Sharpshooters killed the permitted 350 white-tailed deer this winter in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in what park officials called a successful first year.
The deer reduction occurred on 16 nights from Jan. 11 to March 7, said Lisa Petit, the park’s chief of resource management, on Thursday.
About 65 percent of the deer shot were in Summit County, with the other 35 percent in Cuyahoga County, she said.
The federal park had received a state permit to shoot that number of deer to preserve and restore the park’s biodiversity (plants and other animals). The federal park had proposed shooting 375 deer a year but that total was reduced by 25.
The mild winter weather made the deer shooting more difficult, she said.
That’s because the lack of snow meant the deer had plenty of food and were not as easily attracted to baited areas with elevated stands where the federal sharpshooters would shoot the deer in closed areas of the park. As a result, it took more work and more travel to shoot the 350 deer, she said.
Officials had estimated the first year deer reduction to cost $240,000 to $300,000, but it will likely be less than $240,000, she said.
It will be fall before park officials will be able to gauge the impact of shooting the 350 deer on the park’s deer density, Petit said. That’s when the park conducts its annual deer density surveys.
The deer density before the shooting was probably about 40 deer per square mile. It has been much higher in the past with hot spots approaching 100 deer per square mile.
The goal is to reduce that density to between 20 and 23 deer per square mile, Petit said.
The park had about 1,700 deer, according to a 2013 estimate.
The park is planning to shoot an additional 350 deer next winter, she said.
The plan calls for shooting 350 deer a year in years two through four and 175 deer in year five. The park is also looking at developing a deer contraceptive program in the fifth year. If that program fails, additional deer will be shot.
The deer reduction, first proposed in 1997, relied on up to five sharpshooters provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services Wildlife Services.
That agency has been involved in shooting deer at other national park units in the eastern United States. The sharpshooters were armed with rifles equipped with noise suppressors
The shooting went “incredibly smoothly and there were zero safety-related incidents,” Petit said. “I couldn’t be more satisfied with how smoothly and how safely everything went.”
It was the first time that the federal park had shot deer and there was “a learning curve,” especially in dealing with efficiencies and needed staffing levels, she said.
“We learned a lot,” she said.
The deer were shot on federally owned lands within the 33,000-acre federal park, Petit said. Those lands cover about two-thirds of the park.
Summit Metro Parks and Cleveland Metroparks were both conducting their own deer shooting at the same time.
The two regional districts were permitted to shoot up a total of up to 631 deer this winter to help keep deer numbers reduced.
More than 15,000 pounds of venison were donated by the Cuyahoga Valley park to food banks in Akron-Canton and Cleveland. The processing into venison was done in a joint effort with the two park districts.
All the deer killed in the Cuyahoga Valley and some in the two metro parks were tested for chronic wasting disease. All 420 deer tested were negative for the disease, Petit said.
It was the first time that local deer had been tested for the disease, a fatal degenerative brain disorder in deer and elk.
The disease has not been detected in park deer but it has been found in escaped captive deer in Holmes County. Federal park rules mandate the tests be conducted because the disease has been found within 60 miles of Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The samples were shipped to Fort Collins, Colo., for testing and the deer was held for up to seven days from processing until the samples came back clean, Petit said.
About 10 residents living around the park expressed concerns about shooting the deer and the park worked to resolve those individual concerns, she said.
In 1997, Cuyahoga Valley had proposed shooting deer but that plan was blocked by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. That triggered years of study and analysis of the deer in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
It took eight years for the park to complete its plan, which was discussed at public hearings.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.