WEST SENECA, N.Y. (WKBW) \u2014 Regular deer hunting season begins Saturday and runs through December 7 in New York’s southern zone, marked in blue on state maps. Beyond being a popular sport, this hunting period plays a critical role in controlling deer populations that cause significant problems across the state.<\/p>\n
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WKBW<\/p>\n
New York sees over 70,000 car-deer related crashes every year. Deer are also responsible for nearly $60 million in crop damage annually, and they carry ticks that can cause Lyme disease in humans.<\/p>\n
These mounting concerns have prompted communities like West Seneca and East Aurora to develop plans to curb their local deer populations.<\/p>\n
In West Seneca, the town board just approved doubling its budget from last year for deer control, bringing the total from $9,000 to $20,000 for next year.<\/p>\n
It’s a small step for a town dealing with a major problem, as residents report deer running rampant in the community. Town Supervisor Gary Dickson says they’re stepping up control efforts.<\/p>\n
“We get a lot of complaints about them,” Dickson said. “Some people don’t want us to do anything. At least as many, if not more, appreciate the town is taking some steps.”<\/p>\n
Those steps include bringing on eight nuisance wildlife operators, all licensed by the DEC, to help control the deer population. The deer are killed and then eventually processed for food.<\/p>\n
“All the meat is donated to FeedMore and then FeedMore distributes the venison to food banks that ask for the meat,” Dickson said.<\/p>\n
About 10 miles away, the Village of East Aurora hopes to find a similar approach to control a growing deer problem in their community.<\/p>\n
WATCH: Western New York communities tackle problems with growing deer population<\/p>\n
Western New York communities tackle problems with growing deer population<\/p>\n
Police Chief Patrick Welch says geography presents challenges for their deer management efforts.<\/p>\n
“The Village of East Aurora doesn’t have many places at all to safely discharge a firearm for the purposes of hunting or running a deer population program,” Welch said.<\/p>\n
Right now, the village doesn’t have a deer control plan, but it’s something they’re working on after numerous complaints. Welch says it could be costly if officers get involved to help control the deer.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t gotten that far yet. I take guidance from the village board. They ultimately get to decide if a program like this takes place,” Welch said.<\/p>\n
Village of East Aurora officials say they’re still trying to figure out how to move forward with developing a program to get this growing issue under control. West Seneca officials say they’re hoping to sharply reduce the number of deer in the area.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST SENECA, N.Y. (WKBW) \u2014 Regular deer hunting season begins Saturday and runs through December 7 in New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-292172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}