New Castle County cancels controversial deer hunt

New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon has canceled a planned deer hunt in a public park in Rockland after complaints from neighbors.

The hunt was intended to reduce the population of deer in the area around Woodley Park. Earlier this week, a representative of animal rights organization PETA sent a letter to county officials calling the planned hunt "among the cruelest and ineffective forms of wildlife control."

Gordon said his office will look at nonlethal ways to thin the deer population.

"We have a serious deer, health and traffic problem but ... it may be too controversial to proceed this way at this time," Gordon said. "The community is split and we need to do a better education program about the dangers of these cute little animals hanging around the parks."

The hunt was scheduled for April 8-9 in Woodley Park near the Edenridge development. The hunt was coordinated by New Castle County and state authorities to be concentrated in a patch of the park between Whitby Drive and Andover Road near U.S. 202.

Certified master hunters were to sweep the park targeting female deer with arrows.

Neighbors were informed about the plan in a letter sent signed by Senate Minority Whip Greg Lavelle, R-Sharpley, who lives across from the park; local county Councilman Bob Weiner; and Gordon in March. The hunt was organized at the request of Lavelle, who has fielded complaints from some of his neighbors who have, like him, seen deer in their yards.

"It had the prospects of turning into a circus. It is an issue of public health and public safety. We are getting suggestions that there were going to be protests and that would be a public safety issue," Lavelle said, noting he still sees archery as a legitimate way of harvesting deer.

A 2005 state survey found a population density of 145 deer per square mile of habitat in New Castle County, according to a written statement by DNREC game mammal biologist Joe Rogerson.

A 2009 survey pegged the population at 46 deer per square mile of habitat above the canal, noting variability in the exact number due to the survey technique, according to the state deer management plan published in 2010.

The goal of the state's deer management plan is to see 40 deer per square mile, Rogerson wrote adding that there is no indication the population has waned since the most recent survey.

Justifying the plan for the hunt, organizers noted the over-density of deer leading to greater prevalence of Lyme disease, damage to ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers and vehicle collisions.

The thrust of the concerns from many neighbors and PETA was that the hunters would be using bows, which are perceived to be less deadly than guns, but still a danger to nearby houses.

"The deer is not immediately killed a lot of times and it doesn't have far to go to cross into a street or into one of the yards," said Peter Bragaw, a resident of Andover Road near the park. "There is a narrow angle that they would be able to shoot without this coming into a home. That is certainly a very small space for any type of hunting. I don't care if it is archery or not."

Such efforts to cull deer population are common in the county-owned Middle Run Valley Park near Newark. The state also conducts managed hunts in Brandywine Creek State Park and White Clay Creek State Park.

Shotguns are typical of those hunts, but were not suited to the Woodley hunt because of its small size and rules forbidding shooting guns so close to homes.

Some neighbors suggested some sort of deer contraception would be a more humane option, but Rogerson wrote that there are no effective contraceptive options for deer which are both financially and logistically feasible.

"There are 14,000 deer harvested in Delaware in 2014 about 4,000 done through archery," Lavelle said, noting he still feels the hunt would have been safe and productive. "Management of wildlife that has no natural predators is a responsibility of government and that is what we are trying to carry out."

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.