Feb 20, 2017 By Luke Campbell 2 min read

Mt. Lebanon commissioners received underwhelming statistics from last year’s archery phase of the deer management program, along with an increase of vehicle collisions with deer in the community.

Municipal manager Keith McGill presented those unfavorable numbers, especially with the deer-vehicular collisions that reported an increase from 73 in 2015 to 122 in 2016, to the commission at the Feb. 14 discussion session.

The number of collisions has steadily increased since first being recorded in 2013.

Those numbers were paired with a decrease in the amount of deer removed from the controlled archery hunt of the program on both public and private properties throughout the township.

Archers removed only 36 deer in the $9,000 program that ran from mid-September until the end of January conducted by White Buffalo Inc.

In the 2015-16 archery hunt, 104 deer were removed from mostly the same property, a reason why McGill said there was a reduction.

“That’s a significant drop from last year,” he said. “We anticipated seeing a drop because controlled archery becomes much less effective as you progress through a program. Those archers were hunting on the same properties they were last year.”

One area originally included in this year’s archery phase was Twin Hills Park, although no deer were removed from that site because of the amount of human activity that persisted on the property.

While the rising collisions remain alarming, McGill said that the reduction in deer removed by archers was expected after talking with nearby communities that have seen similar culling statistics in their own programs.

It also coincides with what was told to commissioners in September during a conference call with Cornell University Department of Natural Resources associate professor Paul Curtis that it typically takes at least three or four years to see a difference in data once a program is in place.

Curtis, who has been involved in wildlife management for 25 years, also said Mt. Lebanon had a long way to go with the restraints municipal officials are working with after being denied sterilization methods.

With baiting taking place for the sharpshooting program, which is set to begin within the next week and run until the end of March, the goal remains the same for McGill and commissioners.

“We’re hopeful that we will start to see a reduction in the deer-vehicular accidents,” McGill said. “That has always been the goal of the program.”