Municipal officials in Edgemont, Hot Springs and Whitewood are following Rapid City and Custer in taking aim at problem deer herds in their communities.

And like Rapid City and its ongoing deer-management policy, those smaller Black Hills communities could end up shooting deer to reduce their numbers in town.

Killing the elegant-but-troublesome animals is an unpleasant notion to Hot Springs Mayor Carl Oberlitner, but he said it will likely be a necessary part of a city deer-management plan.

"I don't hunt deer any longer. It's such a beautiful animal; I don't like to see it destroyed. It's one of the gifts this world has," Oberlitner said Thursday. "But at the same time, I think people understand that you have to manage these things. We've got an awful lot of deer here."

It's the demeanor of the deer as well as their apparently growing numbers that trouble Oberlitner and other municipal officials. As the animals live, reproduce and rear their young near or inside the city limits, they get more comfortable and sometimes more aggressive around people, the officials said.

Along with increased traffic hazards and landscaping damage, the communities also report more aggressive deer behavior.

"We had one case about a year ago where two bucks attacked a dog and beat the dog up pretty bad. And the dog was up on a back porch," Edgemont Mayor Jim Turner said. "We got some help from the state to put one of them (bucks) down, but we couldn't find the other one."

There is a herd of 30 to 40 deer near the south edge of Edgemont and another 20 to 40 deer near the north side. They travel in and out of the city limits, "devastating" trees and shrubs and flowers as they move, Turner said.

Turner and other Edgemont officials met with biologists for the state Game, Fish & Parks Department in October. The town council is now in the process of establishing an ordinance against feeding deer within the city limits, a requirement before GF&P will help with a management plan.

If all goes well with the ordinance and the plan, Edgemont sharpshooters could begin killing deer this winter, Turner said. Unlike Rapid City, however, the gunners will not have to do their work in town, he said.

"We've got open areas on all sides of town where we could bait them," he said.

Rapid City uses bait to attract deer to kill sites that are considered the safest and most effective. GF&P officials helped Rapid City design its management plan, and the wildlife agency issues kill permits for the deer.

GF&P regional wildlife manager John Kanta of Rapid City said state biologists are ready to help cities manage their deer herds as part of GF&P's overall wildlife-management program. Pierre and Sioux Falls are also dealing with problem deer, Kanta said.

With healthy deer herds and expanding towns and cities, conflicts with deer are more common, he said.

"The biggest problem I see is that more and more of these towns are expanding, and they're expanding into places where, historically, we've hunted and controlled those (deer) populations through hunting," Kanta said. "When the hunting stops and the deer become habituated to the city life - with the shrubs and gardens, and some neighbors who feed them - they have a pretty good life, where they historically had been hunted."

Sharpshooters end up trimming the municipal deer in much the same way that sport hunters do outside city limits, Kanta said.

Custer has already approved a no-feed ordinance and is working on its management plan. Whitewood has a draft management plan that is in the process of being revised.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com