Debate continues over deer culling in Beaufort’s gated communities

Since the start of a controversial program 15 years ago, 5,030 deer have been culled from Beaufort County’s gated communities.

State wildlife officials, community managers and biologists consider the program a success, saying it has significantly reduced the number of deer-car collisions and complaints from residents about damaged landscaping.

It has also ensured healthy deer herds that continue to reproduce, they say, and it has kept the deer mostly wild and wary of humans.

“The deer act like deer,” says Charles Ruth, deer project supervisor for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. “When deer don’t run away (from people), that’s not natural.”

But not everyone is pleased with the results.

Gordon Stamler, a Sea Pines Resort resident who led a legal fight against the culling in his community, said last week culling is wrong and that contraception is the ethical and more effective way to control the population.

Nonetheless, a new deer-culling season is currently underway in South Carolina’s gated communities, though most residents probably won’t notice. That’s because the culling occurs late at night with sharpshooters using sound-suppressed rifles. All of the deer that are euthanized must be processed, and the venison is donated to local food banks.

Eight communities in Beaufort County have received permits from the state to shoot a combined total of 335 deer between Sept. 15, 2015, and March 1, according to data requested from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

They are Hilton Head Plantation, Indigo Run and Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island; Belfair, Colleton River Plantation and Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton; and Oldfield and Callawassie Island in Okatie.

Another eight communities in Beaufort County have participated in the program since a state Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that allowed culling in Sea Pines.

They are Long Cove, Wexford, Palmetto Hall and Leamington on Hilton Head; Moss Creek and Berkeley Hall in Bluffton; Haig Point on Daufuskie Island; and Bull Point Plantation, which is the only northern Beaufort County community in the program.

Most of the communities have focused their culling in the last 10 years on maintaining, rather than reducing, the size of their herds, say community leaders.

For instance, Sea Pines has euthanized about 900 deer since 2001, but 600 of that total were taken during its first five years in the program — sometimes shooting 200 in one year.

This season it is permitted to shoot 35 deer, the same number it shot last season.

Sea Pines Community Services Association wildlife biologist David Henderson estimates the 5,200-acre community has been maintaining the population at about 200 or so deer, down from about 1,000 when the program began.

“The number of deer were creating conflicts at unacceptable levels,” he said.

Car-deer collisions were the biggest conflict.

Since culling began, the community has experienced a drastic drop in the number of confirmed incidents — from 63 in 2000 down to nine last year, he said.

Hilton Head Plantation has followed a similar pattern in euthanasia and crashes involving deer, according to general manager Peter Kristian.

The community reported 60 to 70 crashes per year in the early 2000s, but that number has since dropped into the single digits.

Kristian says that thinning the herd not only helps deer, but other wildlife, which are also competing for the same food sources.

“It’s a successful program,” Kristian said. “We’ve managed to keep auto accidents down. It helps other animals.”

One gated community that won’t participate in culling is Fripp Island, which says it has seen success at herd-reduction from an experimental contraception program.

Fripp Island general manager Kate Hines said the community, which often has deer walking across roads and approaching people, has no interest in hiring sharpshooters.

“We would never approve that,” she said. “We’re a wildlife sanctuary.”

HOW CULLING WORKS

With spotlights blazing, sharpshooters perch on pickup truck beds or in stands overlooking open areas, taking aim at nearby deer.

The culling areas are often baited with corn or other food to attract deer, or are known hot spots for deer activity. Some communities also have areas planted with favorite deer foods, such as naked oats, buckwheat or Austrian winter pea.

The methods vary by community, with some shooters remaining stationary, while others travel to various spots.

The shooters must be a certified wildlife biologist or have the qualifications to be certified, according to the program’s requirements, which were determined from the Sea Pines court case, said Ruth, DNR’s deer project supervisor. The shooters also must use sound-suppressed rifles, which require a federal permit that can take six to eight months to obtain.

The deer can only be shot between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.

