Ross officials want to add sharpshooters to archery hunters to improve its efforts at controlling the deer population in the township.
Commissioners on Monday authorized Suburban Whitetail Management to begin the process of a deer cull program in Ross.
“It’s more or less nuisance control,” said Luke Leonard of McCandless, founder and owner of Suburban Whitetail Management. “It’s no different than termites in your house or bats in your attic. The only difference is we’re talking about deer throughout the community.”
Archery hunters with Suburban Whitetail Management have been hunting deer in Ross since 2021. In four seasons, its hunters have taken 135 deer, including 48 in the 2024-25 season, according to Ross Commissioners President Dan DeMarco.
Despite that, more than 260 deer were hit by vehicles and picked up from roads in Ross just last year, DeMarco said. Residents complain about deer eating the bushes and flowers in their yards.
“We just can’t seem to get a real big dent in this population,” he said. “It’s just clear we’re still fighting an uphill battle.”
Hunters using rifles could increase the harvest from 40 to 50 during the four- to five-month archery season to 100 to 150 in just a month and a half, Leonard said.
Culling would be done in February and March, after the state’s hunting season. The archery program still would be done in the fall, Leonard said.
The deer culling program is not expected to start until 2027.
“There’s a long process that we still have to apply for permits through the Pennsylvania Game Commission. There is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done as far as getting those permits,” Leonard said. “It’s quite a long process.”
If approved, it would be done at night using small-caliber, suppressed firearms on the same township and private properties where Suburban Whitetail has been conducting its archery hunts and any others it acquires between now and then.
In addition to Ross, Suburban Whitetail does archery management in McCandless and Bradford Woods, Leonard said. It does not currently conduct rifle culling anywhere.
Deer management is getting more popular, Leonard said.
“We see a lot of townships that are doing it now. We see the city of Pittsburgh doing it. It’s growing quite a bit over the last couple of years. Even the Game Commission sees we have a problem on this side of the state and raised the number of doe tags this year,” he said. “A lot of people are starting to understand and realize what my company does and other groups are doing, it’s not an eradication program, this is management program to lessen the number of deer. We want to bring the numbers down.”
For the archery hunt, hunters can take one buck per year and as many does as they have tags for, Leonard said. For the firearm cull, they would target the does only at Ross’ request, Leonard said.
“It’s an extremely safe program. I can’t say how safe it is,” he said. “I would not do it if I thought otherwise.”
