Council gives final OK to amended Cape deer ordinance

By a 4-1 vote, with the Ward 1's Dan Presson dissenting, the Cape Girardeau City Council gave its collective blessing Monday to a revised new urban deer management program to be conducted Nov. 1 to Dec. 5.

The hunt will be strictly limited to four designated areas of city property: Twin Trees, Delaware Park, Fountain Park and Cape Rock.

The meeting was held via Zoom because of Monday's snowstorm, with Nate Thomas and Shelly Moore, council representatives of wards 3 and 2, respectively, absent.

City finance director Dustin Ziebold makes a presentation about a proposed new ordinance to control the city's deer herd during a City Council meeting Feb. 1 at City Hall in Cape Girardeau.Sarah Yenesel

Two weeks ago, during first reading of the bill, the City Council directed staff to make amendments to the original proposal.

Under the revised ordinance as posted on the cityofcape.org website, changes from the original bill unveiled Feb. 1 were made:

• Target shooting is explicitly prohibited.
• No one younger than 18 is permitted to hunt during the five-week period and the hunter must have either a valid hunter education certificate card or a valid bowhunter certificate card.
• If a hunter cannot get permission of a property owner to conduct a reasonable search and retrieval of an injured or dead deer, the hunter shall immediately notify only the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).
• The authorization to take whitetail deer will expire with this fall's hunt.

In regard to the final amendment, if a 2022 hunt is later deemed to be warranted, the City Council would have to pass a new ordinance.

"We'll do this once and then we'll look at (the results)," Mayor Bob Fox, a supporter of the measure, told the Southeast Missourian.

Only those who attend and complete an Oct. 26 mandatory orientation will be permitted to hunt, with a pill draw used to assign designated sites to a bowhunter, who may use only compound bows, recurve bows, longbows and crossbows. No firearms will be permitted.

Brief history

By a 4-3 vote, a prior City Council, none of whose members still serve, approved an archery deer hunt after complaints of vehicular accidents caused by whitetails and landscape destruction. A citizen-driven referendum rolled back the ordinance in 2013 by a vote of 1,486 to 1,278.

After reviewing lethal and non-lethal methods to reduce the deer population in Cape Girardeau and after consultation with MDC, a new 2021 plan was unveiled, originally aimed at eventually reducing the herd to 20 or fewer whitetail per square mile over a multi-year span.

Dustin Ziebold, the city's finance director, appointed as "deer team leader," told the council a managed bowhunt was the safest lethal method available and would require the least amount of staff time to manage.

The four authorized zones of city property are considered "natural (and) undeveloped."

Excluded from the archery hunt is the popular drive-through lookout area in Cape Rock Park.

During the duration of the authorized hunt, trails in hunting zones will be closed.