Ohio Town’s Deer Culling Program Cost $611 per Animal
OutdoorHub Reporters 08.28.12
In order to reduce the population of car accident-causing deer in the town of Solon, Ohio, officials hired sharpshooters to cull 300 deer. The sharpshooting program, managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cost the city $183,353 by the time all was said and done.
That comes out to $611.18 to shoot one deer. That figure was determined by David Hromco, a former Solon official who worked part time on the program. He evaluated the program to see how it will go in future years and published his calculations in a summary report of the program.
The costs were as follows:
| USDA Cost | $103,000 |
| Meat transportation and processing | $19,253 |
| Police overtime fees | $40,547 |
| City personnel overtime for site monitoring and baiting | $8,602 |
| Direct city costs for bait, site work and administration | $11,951 |
| Total Cost | $183,353 |
For a stretch of two months between February and March, culling operations were conducted by the USDA’s Division of Wildlife working from mostly private property and some city-owned parcels of land.
The program went through flawlessly and there were no issues at shooting sites, although many residents raised issues with the culling of the deer. Many residents tried to stop the deer cull through a ballot measure that would make it illegal to “knowingly cull, hunt, kill, injure or torture a deer in Solon,” according to the Solon Patch.
Part of the funds went toward processing the meat and delivering donations to local hunger shelters.
