Ellisville Might OK Deer Hunters at Klamberg

Controlled-hunts organized by the Department of Conservation may help reduce Ellisville’s deer population, although a state wildlife expert said Monday that their proposal is not a complete solution.

Ellisville City Administrator Kevin Bookout told council members at a Jan. 18 work session that the Missouri Department of Conservation needs a final decision early next month about possible state-controlled hunts at —a state-owned park leased and maintained by the City of Ellisville's parks department.

Renewed talks about the managed hunts, which city council members , came just more than a week after Ballwin resident Linda Gebhardt was hospitalized and listed in critical condition after in an Ellisville parking lot. Representatives of Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, where Gebhardt was treated, said that as of Monday she no longer was listed in the center’s patient directory.

Bookout said the proposed hunts would use bows—not rifles—and would be managed by the Department of Conservation, though the Ellisville council could set some of the hunts' parameters.

Erin Shank, an urban wildlife biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, said hunts managed by the MDC would utilize about five hunters, who would be drawn from a state lottery and would undergo a pre-hunt orientation. The orientation would include walking the hunt’s grounds, reviewing boundaries and identifying no-shooting zones near private property.

All hunters also would be required to shoot from tree stands, Shank said, which force a downward trajectory, thus decreasing the risk of accidents. The hunts likely would take place over two to three days beginning sometime in November.

Councilmember Roze Acup expressed concerns that managed hunts may cause the deer to flee and “expand out” into more populated areas.

“Are we going to have more deer all over the road?” Acup asked council members. “That’s my concern.”

Shank said Monday that she’s never observed a controlled hunt cause local hazards due to fleeing deer.

“We just don’t see that happen,” Shank said. “They say ‘disburse’ from an area because they don’t go very far and they don’t necessarily go one direction.”

Shank also warned that allowing state-controlled hunts is not the sole solution to reducing Ellisville’s deer population from its current state of roughly 65 deer per square mile to a targeted density of 20 to 30 deer per square mile.

“This is not going to solve Ellisville’s deer problem,” Shank said. “It’s a good first-step, but the real limit here is that it still is only 6 or 7 acres in a 4 mile area.”

“We’ll still have loads of deer,” Councilmember Linda Reel said. “But they might be a little more frightened of people, which might be a good thing.”

In order to have a greater impact on the city’s deer population, Shank said, Ellisville council members would need to approve hunting on private property—something permitted in various capacities by municipalities such as Chesterfield, Clarkson Valley, Wildwood, Creve Coeur and Town & Country.

“I mean really, Ellisville and Ballwin are the only ones left, just about, as far as municipalities in St. Louis County that are not allowing some kind of harvesting of deer on private property,” Shank said. “It has become the exception to do nothing.”

The Ellisville City Council is expected to vote on whether to allow the use of archery and crossbows at Klamberg Woods at the city’s Feb. 1 council meeting.