After a peak of 583 deer carcasses were picked up by the city after car accidents or other causes of death in 2024, the city picked up 550 carcasses last year. Archers took a total of 142 deer this year, which is 57 less than last year \u2014 even though more archers participated in the program this time around, and more parks were open to hunting.<\/p>\n
But it can be hard to determine exactly why such fluctuations occur. And the 2025 total is still 200 more deer carcasses than the city picked up in 2016 \u2014 a reflection of how the deer population has skyrocketed in the past decade.<\/p>\n
And not every corner of the city has seen the same impacts. In the North Side\u2019s Riverview Park, deer continue to present challenges. Archers took only one deer from that park this year \u2013 a far cry from the nearly 100 removed by archery and targeted harvesting there last year.<\/p>\n
![\"Deer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774259467_865_.jpeg\"\/)
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Kate Giammarise<\/p>\n
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90.5 WESA<\/p>\n
Deer graze in a yard in Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side on March 11, 2026. Riverview Park is across the street.<\/p>\n
Mark Masterson, chair of the Friends of Riverview Park, says the lower total isn\u2019t because the deer problem has been solved. Even with the program ongoing, his organization estimates there are between 250 and 450 deer living on the park grounds\u2013eating plants, spreading ticks, running into the road, and even exacerbating landslides through overbrowsing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sense is now we’re seeing deer back in the park similar to what it was two years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cHiking and walking around in the park and riding through it on my bike, I’m seeing more deer coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Masterson says previous targeted harvesting in Riverview did have an impact. He hopes to see targeted harvesting return to the park in future years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still need help in Riverview, and hopefully the city continues this program, because I think it makes a difference for all of the parks in the city,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s not something that’s gonna fix itself. It’s gonna get worse if it’s not managed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other Western Pennsylvania municipalities, some of whom have been running their own programs for decades, counsel patience.<\/p>\n
Fox Chapel, a wooded suburb just northeast of the city, has been running a deer-management program since 1993, and Officer Don Stoner has been in charge of it for the last 20 years. He says the borough coordinates between landowners and archers who want to hunt deer on their property.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThe community is unique that we do have a lot of private spaces that people own that can hold the deer \u2013 wooded areas, stuff like that on private property,\u201d Stoner said. The borough\u2019s police department also gets a permit from the state game commission to remove additional deer \u2013 the local equivalent to Pittsburgh\u2019s targeted harvesting.<\/p>\n
Before the program started, Fox Chapel had over 125 reported deer-vehicle accidents annually. Now, the borough sees fewer than 20 per year. Stoner says the early years of a deer management program tend to produce the most marked results.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI think you’re gonna see better numbers the first year or two,\u201d he said, noting that he\u2019s heard the Fox Chapel program originally started showing results within the first five years of its existence. \u201c\u200aOnce you get to the proper balance, yeah, you’ll start seeing that it’s a maintenance thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Variations from one year to the next can also have an effect on hunting success, Stoner noted.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a\u200aCertain seasons, acorns do better than other seasons,\u201d he said by way of example. \u201cYou may have had a park that had a lot of oak trees, so there are a lot of acorns that year [which] gave the hunters a better opportunity,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe the following year, there weren’t as many acorns on the ground, but the different food sources outside the park drew them outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Councilor Barb Warwick represents both Schenley Park and Frick Park \u2014 two places where deer are often spotted. Schenley is one of three parks that will see targeted harvesting this spring. According to Allwes, the city alternates its targeted harvesting locations to give new areas extra attention.<\/p>\n
Warwick says she expects it will take a while to really impact the deer population because the city only started relatively recently.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aPittsburgh was way, way behind the curve on this. This is something that we should have been doing long ago, long before our deer population got as bad as it is,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it is gonna take us a few years at least to kind of catch up and manage the problem. At this point, we’re really just trying to keep it from exploding even more out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weber, of the University of Pittsburgh, says that even when programs remove deer from an area, more deer from the surrounding region will sometimes move in.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aAs you have removals in Frick, for example, deer are going to migrate in and alleviate pressure from other places,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it’s kind of dispersing the benefits more broadly. \u2026 Frick Park isn’t capturing all the benefits. Some of that is spillover into the surrounding communities that now have slightly less intense deer populations.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Weber, these kinds of programs tend to last for a long period of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an issue where you don’t just solve it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnytime you have a large green space where there’s no predators, you’re going to have overpopulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allwes agrees there\u2019s still a long way to go before the numbers stabilize.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur management plan might be a little bit more aggressive than some areas, but these are the first couple years of a deer management program [and] hopefully after that we can just sustain it through archery.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeer will continue to populate and reproduce,\u201d she added. \u201cWe want to just make sure we stay ahead of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even in wintertime, hikers don\u2019t have to step off the trail in Frick Park to see telltale signs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-145834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-pittsburgh","9":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","10":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}