Before any community can cull, it must first survey its deer population and do so each year it participates, according to DNR requirements.

Many use an outside land-management firm, though some of the larger communities, including Sea Pines and Palmetto Bluff, have biologists on staff who can perform the surveys and the culling.

The surveys are conducted at night in late summer. During that time of year, it’s easier to tell doe from young bucks, which still have antlers, says Travis Folk, a wildlife biologist whose firm conducts surveys for some of the local communities. It’s also easier to pick out fawn, which still have their spots.

The surveyors travel the same routes each year, driving slowly and stopping frequently to count deer, using spotlights to locate them. They combine the data with other factors, such as previous years’ counts, the number of complaints about damaged landscaping, reported car-deer collisions and the amount of foraging acreage, Folk said.

They then make a recommendation to the property owners association on how many deer should be culled. The association then applies to DNR for a permit.

FIGHT ERUPTS IN SEA PINES

Two signs showing leaping buck and a running tally of the number of vehicle-deer collisions were put up in Sea Pines on Sept. 21, 2000, hitting another raw nerve.

The community had been rocked for several years by national media attention, raucous internal debates and a costly legal battle that was slowly making its way to the state Supreme Court.

Sea Pines’ officials said the signs were needed to make drivers aware of the dangers posed by a community they saw as overrun by hoofed herds. But residents and animal-rights groups fighting a culling proposal viewed it as another attempt to demonize their beloved deer.

The firestorm began in the late 1990s, when Sea Pines authorities decided something had to be done. The fight ended up in the courts and ended in 2001, when the high court declined to overturn a Circuit Court ruling denying the culling opponents’ claims.

After that, the protests and debate subsided. Communities that had been awaiting the outcome of the case received DNR permits to operate their own culling programs.

Since then, deer culling has become a Beaufort County staple.

While the program is offered statewide, just seven communities outside of the county cull deer, euthanizing fewer than 1,000 total since the program began, according to DNR data. Those communities are in Charleston, Horry, McCormick, Pickens and Aiken counties.

Ruth attributes the program being most used in the Hilton Head area to the lack of hunting in a place that had traditionally been a haven for recreational hunters in the early 1900s.

Then came heavy development and more frequent deer-human encounters, sometimes with deer crashing into glass doors and entering homes.

The development also brought fertilized landscaping — much more nutritious food than the maritime forest habitat. Native deer that were typically considered smaller than normal were soon becoming healthier and proliferating.

“Development brought back better habitat, with fertilization and more plants,” he said. “You had improvements in biology from a vegetation standpoint.”

SEEKING AN ALTERNATIVE

Stamler, who led the effort to fight Sea Pines’ culling, still holds out hope his community will find an alternative to sharpshooters. He believes a contraception program should be implemented to reduce the herds without killing.

“Sea Pines was built on the premise of man and nature living side by side,” he says. “All of this is in violation of that original premise.”

Contraception, however, has also been controversial.

Fripp Island has relied on an experimental birth-control program to manage its herd. Between 2005 and 2011, the community worked with the Humane Society of the United States to shoot doe with darts to deliver the contraceptive PZP.

The researchers reported a reduction in the island’s herd from 600 to 300 deer. But after the experiment ended, the island has been unable to continue the program because PZP has still not received federal approval.

Hines, the general manager, notes that Fripp’s case is a unique situation, because it is a small, isolated island.

“We’re a perfect site for it,” she said.

Several biologists involved in the state’s management program say contraception has too many pitfalls to be a viable option in the larger communities on Hilton Head and mainland Beaufort County.

They cite high labor costs, the difficulty in keeping unvaccinated deer out of the community and the potential for human consumption of the contraception, should inoculated deer roam to hunting areas and get killed.

“It’s not a viable option,” Henderson said.

Biological debates aside, state and local biologists say that, ultimately, deer management is up to each individual community to decide how much deer-human interaction it can accept and to what extent it should be controlled.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Debate continues over deer culling in Beaufort’s gated communities."