In Mt. Lebanon, deer have become public enemy No. 1.
But a hastily concocted plan to reduce the deer population through a controlled bow hunt on public land fell apart Monday, when Mt. Lebanon announced that no more state doe hunting licenses were available.
Unable to secure new licenses for the roughly 20 or so municipal employees interested in participating in the hunt, and unwilling to open the hunt to the general public, Mt. Lebanon now faces a long, cold winter of deer problems followed by spring births that will further enlarge the already swollen population.
“This is a major, major safety issue we’re dealing with,” Mt. Lebanon Commission President Kristen Linfante said.
Since 2011 there have been 765 reported incidents involving the herbivorous menaces in the municipality, ranging from dead and injured deer to deer stuck in fences to deer “tearing up” a yard, according to an online tracker.
Residents fear Lyme disease, vehicle crashes and decimated gardens thanks to the animals, which are hardly skittish these days, courtesy of frequent human contact.
Most here agree that deer are a problem. How to manage that problem has been a thornier matter. Residents are divided on the best approach. Some, like Ms. Linfante, favor sharpshooting; others favor bow hunts; still others prefer sterilization or a capture-and-euthanize method.
Things crystallized last month when a state wildlife conservation officer told the commissioners that the deer herd must be culled.
Ms. Linfante said she understood from that meeting that an archery hunt must occur as a precursor to any other kind of deer management.
It was not until Dec. 9 that Mt. Lebanon approved a deer management plan.
“Everyone knew that this was a very tight time frame in which to devise an archery program,” Susan Morgans, the Mt. Lebanon spokeswoman, said.
“We rushed through this,” Commissioner Kelly Fraasch said. “It was a last-minute process.”
Commissioners did not actually vote on the archery component, Ms. Linfante said. They had previously voted to allocate $68,000 to deer management with details to follow. Commissioners instead directed Mt. Lebanon’s police chief to come up with a plan for a bow hunt. But the clock was already ticking.
Sales of doe licenses at $6.70 apiece began July 14. A month later, 6,187 were gone. But by Oct. 4, the start of the fall deer archery season, 33,000 doe licenses had been sold, according to the Game Commission.
That number jumped to 47,052 by Nov. 15, the last day of the season. And by Dec. 1, the start of firearms deer season, 53,912 licenses had been sold.
This information was publicly available on the Game Commission’s website.
On Dec. 12, the very day that Mt. Lebanon put out a news release announcing the archery hunt, the Game Commission had sold out of doe licenses.
Ms. Morgans said she “knew nothing about it.” She added that she learned Friday afternoon from the municipal manager about the lack of licenses. It is not clear why it took a week after the news release announcing the hunt for the municipality to learn that no licenses were available.
Ms. Linfante called the timing a “coincidence” — and a happy one for some.
“On one hand I really hold some of my colleagues responsible who were resistant to coming up with any kind of deer plan at all,” Ms. Linfante said. “At least one of my colleagues is very happy that this thing fell through. I find that unfortunate.”
That colleague would be Ms. Fraasch, who favors a sterlization approach and said she had proposed a plan in 2012.
“I’ve obviously had concerns about doing anything lethal in Mt. Lebanon because of the density of the population, so I thought this was actually a bit of a relief,” Ms. Fraasch said. “I think it’s good for Mt. Lebanon to take a moment and make sure this is the right way to go with dealing with our deer-management issue.”
Ms. Linfante said police Chief Coleman McDonough worked hard to put together a bow-hunt plan, including protocols for selecting and vetting prospective hunters.
Mt. Lebanon opted to not open the cull — which was to have taken place Dec. 26 through Jan. 24 in Bird, Robb Hollow and McNeilly parks and the Mt. Lebanon Golf Course — to the thousands of hunters who already had licenses.
Some Mt. Lebanon employees who planned to volunteer for the bow hunt might already have licenses.
But, Chief McDonough said, “just because of the very small number of deer tags available we decided it wasn’t worth taking four or five.”
Mt. Lebanon commissioners will meet Jan. 5 to discuss what to do next.
First Published: December 22, 2014, 3:24 p.m.
Updated: December 23, 2014, 5:01 a.m.