Daily Local News – No quick ‘fix’ for whitetails

By Tom Tatum

Bowhunting is the most efficient, most practical, most cost effective management tool for controlling the size of our whitetail deer herd in suburban areas. This is the mantra of a number of townships and municipalities when it comes to dealing with burgeoning deer numbers – the approval of controlled bowhunting programs to help whittle down nuisance herds. But an editorial that recently appeared in the Daily Local News (Game commission should consider deer contraception, Friday, Sept. 5, 2008) proposed the use of contraceptives as a means of reducing deer numbers. In making its case, the editorial cited the effective use of porcine zona pellucida (PZP) in examples that included wild horses on Assateague Island and some wild animals in African game parks as examples. The editorial then speculated that such birth control methods might also serve to put a hold on deer population growth here in Chester County.

Apparently these contraceptive programs have proved effective in controlling wild animal populations in confined or isolated environs (i.e. Assateague Island, some wild animal parks, and captive deer) but how feasible would this solution be on free-ranging whitetails here in our corner of Penn’s Woods? I met recently with Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) officials to find out.

Chris Rosenberry, a PGC deer biologist and section supervisor noted, “Gonacon is the birth control drug that the United States Department of Agriculture is now investigating. PZP is also under study as a potentially viable alternative.”

No matter how effective the birth control drug of choice might be, however, developing an effective delivery system to wild deer populations as vast as ours here in the southeastern corner of the state may represent an impossibly monumental challenge.

“It’s my understanding that for PZP to be effective, the deer needs to be captured, tagged, and injected with the drug by hand,” explained Rosenberry, “and then at least one booster shot would have to be administered later. The cost could run hundreds of dollars or more for each deer treated.” Rosenberry cited a number of other problems including dosage, drug type, the overall impact on the herd, and the best delivery system. “For it to be truly effective, you’d have to capture, tag, and treat virtually every deer.  Full Story

Daily Local News – No quick ‘fix’ for whitetails.