'Rats with Antlers' Or 'Majestic Creatures'? SLP Reconsiders Deer Hunting.

With two city council members raising serious objections to St. Louis Park’s deer hunting policy, city staff have been instructed to search for a way to manage the city’s herd without killing deer.

Since 1994, St. Louis Park has hired contract shooters for regular winter hunts in the Westwood Nature Center in an attempt to keep the city’s deer population to about a couple dozen souls.

The contractors—most recently, the Superior Whitetail Management Company—take to the woods, armed with rifles, minimizing the danger of their ammunition’s mile-long trajectory in an urban environment by aiming their guns at acute, downward angles, their bullets ideally finding earth within 30 to 60 yards.

Earlier this year, Superior Whitetail contractors were allowed for the first time to hunt outside of the nature center, in the northeast quadrant of the city. A boundary mix-up led to a St. Louis Park contract hunter shooting a deer dead in Minneapolis, and the city terminating its relationship with Superior Whitetail.

The incident added heat to the city’s controversial deer hunting policy, with residents already concerned about the ethical implications of hunting and the safety of shooting live rounds near residential homes.

“We’re creating another problem [in] the discharge of firearms in an urban environment,” council member Anne Mavity said. “I cannot see that the damage or the downside is sufficient to say, ‘Yes, let’s just shoot the guns off to get the deer.’”

Council member Jake Spano also emphasized his displeasure with authorizing contract deer killing inside city limits.

“While I would agree that managing our deer population has some merit, I was clear last fall that I don’t think shooting deer is the way to go about it,” he said.

But with catch and release prohibited by the Department of Natural Resources and contraceptive techniques of dubious efficacy outside of contained areas such as zoos and fenced reserves, mayor Jeff Jacobs was dubious that St. Louis Park staff would be able to find an alternative to hunting in “their magic hat.”

By a January count, St. Louis Park is home to at least 38 deer, concentrated in the northwest, near the Westwood Hills Nature Center, and the northeast, near Cedar Lake. In high numbers, deer can strip areas of vegetation, serve as a neighborhood nuisance and pose a hazard to drivers.

During a Monday work session, most city council members sounded likely to continue the city’s basic deer hunting policy, though they expressed a desire, to borrow a council buzz phrase, for a “greater level of comfort in community safety.”

Council member Steve Hallfin said he received polar input from residents about the city’s deer, with some hardliners saying, “They’re rats with antlers, shoot them all” and other countering, “I love having the deer: They’re beautiful, majestic creatures.”