not dead, and the company ties a plastic bag around her head and she is dragged away still kicking," Hilgendorf says.  That is clearly inhumane.

We at the Humane Society of Huron Valley assert there are safe, legal, humane, cheaper and more effective ways of resolving this human/wildlife conflict.  Ann Arbor can do better.

Many thanks to Mayor Taylor and Council Member Briere for their rational, humane thinking on this topic. HSHV will be attending the final City Council public hearing followed by a vote on Monday, August 17 at 7 p.m. We will be wearing red in support of non-lethal methods of deer management, and we hope you will, too.