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Mt. Lebanon sharpshooting detailed

By Harry Funk 3 min read
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Prior to the Mt. Lebanon Commission voting to implement sharpshooting of deer, the head of the organization that has been contracted for the cull spoke about what to expect.

Anthony DeNicola, president of White Buffalo Inc., compared the effort with the archery hunt led by his organization that has been in progress since September.

“The methods we can deploy allow us to be much more efficient in our ability to reduce deer,” he told commissioners during their Jan. 12 discussion session. “So what they’ve accomplished in four months, we’ll be able to do probably in 10 to 14 days.”

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has issued a permit covering Feb. 1 through March 31, and sharpshooting will occur during a two-week window, the dates of which are to be determined.

In preparation, White Buffalo representatives have been working closely with municipal officials, including police Chief Aaron Lauth.

The chief will have his staff come out, inspect all our sites, understand where we’re sitting, where the bait is, how we define our perimeter of operations,” DeNicola said. “They’ll be in touch regularly on where we’re seated each day, the events that occurred. There will be full and continuous education with those people.”

Hunting will occur on designated public land along with private properties on which owners have given permission.

“We’re already in communications with the neighbors so they know what’s going on,” DeNicola told commissioners. “We know if their kids are going to come home from school or they walk the dog in the afternoon. Obviously, we’re always on super-high alert, looking for people and activities in general that would be in conflict with the program.”

Hunting from vehicles was a potential option for White Buffalo.

“In a community like this, with the amount of human activity, we’re erring on the side of caution and focusing on fixed stand, which afford us higher elevation, more visibility and a presence in that location for an extended period,” DeNicola explained.

He addressed the use of ammunition.

“We have done extensive research on developing bullets and selecting bullets that will not ricochet and they will not exit the animal,” he said. “We fully understand how these projectiles behave in a multitude of circumstances.”

Certain animals are priorities for hunters.

“As they did in the archery program, the objective to is harvest adult female deer,” DeNicola said. “Then we work through fawns, meaning collectively antlerless deer. And then males are harvested only if it does not compromise the harvest of antlerless deer.

“The priority is antlerless deer because they have reproductive potential that will create the return growth, if you want to call it that, come May and June,” he explained.

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