The only effective way to reduce the expanding deer herd on the North Fork is by hunting them.
That’s the basic message a local group seeks to bring to every Southold Town resident with a brochure they are trying to get printed and mailed to every household.
“I’m an animal lover and did not initially favor solving this problem by killing deer,” said Hazel Kahan of Mattituck.
But now, having learned of the serious and permanent deleterious effects deer are having to our ecosystem, she’s a proselyte.
Representing the North Fork Deer Management Alliance, Kahan and Amy Dries are speaking to community and civic organizations to spread the word about “the seven biggest myths about deer” — and to garner support for the idea of hunting as the most effective and humane way of dealing with the deer crisis no the North Fork. They are also hoping to raise funds to carry the estimated $10,000 cost of printing and mailing the brochure.
Kahan, Dries and Southold Town Deer Management Task Force co-chairman Dave Dominy spoke to the East Marion Community Association this morning at the East Marion Fire Department. Kahan and Dries outlined the scope of the crisis and Dominy discussed the town’s deer management program.
Reducing the deer population is necessary for the health of the environment, for human health, and for the health of the herd itself, Kahan told the group gathered at the firehouse this morning.
Voracious deer are destroying the understory of our forested lands and even bringing native plants like the lady’s slipper orchid to the brink of extinction.
The consumption of tree seedlings means no new trees are growing to replace the old one, and that has an negative impact on birds in the region, according to the brochure prepared by the group. Contamination from deer feces is polluting local waterways and soils.
Deer have done tremendous damage to agricultural crops on the North Fork, a combination of browsing, plant destruction and contamination by fecal matter. The FDA is in the process of implementing sweeping regulations requiring farmers to guarantee the safety of food harvested from any fields contaminated by deer feces. Farmers have responded with tall deer fencing.
As the main reproductive host for black-legged ticks — known, appropriately, as deer ticks — a deer feeds hundreds of the ticks to adulthood, after which they drop off the deer to lay thousands of eggs. It’s “a multiplier effect that puts deer at the heart of our current epidemic,” according to the alliance.
“The Centers for Disease Control lists 14 tick-borne diseases,” Dries said this morning. “Suffolk County health officials have documented eight of them here in Suffolk.” Lyme Disease is just one of them.
Twenty-five percent of all accidents in Southold Town involve hitting a deer, Kahan said. The number of deer-vehicle accidents rose to 243 in 2015, up from 229 in 2014. The rate of deer-vehicle accidents in Southold is three times the national average, she said. The cost of auto repairs due to deer collisions added to insurance premiums is about $1 million per year, according to data provided to the group by State Farm Insurance.
Pesticide-spraying, four-poster tick removal devices and fertility control are not realistic or effective options — in part due to the high cost of deployment.
Hunting is the only realistic way to manage the deer population, but it cannot be managed by recreational hunting alone, according to the group. Studies done by Cornell University show that 66 percent of the population would have to be removed each year in order to reduce the herd to a sustainable level.
Southold allows deer-hunting on 650-acres of town-owned lands. The town has a nuisance permit, which allows doe-hunting all year long. (Hunting for bucks on town land, under the nuisance permit, is only allowed from Oct. 1 through March 31.)
Hunting on private lands can take place from Oct. 1 through Jan. 31. In the 2015-2016 deer season, 135 hunters harvested 250 deer — 115 of them on town-owned property.
But recreational hunting is not enough, the alliance and town task force say, citing the conclusions of a Cornell University study published in 2014.
Professional sharpshooters over bait is the most successful method of herd reduction, though it is likely to be controversial, the study’s authors noted.
The Long Island white-tailed deer damage management demonstration project in 2014, in which Southold Town participated, sparked controversy that raged for months after it was concluded. The cull, commenced with a $200,000 state grant to the L.I. Farm Bureau, was the first of its kind locally. Its success was hampered by litigation as well as weather conditions and resulted in the harvest of only 132 deer, which farm bureau and municipal officials called disappointing.
The town’s deer management hunting program, since its implementation in 2008, has resulted in the harvesting of 1,390 deer in Southold Town and the donation of 35,000 pounds of venison to local food pantries, according to town records.
