Deer Control Has Bambi in Crosshairs
More Area Suburbs Using Sharpshooters

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 5, 2006

Phil Norman wriggled into his blood-splattered overalls and got ready to shoot some deer. He had everything he needed for an evening hunting trip: a Remington Model 700 rifle, night-vision binoculars and a map of the terrain.

Not that it was particularly hard terrain to navigate.

Norman was stalking white-tailed deer amid the suburban cul-de-sacs of Columbia. Just a few hundred yards from where a little girl had been playing on a yellow swing on Nightshade Court, he crept, under cover of darkness, through part of a 300-acre park. Before he was done, he shot six deer.

Norman, a Howard County employee, said he aims away from the houses, uses a silencing device and takes only shots that could not ricochet toward people. County rules prevent him from firing within 150 yards of any occupied structure.

"It might sound strange to think of deer SWAT teams in the suburbs," said Norman, 50, a soft-spoken pastor with wire-rimmed glasses. "But if we don't do something pretty soon the deer will be stampeding down the streets."

Desperate to control exploding deer populations, some Washington area communities have turned in recent years to organized hunts -- often by recreational hunters -- to thin the herds. Now they are relying more and more on sharpshooters and police SWAT teams to hunt the animals even in some densely populated neighborhoods.

The District and Fairfax and Montgomery counties --not to mention private citizens -- have hired professional sharpshooters to kill the animals.

There are perhaps a dozen registered deer sharpshooters in the region.

Even in an area where development often collides with nature, the rise of the suburban sharpshooter stands out as problematic.

The practice of shooting deer in residential areas has ignited a fierce debate over safety, with some residents recoiling at the thought of gunfire outside their homes. Even some families are divided.

"I'm so petrified to leave my house that I've become a prisoner in my own bedroom," said Kim Thompson, whose back yard borders the park where Norman shoots deer. It's not sharpshooters she's afraid of, however, it's the deer, which are notorious for darting in front of cars.

Her husband, Joe, shook his head. "I don't want bullets whizzing around here," he said. "I'm much more afraid of guns than any deer."

There is little argument about the scope of the region's deer problem. The construction boom has destroyed deer habitat, forcing the animals to wander in search of food. Suburban greenery offers the highly adaptable deer a new habitat, one with few predators.

Deer control measures that have been tried or considered include supervised hunts for recreational shooters in public parks, programs to capture animals and relocate them to rural areas and the use of birth control to reduce fertility.

But deer control experts say the use of sharpshooters is often a safer or most efficient way to reduce the number of animals in densely populated residential areas.

Earl Hodnett, Fairfax County's wildlife biologist, said the county realized in 1998 that it had to take drastic steps when it found as many as 400 deer per square mile in some parks, more than 20 times the ecologically desirable level. Members of the police SWAT team have been assigned to hunt deer, shooting from the back of an olive drab pickup truck in parks near homes in such places as Great Falls and Clifton.

In Montgomery, which also uses police tactical officers as deer sharpshooters, the number of deer killed in organized hunts in county parks has skyrocketed from 19 in 1999, the year the program began, to 535 this year.

And what if you're a fed-up private citizen? Under the right conditions, a professional sharpshooter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will snipe the critters for $100 to $200 a head.

The deer snipers have sometimes met with fierce controversy. Some people involved with a sharpshooting program at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton received death threats. Recently a deer carcass was found on the doorstep of an employee's home, said Bill Hamilton, a wildlife ecologist with Montgomery's Department of Park and Planning.

In Howard County, which launched a sharpshooting program this year, neighbors said they received a flier that warned them that their children were in danger. But county officials, who are worried about ecological damage to parks, said the feedback has been almost entirely positive.

Phil Norman, the sharpshooter in Howard County, said he received a call from an angry-sounding woman demanding to know whether hunters would be traipsing all over her back yard. As he began to explain the county's tightly regulated program, she cut him off.

"No, no, no, you don't understand," he recalled her saying. "I'm in my back yard right now, and there are six deer. I want hunters here to shoot them right now!"

On a recent afternoon, Norman entered Blandair Park in Columbia to shoot some deer. As he drove through the woods in a white sport-utility vehicle to make sure that no one was there, he gazed at homes just a few hundred yards away. Young children played in one yard; a young woman jogged in a cul-de-sac.

Does it worry him to shoot so close to houses? Not at all. Norman began hunting as an undergraduate in upstate New York in the 1970s, and he went through a rigorous state process to become a sharpshooter. Norman, who is also the deer project manager for the county, said it is safer to have one highly trained sharpshooter than dozens of recreational hunters in the park.

Rules for sharpshooters vary by jurisdiction. Howard, for instance, forbids sharpshooters to fire within 100 yards of a road or right of way, in addition to having the prohibition on shooting within 150 yards of an occupied structure. State approval is required for every property on which a sharpshooter operates.

Norman shot six deer between 5 and 9 p.m. that day and took the meat to a food program at the nondenominational church in Baltimore where he is a pastor. County officials refused to let a reporter accompany him while he was shooting.

"We don't want anyone to think we're a deer SWAT team," he joked.

But on Nightshade Court, where houses border the park, some people already do. Tom Morton, 62, a graphic designer, said he doesn't see a need to kill deer.

"I just hate to see the poor things be shot," he said. "Why can't they just load their guns with tranquilizer and take the deer somewhere where they can live happily ever after?"

For some residents who spend thousands of dollars on landscaping, shooting deer is an appropriate way to limit the damage. Randall Good, 42, a maintenance worker, said he has fenced in his yard to try and keep the animals out.

"The deer are out of control," he said. "They'll eat any plant you have."

Even some supporters of the program, however, said they were angered that the county did not notify residents or the homeowners association.

County officials put out a news release about the program and said they tried to notify residents. But Alison Pasternak -- whose 2- and 4-year-old daughters play in a back yard that borders the woods -- said she heard about the program from a reporter.

"My goodness, they use bullets?" asked Pasternak, 35, an economist with the U.S. Department of Labor. "A high-powered rifle right behind our house? I can't imagine anyone would support that."

A few cul-de-sacs over, on Goldamber Garth, Kim Thompson has no patience for those opposed to the sharpshooters. She has noticed groups of five or six deer roaming about her street, and she is constantly worried that one will total her car or wander into her house.

"If these people love the deer so much, they can go adopt them," she said. "Me? I say bring in the snipers and shoot 'em up."