Urban deer hunts are becoming a popular way to address the problems associated with overpopulations of whitetail deer in residential areas.
However, to be effective there are a couple of key ingredients. Number one is you have to have hunters to participate and secondly, a city must allow enough land to hunt.
The city of Charleston will stage a third urban hunting season this fall, starting Sept. 29 and will attempt to address those two key factors.
Last year, only 14 hunters participated in the urban hunt and those hunters killed only 22 deer. The kill total was hardly enough to be effective in a city that lies in the heart of prime whitetail habitat. This year, the city has opted to lower the cost of the permits in hopes of making it more lucrative to archers. This year’s fee will be $5.00, that’s down from the $25.00 in previous years. The city of Weirton has a controlled annual hunt and had 280 hunters participating last year, those hunters harvested 200 deer.
The parameters on Charleston’s hunt are fairly strict. Hunters have to be at least 18 years of age. The bow hunting-only restriction is confined to tracts of land larger than five acres and only those tracts designated by the city are allowed for hunting. Previously, those tracts were only private property tracts in which owners had allowed for the hunting. This year, the city is opening up its own public land for hunting, including an area near Cato Park that has a high density of deer.
Landowners can also still apply to have their acreage included in the hunt. More information is available on the city’s website www.cityofcharleston.org