Sluggett farms in West Saanich near Victoria has put up protective plastic fences to keep white tailed deer from eating the strawberry crop.Chad Hipolito For The Globe And Mail.
Voracious, roaming bands of wild deer have declared open season on his crops. Now Central Saanich Mayor Jack Mar wants to declare open season on the deer.
"I've never shot them before, but I'm trying to get a permit through the environment branch to be able to hunt out of season," said Mr. Mar, a life-long farmer, born and raised on the Saanich Peninsula. "I'm also applying for a shooter permit for crop protection for my district. We've always had deer out here, but this is by far the worst I've ever seen it."
Like most municipalities in B.C., Central Saanich has bylaws that prohibit hunting within municipal boundaries, except by special permit and with police permission.
However, Don Brown, chief bylaw officer for the Capital Regional District, said killing deer within municipal boundaries also requires a permit under the province's Wildlife Act, similar to the one the University of Victoria obtained last year to rid its campus of feral bunnies.
The B.C. Wildlife Act was passed in 1992, and permit approvals for urban wildlife culls are "few and far between," he said.
Mr. Mar, 71, estimated that deer damage has already cost him more than $10,000 this year, including most of the crop from a 3,000-square-metre strawberry patch.
"On the way home last night I counted nine deer in my strawberries, the day before it was 12," said Mr. Mar, who owns or leases about 45 hectares of land. "I should have nice young beet tops for sale now but they've just been decimated."
Wendy Fox, owner of Silver Rill Farms in Central Saanich, a well-known roadside stop for corn and other fresh produce, said her operation is also dealing with deer in record numbers and said a cull is "long overdue.
"I've been complaining about this for a long time and I bet the population has tripled in the last couple of years," she said. "It's time they changed the rules."
This year, Ms. Fox obtained a permit to "scare" herds of foraging deer out of her fields with a starter pistol, a task that Silver Rill employees now perform on a nightly basis.
West Saanich Road farmer Larry Sluggett is one of many farmers in the region who have installed costly deer fencing to protect their crops.
After losing most of his vegetables and berries to marauding deer last year, Mr. Sluggett spent $3,000 to enclose a one-hectare strawberry patch this winter and is considering fencing off his entire 28-hectare farm at an additional cost of about $25,000.
"Fencing is really the only solution, but it's getting to the point where it's not economical to farm any more," said Mr. Sluggett, adding that deer damage has cost him "about $50,000" in lost crops over the past two seasons.
Deer are indiscriminate vegetarians that will devour berries, lettuce, corn, beans, cucumber plants and a wide variety of flowers, and there are as many as 2,000 of them living on the Saanich Peninsula, Mr. Mar said.
Last week, the Capital Regional District board of directors, comprised of local mayors and councillors, voted against creating a deer management plan for Greater Victoria, a project with an estimated price tag of $250,000. A similar plan to control the local goose population, commissioned last year, also cost $250,000.
Many B.C. municipalities maintain that deer are a provincial responsibility and blame the government for failing to develop a co-ordinated response.
A problem in cities and towns across the province, the proliferation of urban deer has led to a spike in the number of deer attacks on both humans and their pets in recent years.
Last Wednesday, an aggressive doe stomped a family poodle to death in Langley, and, two days earlier in Kimberly, a woman was seriously hurt while trying to stop a doe from attacking her two pet pugs on the sidewalk outside her home.
Special to The Globe and Mail