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Bloomington could hold larger deer population

By Isabella Vesperini

Posted July 25, 2023

Bloomington’s safe and well-vegetated environment allow deer to thrive. (Isabella Vesperini / WFIU-WTIU)

Despite concerns about the large number of deer in urban and suburban areas and at Griffy Lake, Bloomington could hypothetically host a larger deer population.

Virgil Sauder, director of animal care and control at the City of Bloomington, said Bloomington’s safe and well-vegetated environment allow deer to thrive. Apart from the occasional coyote, there are no natural predators that would go after deer.

“They [deer] find good homes and what they need to survive in Bloomington,” Sauder said. “Biologically, we could carry quite a few more, so it’s more of a question socially of what we as a community are comfortable with handling.”

Sauder said the Joint City of Bloomington-Monroe County Deer Task Force was created in 2012 to draft a list of recommendations on what they city can do to address human-deer interaction and concerns. Problems with deer include vehicle collisions, deer feeding and garden grazing. However, there are some people who like or are indifferent to the deer.

There has been a slight increase in the last six years in the number of deceased deer animal control has collected. In 2022, animal control received 124 calls concerning a dead deer due to deer-vehicle collisions. Animal control gets a couple calls a year concerning aggressive deer as well.

“That aggression tends to be mother deer warning off potential dangers from their fawns,” Sauder said. “It’s fairly predictable and happens during that young-fawn season and then disappears.”

Fawns are born mainly April through July.

Sauder said the City proposed a deer feeding ban because feeding deer is not good for the deer themselves and increases conflict with neighbors. It interrupts the deer’s natural tendency to graze and gathers them in one place.

“When you have artificial feeding, you tend to have larger bands of deer congregating in one area,” Sauder said. “It can actually create a prime space for disease transmission among the deer.”

While deer-to-human disease transmission is not common, the deer can still spread ticks and diseases to people if they get too close. Sauder said anyone seeing a deer should either put distance between themselves and the deer or continue moving to avoid a negative response, especially if the deer is protecting its fawns.

“We don’t want to start overly habituating the deer to people so they are going up to people expecting food,” Sauder said. “That increases conflict and when it comes to conflict between people and wildlife, it really can only end with the wildlife dying.”

Sauder said in previous problems with deer, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources has a policy that requires officials to euthanize the deer. While Bloomington has no ordinance in place to ban deer hunting, people are not allowed to use firearms. However, there is a loophole that technically allows people to bow-hunt in permitted hunting areas if allowed by state laws.

“We want to keep them [deer] as wildlife and enjoy them as wildlife,” Sauder said.