Deer are running amok in suburban Michigan. Is it time to shoot them?

• The deer population in and around cities in Michigan is growing, along with associated problems like vehicle-deer crashes
• Several governments, including Farmington Hills and Kent County, are looking into killing deer as a population control method
• Local leaders believe that a regional approach is necessary, but it’s not clear yet if everyone is on board

Last year, Farmington Hills resident Omar Haq was driving at night when a deer suddenly ran out into the road right in front of him.

“It just kind of came out of nowhere,” and did considerable damage to his car, Haq said. “I had to get my whole front replaced.”

The next day, Haq drove by the same spot and saw that someone else had hit a deer there. 

Statewide, thousands of people can tell similar stories.

Michigan is home to about 2 million deer, or 1 for every 5 residents. About half the deer are now in southern Michigan, according to the state, leading to problems from Detroit and Grand Rapids to Lansing. In urban and suburban areas, deer lack predators, there aren’t many places to hunt them, and fewer people are hunting when it’s allowed. 

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As a result, deer are feasting on backyard gardens and increasingly getting struck by cars, sometimes resulting in human fatalities. Kent County reported a person died in a deer collision just a few months ago. 

Local governments including Farmington Hills in metro Detroit are looking into killing the animals — with hired sharpshooters — to manage the population.

Over the years, several communities have tried lethal methods to control herds, but the issue is often fraught with emotion.

“Nobody wants to have to kill a bunch of deer. It’s not like that is the goal,” said Sean Zera, wildlife program coordinator for Oakland County Parks, which has hired sharpshooters to control populations.

“More people are aware that this is a problem and this is the only solution,” he added. “So demand is really skyrocketing for (sharpshooters’) services.”

Some suburban leaders advocate a regional approach, arguing that killing deer in one community does little good if they can wander into a neighboring one.

“Deer can't read signs. They don't stay within jurisdictional boundaries,” said Jerry Byrne, managing director of the Kent County Road Commission, which is leading a countywide effort to come up with deer population management ideas, which could include increasing opportunities to shoot deer.

“To us, it's ethical deer management,” Byrne said. “Because the deer that get killed with a car-deer crash, the meat goes to waste. If we can get some of those deer donated so it feeds the hungry, we think it takes care of another social issue that we're dealing with.”

Concerns about gardens and crashes

“In general, southern Michigan as a whole has very high deer numbers,” said Chad Fedewa, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ deer specialist. “They’re programmed to reproduce a lot of offspring annually.”

Does can have up to three fawns a year. At the same time, predators such as bobcats, wolves and cougars are lacking or nonexistent in the bottom part of the Lower Peninsula, leaving people as essentially the only predators left for deer in urban areas. 

But places to legally hunt are limited in developed areas, and hunting in Michigan declined for years.

So herds are growing, and many urban and suburban residents see deer as a nuisance. Statewide, there are nearly 60,000 car-deer crashes per year, and suburban areas like Oakland and Kent counties typically have the most.

A 2022 survey by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments found that more than 60% of residents said they were concerned about deer-vehicle crashes, half were worried about their gardens being damaged and about a third were concerned about ticks, which can carry Lyme disease.

Kent County survey data gathered by Grand Valley State University for the county showed 41% of respondents enjoy seeing deer but have some concerns.

Managing the herd

In Farmington Hills, city officials would like the deer density to be around 18 deer per square mile. According to aerial surveys conducted by Farmington Hills and Southfield in 2021, some parts of Farmington Hills have 80 deer per square mile. 

Leaders in Farmington Hills began working with the DNR to address problems stemming from the deer population about a decade ago. 

After realizing that a lot of other communities faced the same issues, Farmington Hills in 2021 created the Oakland County Community Deer Coalition, now known as the Southeast Michigan Urban Deer Coalition. The group began pushing for a statewide plan that could be handed to city leaders looking to deal with deer population issues. 

On March 24, a draft version of that plan was presented to the Farmington Hills City Council. The plan proposes bringing in professionals, like US Department of Agriculture sharpshooters, to kill deer as part of a special evening hunt. The shooters would use rifles with noise suppressors and shoot downward from elevated tree stands, not out into the open. 

The plan also includes the option of opening up a drawing for residents to participate in organized archery hunting within city limits. Selected hunters would need to pass a skills test and might be asked to pay a fee to participate. 

“We wouldn't eradicate the deer population. We just want to reduce it to be able to reduce the impacts that we’re having,” said Bryan Farmer, Farmington Hills’ deputy director of Special Services.

Sharpshooter and bow hunters could take harvested deer meat home for consumption or the meat would be donated to food banks.

The Farmington Hills City Council is expected to vote on the proposal on April 28. If passed, the sharpshooter hunt would begin in 2026 and the special archery hunting could begin in 2027. 

Not unprecedented

Communities have used varying degrees of lethal force for years in Michigan.

Meridian Township outside Lansing first started having special hunts in 2012 and has seen its deer-vehicle crashes decrease as a result. Jackson, East Lansing and Mount Pleasant have all had hunts organized by their local governments within their jurisdictions. Ann Arbor experimented with sterilizing deer at one point, but has had city-led hunts, too.

Huron-Clinton Metroparks began allowing special hunts in 1999, though at times the practice has drawn protesters, including death threats.

Meanwhile, Oakland County has allowed deer to be killed as a population control method in its parks for decades. County officials say there’s been little pushback.

“We have gotten essentially no complaints,” said Zera of the parks department, who added the county isn’t sure how many deer hunters kill in county parks.

“We ask that people report when they take deer,” Zera said. “Realistically, most of them go unreported. People don't bother to tell us.” 

Two winters ago, Oakland County started a new approach. It paid $15,000 to hire USDA sharpshooters to kill deer in Addison Oaks Park. In three days, the sharpshooters killed 75 deer.

Last winter, officials expanded the program to an additional park, Groveland Oaks, and they hope to add a third park for the sharpshooters to hunt in next year.

‘The cockroach effect’

In recent years, Grand Rapids began exploring a pilot program that would allow hunting within the city, but received pushback from the community and ultimately decided to push the possibility of the hunt back until this fall.

Similar to Oakland County, Kent County has allowed bow hunting since at least 2014 within three parks, but the Kent County Road Commission is looking into deer management options that could be used by municipalities across the county.

The county is hoping to put together a menu of management options for municipalities to choose from by this fall. Byrne, the Road Commission director, said it has to be a regional approach because, if you bring down the deer population in one part of the county, nearby deer could simply move back in.

“We call this the cockroach effect. You clean up one area, and others will come in because the food, the water and the habitat is there,” he said.

‘It doesn’t make sense’

Farmington Hills’ Farmer said southeast Michigan needs to tackle its deer problem together.

“It doesn’t make sense if we were the only ones to do it,” he said.

While some nearby communities — like Livonia and Farmington — are actively looking into deer management options that could include killing deer, others are hesitant or not interested at this time.

Southfield residents voted in favor of a hunt but the city isn’t planning any,  though that could change if Farmington Hills, Livonia and West Bloomfield approve efforts to kill deer in their communities.

But West Bloomfield spokesperson Kris D’Arcy said “the deer complaints we get aren’t that serious. Most of them are related to landscaping.”

Birmingham, Royal Oak, Wixom and Auburn Hills officials each said they were not planning any deer management options that involve a cull.

But efforts to launch a regional approach continue.

“Part of the problem with deer overpopulation is that all their natural predators are missing. … People, I think, are not not remembering that humans are also a very important part of that,” Zera said.