Wildlife management firm to begin as early as tonight.
By: David Campbell
Weather permitting, the fourth year of Princeton Township’s deer-management program could begin as early as tonight, Anthony DeNicola, president of wildlife-management firm White Buffalo, Inc. said Monday.
Mr. DeNicola, whose Connecticut firm has a $155,000 contract with the township for what could be the last year of extensive deer culling in the municipality, arrived in the township Friday and intends to begin culling and vaccinating deer as soon as the rainy weather abates, he said.
Princeton Animal Control Officer Mark Johnson said he has been in the field in recent weeks preparing bait sites for this winter’s culling and birth-control immunizations.
Mr. DeNicola said last week that he expects his work here this winter to last from five to six weeks.
Weather permitting, Mr. DeNicola has said, he expects to reduce the herd by 150 to 200 deer to the township’s goal density of about 20 to 22 deer per square mile a population of roughly 350 animals in total.
Mr. DeNicola said Monday that the program thus far has succeeded in reducing deer-vehicle collisions in the township by more than 60 percent.
While this could be the final year of all-out culling under a program that began in 2001, Mr. DeNicola said last week he will likely return in subsequent winters to trim the herd by 75 to 100 deer annually.
As in the past two winters, White Buffalo proposes to cull the deer at bait sites using sharpshooters as well as drop nets and captive-bolt guns to capture and kill the animals. Captive bolting is a slaughterhouse method that kills with a retractable metal bolt to an animal’s head.
White Buffalo plans to set up 38 bait sites in the township this winter, 35 on private property and three on public land.
Sharpshooting will be the preferred method where it can be conducted safely and with legal authorization, while captive bolting will be used where firearms cannot, specifically south of Rosedale Road to Mercer Road and in the neighborhood of Cherry Hill Road, according to White Buffalo’s proposal.
In conjunction with culling, Mr. DeNicola plans to continue the deer birth-control pilot program begun last winter in the southeast corner of the township.
Twenty does were vaccinated last winter three of which have since died using the experimental one-shot drug SpayVac. Mr. DeNicola has said he plans to vaccinate about 50 more deer this winter.
A total of 905 deer have been culled since the township program began in 2001.