Freeville looks to create deer management program

Freeville officials are looking to start a program in the village that will help decrease the deer population in the area.

On Jan. 4, the village’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously in favor of a local law that repeals a portion of a local law passed back in 2010. The local law in 2010, according to village Mayor David Fogel, bans firearms, the discharge of firearms, bows and arrows, and fireworks “anywhere in the village.”

The difference between the local law in 2010 and the one enacted this year is this year’s “carves out an exception” for a deer management program, Fogel said.

According to Bernd Blossey, chairperson of Cornell University’s Deer Management Committee and a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, a deer management program consists of volunteers who have experience in hunting and help “reduce the deer population.”

This means program participants hunt the deer and harvest the meat retrieved from the hunt. The program operates outside of the open hunting season, Blossey said, which means the program can’t take place between September and January.

The harvesting of the meat serves the community through food banks and pantries, village Board of Trustees member Miles McCarty said.

The village of Freeville has limited activity of the program to private properties, not village-owned property, which is based on approval from landowners. Volunteers can only use crossbows for hunting in this program, Fogel said.

“We don’t have firm commitments from property owners in the village yet, but it could be as little as one large property,” Fogel said, adding the property could be near a wooded area and have somewhere between 5 to 10 acres of land.

Freeville conducted a survey to get an idea of the severity of the overpopulated deer issue the village is currently facing.

“The survey showed that almost all residents have been negatively affected by [car] accidents, lyme disease [and/or] destruction of property,” said Jason Cuykendall, the village’s deputy mayor. “Next to speeding, deer are the biggest complaints I hear from residents of the village.”

Cuykendall, who drafted the local law to repeal a part of the law in 2010 and has taken the lead bringing forth a deer management program in the village, said Freeville would have to receive approval from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to allow the program in the area.

Cuykendall elaborated on the issue of car accidents that involve deer. He noted that between January and February of last year, the village’s highway staff “disposed of 18 deer [that were] killed by vehicles on village roads.”

“The number is extremely high considering we are only a 1-square-mile village and have low speed limits on almost all of our roads,” Cuykendall added. “The overpopulation has created a hazard for motorists and a tragic survival issue for the deer.”

Fogel mentioned that most, if not, all of the deer who appear in the village are “unhealthy and malnourished,” leading it to be seen as a “humane solution.”

“It is not uncommon to see groups of 20 or more deer at times in Freeville,” Cuykendall said. “We have talked with biologists, professors and residents who have pointed out the deer in the village are starving. The overpopulation is causing them to eat items deer do not normally eat.”

That’s where a deer management program would aid the overpopulation issue in Freeville. Cuykendall said municipalities nearby Freeville who use the programs “have brought it up as a successful program.”

Blossey has coordinated programs in the villages of Lansing and Trumansburg, noting that the town of Ithaca “has its own thing” as well. Blossey is in the process of aiding Freeville in its efforts of starting a program.

Along with the DEC requirement that volunteers within the program must have a hunting license, Blossey also ensures the volunteers have the “right attitude since sometimes these programs can be controversial.”

“The deer travel the landscape searching for food,” Blossey said. “We try to find places where landowners have agreed [the program] can happen. Once we’re on the land, we try to find a safe place and put feeders out at night. The deer realizes food is available, so you typically shoot them there.”

Blossey noted that once a municipality picks up the program, you need “to maintain it.”

“It takes years to develop the program where the deer eventually avoid the area,” he added. “One thing about the program is that volunteers can’t be out on the land more than once a week. The deer will realize it’s not a good area to be in.”

McCarty said the program would “not only improve the deer population but overall health of the community as well.”

“We want to reduce the deer population,” Blossey said. “It benefits landowners in the long run. Plants have become invasive without deer reduction, so a program like this gives plants and other animals a chance to thrive in those areas.”

Dryden dispatch appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com.