HOWARD, Wis. (WFRV) – At their board meeting on Monday night, Village of Howard trustees greenlit a hunting program they hope will help reduce the village’s deer population.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will issue nuisance permits to the village, allowing hunting during the deer archery hunting season in six designated areas throughout the village.
A village committee had originally recommended allowing the hunting in two spots (the village’s industrial park and Gordon Nauman dog park), but city officials have since added four other areas. They include wooded areas behind Marble Mountain Way, two areas near the Heartland Terrace/Prairie Garden Trail, and in the area near the intersection of Glendale and Evergreen Avenues.
Trustees emphasize that safety was one of their top priorities when considering whether to approve this deer management program. There will be a required 75-yard buffer from buildings when hunters do their thing in the four additional hunting areas.
“People had this impression that we’re the deer elimination committee, that’s not it at all it’s a deer management program,” said village president Scott Beyer. “People are saying we don’t want this committee because we love seeing deer in our backyards, well you know what we’re not going to eliminate all the deer.”
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Although there’s disagreement about whether it’s a positive or negative, most people in Howard do agree that there are a lot of deer in the village. Those in favor of a hunt said the deer destroy their gardens, leave their droppings everywhere, and also present a major safety hazard to drivers.
Howard resident Frank Ingram said he’s been fighting a losing battle with the deer when it comes to protecting the plants in his yard. He said he doesn’t think the deer management program the village approved on Monday night goes far enough.
“I think this is a first step, I still have skepticism about the effectiveness it will have,” he said. “I think the village will have to in the future turn to sharpshooters or professional users of crossbows.”
There are people in Howard who want no part of a deer hunt. Some said they moved to Howard because of the wildlife and said the deer are friendly neighbors. One woman who spoke with Local 5 News said the deer will stop destroying people’s yards if they simply use deer spray on their plants.
A person who spoke at the meeting on Monday night, ahead of the board’s vote, shared a packet of pictures with each trustee showing the deer in his yard. He said it’s to the point where they come right up to him and let him pet them, and he’d be devastated if they died in a hunt.
He suggested relocation or sterilization as solutions to manage the deer population nstead of killing the deer.
“When you do something negative, you have to ask, is it justified, is it necessary as a response to something that is as bad or worse,” the man said. “Are the deer killing anybody? If not, you’re the one escalating by killing a living being.”
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Maria Lasecki was the only trustee who voted against adopting the deer management program. She said she wished that this could have gone to a referendum so that community members could decide its fate. She said she also wished that the deer control committee that came up with the deer management program had people with more diverse perspectives on it (they were mostly hunters).
“Committee said it’s not about killing the deer or taking the extreme measures, but the reality of it is that it is,” Lasecki said.
Under the terms of the deer management program, the village expects hunters to kill two does before going after a buck. Field dressing of deer isn’t allowed except in the industrial park and dog park.
Village president Burt McIntyre said he thinks this deer management program puts the village on the right track in terms of beginning to address the issue. He said village officials will reevaluate and potentially tweak parts of the program after seeing how it fares during the upcoming deer archery hunting season.
McIntyre said the village doesn’t have a good estimate of how many deer live in Howard. He said they’ll measure success for the new deer management program anecdotally.
“Having less damage to gardens, fruit trees, and flowers, ” McIntyre said. “Once the public is more comfortable, (when) they can plant a garden without having them decimated.”
“I think they’ve got to take it up tonight, but they also got to talk about the DNR about if they actually have success during the archery season about getting more nuisance tags authorized by the DNR this year,” Ingram told Local 5 News.
