What Are Deer Wars About?

For over a decade, a fight over deer in a city neighboring Chesterfield has been legendary.

The war:

• people who want deer left alone
                 versus
• residents who call for lethal deer control.

The debate has been anything but civil in Town and Country, but Chesterfield has managed to avoid an ongoing war.

Those calling for killing the deer say it's to keep deer from taking over high-dollar real estate and being a menace on the roads.

Deer lovers will repeat how deer were here first in West County, including in Chesterfield.

But if you go back 40 years, there were not that many deer in central West County. If you go back 50 years, you would find almost no deer in the area. The deer population exploded in the Midwest in the 1990s.

In 1973, while working my way through college, I was a police dispatcher in Creve Coeur. One day an alarmed resident (recent transplant from New York) called to ask if there were reports of animals escaped from a zoo or circus, because a deer was in his backyard.

That's how rare sightings of deer were in the area in the 1970s.

Now, there is an over abundance of deer in West County communities.

St. Louis County Police who patrol the City of Wildwood, for example, have an unofficial motto of “To Protect and Swerve” because of the high number of deer darting onto Wildwood roads.

In the last two years, for example, deer-vehicle accidents have reached high numbers in Town and Country—Chesterfield's neighbor.

In 2009 there were 94 deer-related accidents. In 2010 the number was 78.  This year it is on pace to hit the 100 mark.

Some Town and Country aldermen are asking police not to count dead deer on the side of the road as evidence of a deer-car crash—but count only accidents where the driver or possibly the deer file a police report.

Another alderman wants to spend $1,100 per deer to sterilize does, and count dead deer on the side of the road as “incidents” and not accidents. Again, count it as a deer-car accident only if the driver makes a police report, or the deer makes a dying declaration.

A contract sharpshooter for Town and Country has attempted to reduce the number of deer over the past two years, but meetings about it have a history of getting nasty, with booing and shouting.

Oh the other hand, neighboring Creve Coeur public gatherings brought out resistence to lethal deer-control methods, and people talked about feeding deer and "naming" the deer.

How has Chesterfield avoided deer wars?

City police Lt. Steve Lewis believes deer have not been an issue because in far western areas of the city, farm land hunting is still permitted.

Near some residential areas, neighbors agree to allow hunting. 

Erin Shanks, a wildlife specialist with the Missouri Department of Conservation has been dealing with deer issues in St. Louis County for a number of years.

“In Wildwood and Clarkson Valley there is hunting access to private property. They allow hunting,” Shanks said, unlike Town and Country, that uses taxpayer dollars for deer control.

“I was in Chesterfield in 2005 when the deer control ordinance was adopted. There were people protesting outside of city hall with signs. But after four or five years with no bad incidents, people realized their worst fears would not happen,” Shanks said.

When I first moved to Maryland in 1990, our subdivision outside of Washington, D.C. had a 42-acre park in the middle of it. For the first few years, you would see an occasional deer. But by 1995, deer had overrun the area. Neighbors were coming down with Lyme disease, an affliction that would take some a year to recover from.

Shanks thinks deer tick-borne illnesses such as ehrlyshiosis and Lyme disease may have an effect on public opinion soon and deer management.

Shanks pointed to 2010 research by Washington University showing a connection between increased numbers of disease-carrying deer ticks in West County and the overgrowth of honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle plants were favorite deer habitats. In those areas, they found 18 times higher rates of deer ticks, many carrying bacteria that lead to serious human illness.

When children begin getting sick from illness carried by deer ticks, things are likely to change. West County cities will need serious deer control-management operations, like the Upper Midwest and East Coast have now.