Deer hunting on county land in sights

The program to thin an expanding deer population that munches through foliage and bounds onto roadways won't be ready for months, officials said, despite enthusiasm from the hunting community.

"I've already got three calls from hunters ready to go," said Mark Garrity, a county parks administrator.

Anne Arundel will join other central Maryland counties that use volunteer hunters to rid park land of white-tailed deer, but only after officials form a "deer management work group" to lay out the details of managed hunts.

Mr. Garrity and others say hunting is not the only solution the county will use to control where the deer graze, though it is the least expensive and most efficient option to reduce the herd's size.

The Humane Society of the United States has denounced other managed hunts on public land in Maryland as causing unnecessary suffering to animals.

Deer overpopulation on county lands, particularly the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary outside Lothian where deer are three times more plentiful than the forest can support, has prompted county officials to reverse a local law banning the killing of animals on county-owned land.

The new law, passed unanimously Monday by the County Council, allows for animals to be killed, and for firearms to be discharged in county parks if it is part of an established "wildlife management plan."

That plan will go through several layers of bureaucracy before it is enacted, including the aid of experts at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Before it's approved, the council will be notified.

County administrators also want to establish a countywide deer management program that educates the public on how to avoid encounters with deer.

They will offer other alternatives to hunting when possible, including encouraging residents to install fences to protect farm land, and to landscape with plants that deer find unappetizing. Since the 1950s, Maryland's dwindling deer population rebounded to 230,000, according DNR biologists. Urbanization drove out wolves and mountain lions, eliminating deer's natural predators.

To repair ecosystems knocked out of balance by overgrazing, and to prevent collisions of deer and cars, jurisdictions have started programs to let hunters kill deer either with shotguns or bows.

Private property owners invite hunters onto their land to help manage the population. At Sandy Point State Park, which is not county land, state officials employed nighttime sharpshooters to take out as many deer as possible.

Anne Arundel County Sheriff Ron Bateman, who spent the past week on an annual deer-hunting trip to Western Maryland, described the managed hunts as a community service.

"It's really worthwhile," Sheriff Bateman said. "These managed hunts are needed to control the populations because it gets so dangerous."

The forests on 1,500 acres at Jug Bay will most likely be the first place hunting is permitted.

"That's a pretty good set of woods there," Sheriff Batemen added, predicting there would be no shortage of volunteer hunters. "It's off the beaten path."

Andrew McKinney, a hunter from Severna Park who teaches hunter safety with the Anne Arundel Fish & Game Association, said he also considered managed hunts a community service, especially since he donates the deer he bags to Hunters for the Hungry.

That nationwide nonprofit, which was launched in Maryland, uses butchers to process the venison and donates the meat to homeless shelters. Last season, the organization served 1.2 million meals across the country.

Mr. McKinney called the managed hunts free pest control for the county. "It's satisfying," Mr. McKinney said, "You're doing your civic duty, you're outside, and you can donate the deer to charity."