Urban deer make for interesting neighbours in northwestern Ontario cities and towns | 24CA News

There was a time when seeing a whitetail deer in Thunder Bay, Ont., was uncommon, even newsworthy. These days, nevertheless, that isn’t the case.

Deer are sometimes seen within the metropolis, generally in giant numbers. Recently, a video made the rounds on social media of a dozen or so deer strolling on Fort William Road as automobiles and vehicles handed by.

Online photos of deer submitting by metropolis neighbourhoods or grazing underneath fowl feeders, are additionally frequent.

Yet, Thunder Bay’s city deer herd is just not an anomaly.

Several different northwestern Ontario communities have city herds, together with Dryden, Fort Frances and Kenora.

“The first urban deer showed up in Kenora maybe 15 or 20 years ago,” defined Bruce Ranta, a biologist and outside author. “It was rare to have deer in the city before then and I have been here since 1982. There were no urban deer then.”

Ranta mentioned it is potential that intense deer searching on the outskirts of Kenora stored deer from shifting into the town sooner. Or the motion of deer into Kenora might have been attributable to a sequence of extreme winters.

One factor he’s positive of is the deer usually are not leaving any time quickly.

“Deer are very adaptable animals,” mentioned Ranta. “In the 1800s, the pioneering attitude was deer were food and food was to be gathered. But as times changed and the habitats changed, deer have learned to live in and around people.”

Ranta mentioned younger fawns born in an city setting study from their moms about the place to reside and learn how to survive.  It’s a “learned and adaptive behavior” that will get ingrained over time, he mentioned. 

Feeding bylaws, hunts used to curb inhabitants

Ted Armstrong, a wildlife biologist and naturalist who lives in Thunder Bay mentioned the city deer within the northwest’s largest metropolis have quite a lot of causes to reside in it.

Armstrong mentioned the meals availability is sweet, particularly within the winter, with cedar hedges and small fruit bushes offering pure forage.

“Of course, a lot of people like to feed deer,” he mentioned. “And despite the city bylaws, it seems that that there’s still quite a bit of that going on.”

The Thunder Bay bylaw Armstrong refers to was handed in 2012. The bylaw prohibited the feeding of deer, seagulls or geese. Under the bylaw, folks discovered deliberately feeding these animals might obtain a effective as much as $5,000.

Doug Vincent is Thunder Bay’s licensing and enforcement supervisor. He mentioned since his arrival within the metropolis 2018 he hasn’t obtained any complaints about feeding deer.

In an electronic mail to CBC News, Vincent mentioned the town does get between 20-30 different wildlife feeding complaints in an common 12 months, with squirrel feeding the primary irritant.

Vincent mentioned his officers solely reply to complaints and “don’t patrol for such activities.”

Another Thunder Bay bylaw that was handed in 2012 allowed for bow and arrow looking for deer in sure areas of the town. The bylaw was handed to decrease the “destruction of private and public property” by deer and likewise to scale back the potential for automobile collision.

There are various guidelines landowners should observe to participate within the hunt together with being inside sure semi-rural areas; being in a tree stand three metres or larger above the bottom and never baiting for the deer earlier than November 1.

The same city bow searching by legislation was additionally handed in Kenora, however Ranta is just not positive it has had the specified impact there.

“There are certainly hunters who have harvested [urban] deer,’ said Ranta. “But it does not appear to me that the hunt has had a noticeable impression on deer numbers.”

The urban deer hunt may have had the intended effect in Thunder Bay, however. 

In 2013, there were 130 collisions between deer and vehicles in Thunder Bay, in 2021, that number dropped to 32, according to numbers from the city’s engineering department. 

Both Ranta and Armstrong agree that at least some deer move into urban areas to escape predators.

Armstrong said grey wolves in particular are less likely to follow deer to where people are found. However, he said coyotes don’t share that fear.

“Coyotes coexist fairly nicely with people in our metropolis and there may be numerous pure habitat for them nonetheless,” he said. “So I feel the deer are right here in larger numbers as a result of there are fewer predators. But the the the flip facet is the predators that can reside intently with us – like coyotes – it in all probability does enhance their density as nicely.”

Armstrong noted that if the deer numbers fall, the coyotes can and will hunt other prey, including pets.

So is there a plus side to having urban deer?

Ranta thinks there may be.

He said having a stable urban deer herd may be able to help the wild herd recover more quickly.

He said due to a series of bad winters and habitat change, wild deer numbers are way down as compared to the peak population of the late 90s and early 2000s. 

‘Having urban deer is like having a source spot population where they can start to fill in once conditions get better,” Ranta mentioned. “So that’s a net positive.”