Foothills County is known for its resident ruminants, but the deer that call communities like Okotoks and Diamond Valley home are not beloved by all.
The abundant mule deer populations are a controversial matter, with many calling them a staple of the small-town aesthetic while others advocate for population control.
To some people, the pros of the deer — that they’re cute — are outweighed by the cons: the damage they often do to gardens and lawns, the tendency of mothers to behave aggressively, their potential to attract predators like coyotes and cougars to town, the risk of contracting chronic wasting disease and spreading it to cattle and humans... the list goes on.
To some, including several residents who have stated their opinion publicly through letters to the Western Wheel, the solution is a cull.
“The deer have become more and more of a nuisance and a problem,” acknowledges Gordon White, urban forestry parks technician with the Town of Okotoks and one of the key players when it comes to managing deer and other urban wildlife.
When asked what a potential cull would entail, White described an initial selection process that would consist of driving around and picking out deer based on factors such as age, size and sex, with females likely to predominantly be targeted. He additionally notes that due to the favourable conditions of the urban environment, some deer reproduce outside of their traditional mating season, which is potentially a contributing factor towards Okotoks' ever-increasing deer population.
Then, those deer would be captured, taken to a remote area and euthanized.
Will it happen? Probably not, but the possibility isn't being ruled out entirely.
“It's important to recognize that ungulates are a provincial resource and managed under the provincial government,” says White. “So the municipal government doesn't have the authority to go and harass or interfere with wildlife.
“A section within the Wildlife Act says you're not allowed to harass deer, which also includes culling and indiscriminately putting them down. It’s important to know that if we do anything more than what we're doing already, it probably will involve the provincial government.”
Culls elsewhere
Outside of Alberta, deer culls have been ordered for a variety of reasons.
In April of this year, the City of Montreal approved a cull of white-tailed deer living in certain parks, citing accelerated population growth leading to increased vehicle collisions, damage to the parks’ natural ecosystems, the animals’ carrying of ticks with the potential to spread Lyme disease and more.
Okotoks is no stranger to its deer population steadily increasing: the annual count found 139 in 2023, up from 124 a year before and well above the first count in 2015 that tallied 66.
The Quebec cull, which will involve professional shooters lowering the numbers in specific herds, is set to happen in the fall.
Outside of urban areas, a large-scale cull was initiated by the Government of Manitoba in December of 2021 as a precaution for chronic wasting disease, with marksmen in helicopters gunning down hundreds of whitetails and mule deer along the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border with semi-automatic rifles to prevent any potential spread of the disease.
Similar methods were used in Sidney Island, B.C. by Parks Canada to cull invasive fallow deer in December 2023. The plan backfired somewhat, with approximately 20 per cent of the animals killed turning out to be native deer species rather than the European animal being targeted. Another fallow deer cull is planned for this year.
The Government of British Columbia additionally established significant flaws around another widely-proposed solution to urban deer overpopulation: sterilization. According to the government’s website, 70 to 90 per cent of female deer in a population need to be captured and sterilized through invasive surgery for the process to be successful, with the costs and time commitment of the procedures and subsequent monitoring of the animals being rather high.
The page additionally notes that fertility control is not a fast solution to lowering the population, with a cull being required to see more immediate results.
In Okotoks, a cull would likely be a short-term solution. Killing deer in the town would do little to stop those outside of town from trickling in and re-establishing populations, especially with the benefits the urban environment offers them in terms of safety and food.
“We can remove all the deer we want," said Coun. Rachel Swendseid during an Okotoks council meeting earlier this year, "but if people are going to feed them when they start re-establishing themselves, it doesn’t make any sense."
White echoed this sentiment.
Intentional feeding
“That's probably one of the biggest reasons why the urban deer have become so much of a nuisance as they have: because people are intentionally feeding the deer, and so then they don't have a need to go anywhere else," he says.
Ultimately, White did not rule out a cull as a possibility, and says that Alberta Fish & Wildlife would likely approve a cull if a request was made, although that decision is unlikely to be made anytime soon.
Outside of killing the animals in town, other options have been proposed, such as killing them out of town. Selling more deer hunting licences for the area surrounding Okotoks was one possible solution White proposed.
A similar plan was recently implemented in the town of Magrath, approximately 200 kilometres south of Okotoks in Cardston County. A hunt, targeting white-tailed deer with the purpose of lowering the town’s deer population, was made possible through the cooperation of landowners surrounding the town allowing hunters access to their property from November 2023 to January 2024.
Landowners and farmers in Foothills County would likely be more than happy to take part in such an initiative. After all, the provincial government itself has recognized the havoc that deer can wreak upon land.
Through the Fish and Wildlife Division of Environment and Protected Areas, the Government of Alberta offers support for agricultural producers who have taken steps to minimize damage to crops by deer but still suffer losses on products such as stacked hay, stored silage or unharvested crops.
The department, which acknowledges that deer are "messy eaters" and "soil or destroy three to four times the forage that they consume," offers eligible applicants financial compensation for their damaged goods and access to deer repellents such as fencing and scaring devices.
A hunt with the added purpose of deer population control would help counter the underlying problem of deer entering Okotoks from out of town, while potentially sparing the animals that already call Okotoks home and leaving them to be deterred from people's property through other means.
In Okotoks, homeowners rely on more humane solutions to keep deer away from their gardens, including high fencing, motion-sensing sprinklers and repellents such as specialized sprays and coyote decoys to scare off the prey animals.
Other humane solutions have been proposed for Okotoks’ deer, including a discussion in 2022 around aversion therapy. That would see dogs used to scare deer away from the town by provoking a predator response and removing their acclimation to the urban environment and its supposed safety, an option that never came to fruition.
Whether anything drastic will be done about the deer remains to be seen.
“It's nice to have wildlife in the community, but it can be tough to find a balance,” says White.
The Town's hand has yet to be forced as many residents' concerns around fatal deer attacks, cougars entering residential areas or chronic wasting disease remain largely hypothetical in Okotoks for now.
