Shooting to Kill

Leigh Duvall Parks said she was surprised and frightened to see an archer in a next-door-neighbor's tree at 10 a.m. this summer. She called the Fairfax County police.

It turned out her neighbors had a kill permit and were allowing archers to hunt their land, but Parks wishes she and her family had been apprised.

She describes the sight as "chilling."  

Parks "realizes deer can be a nuisance," but she finds them beautiful. She recalled seeing them the night her family moved to its 2-acre parcel in Fairfax Station, and she said it's still exciting to observe them with her 9-year-old daughter. 

"They eat our weeds, and it's upsetting to see them squeezed out of their natural habitat," she said.

While she understands "there are too many deer and we need to thin the herd," the idea of archers within a few yards of her daughter's bus stop bothered her.

She doesn't think Fairfax County should allow kill permits in residential areas. 

In the past few years, resident Kim Boone says she's seen a noticeable increase in the deer population. She and her family live on a partially-wooded 2-acre parcel of land just off Fairfax Station Road. 

"Right behind our house, there's been a doe living with her fawns for about three years," she said. "They like to eat my hosta [plants]."  

Fairfax Station resident Patti Hopkins has noticed deer have become increasingly tame in the past few years. "We have an invisible fence and entire families of deer regularly come right up to the fence line and just stare at the dog in our front yard," Hopkins said.

The Fairfax County Deer Management Program began in 1998 as part of a County Board of Supervisors effort to control deer on public parklands, a population in the early stages of "eruption," according to the 2009 County Report on the Environment. 

While officials estimate 75 percent of deer are hunted on private property, this program includes public-managed hunts, police shooting and a stringent archery program to reduce deer within 11 public parks across the county.

The archery program is open to nonprofit bow hunting groups that qualify with the county's lottery program. This year, 13 groups qualified.

In order to meet program qualifications, archers must possess a Deer Population Control Permit and liability insurance, and sign a non-professional service contract with the county. 

Applicants are tested by designated Fairfax County police staff. In order to qualify, archers must hit a 9-inch target ("vital area") at 20 yards three out of three times. In addition, qualifying archers attend a two-hour, site-specific safety briefing.

Processor business cards are also county-required to ensure no carcass waste.  

Participants are expected to follow an ethical code of conduct, to report suspicious activity, and to carry several passes during the hunts. All arrows are labeled for identification. Bow hunting groups also provide a representative who has daily contact with county staff. This liaison must provide weekly harvest and incident reports. Fairfax County's Wildlife Biologist Victoria Monroe tracks biological data—including the sex, age and weight of each deer dispatched—and records any signs of disease or abnormality.

Monroe says the advantages of the program are often misunderstood or under-appreciated by some Fairfax County residents. She points out hunters are paying for their licenses while removing "taken" deer from park land without costing the state—a substantially more taxpayer-friendly solution than other methods of wildlife population control.

This article is the second part in a multi-part series on the deer population throughout Fairfax County. Read Part I: