Hilton Head gated community plans to kill up to 30 deer. Some residents are concerned
The Palmetto Dunes gated community on Hilton Head Island plans to kill up to 30 deer between the start of January and late February as part of a legal cull.
Palmetto Dunes, which is mid-island, has been split over previous attempts to cull the deer population.
A cull was canceled in 2020 after backlash from some residents. And a deer-killing operation in early 2021 was called off due to a calculating error in the community’s survey of the deer population.
Some residents are opposed to the latest plan to cull the deer, but the Palmetto Dunes Property Owners Association says the community’s “increasing deer density” poses a risk for “future safety concerns.”
“Additionally, as the community is nearly built out, and empty lots and natural grazing opportunities are scarce for the deer population, they now resort to residential yards in search of food. This has resulted in several owner complaints regarding damage to their landscaping,” read a Nov. 29 news release from the POA.
Not everyone, though, supports the plan to hire at least one sharpshooter to control the animal population.
Resident Dacia Allen, in a phone call Tuesday, said she feels like Palmetto Dunes leaders have given some residents “lip service” and have not been responsive to their longstanding concerns about deer culling in the community.
“It’s really frustrating to a lot of owners,” Allen said.
But Jim Griner, the Palmetto Dunes security chief, said he believes “we have left no stone unturned.”
“I don’t know what else we can do,” Griner said in a phone call Tuesday.
The POA’s board of directors, Griner said, has spent hours discussing the community’s deer management program. He believes that management has done a good job in listening to experts’ advice on the issue, and that Palmetto Dunes leaders have given owners an opportunity to be involved in the process. The Nov. 29 news release, for example, said the POA has hosted Q&A sessions about deer culling.
“It’s certainly an emotional topic,” Griner said, adding that he understands residents’ “mixed emotions” about the cull.
Culling as a practice was upheld in a 2001 state Supreme Court decision that allowed the lethal elimination of deer in Sea Pines.
When culling happens, sharpshooters use pickup trucks or stands near open areas and take aim at nearby deer, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The culling areas often are baited with corn or other food to attract deer, or are known hot spots for deer activity, the newspapers reported. Some shooters remain stationary; others travel to various places.
The shooters must use sound-suppressed rifles.
David Lucas, a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, confirmed Tuesday that Palmetto Dunes has received a permit to cull up to 30 deer.
The deer will be shot sometime between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., Griner said.
Why cull now?
In an email to owners this past January, Palmetto Dunes’ leadership said it would cancel a cull that was scheduled to happen before March 1.
It said “a key deer density metric provided to the Association was incorrectly calculated in 2020.”
The error actually had occurred in the community’s counts of deer since 2014, leading Folk Land Management Inc., the company responsible for surveying the deer population, to underestimate the amount of land each deer had to live on and feed on in Palmetto Dunes, the newspapers reported.
The company had originally said the community had just over 2 acres per deer when in reality it had 6.4 acres per animal, according to the newspapers.
Following that announcement, the POA hired a new company, Lowcountry Wildlife Specialists LLC, to conduct a survey of the community’s deer population in fall 2021.
The company estimated there were about 6.6 acres per deer in Palmetto Dunes.
“Given the absence of significant natural predators of deer within the community and the relatively high fawn/doe ratio (0.56), it is almost certain that the deer population within Palmetto Dunes will increase in future years unless a deer harvest is implemented,” wrote Jim Jordan, a wildlife biologist at Lowcountry Wildlife, in a Nov. 8 memo to Andrew Schumacher, CEO of the POA.
Griner, the security chief, said he believed Schumacher was responsible for deciding earlier this year whether Palmetto Dunes would conduct the now-upcoming cull, as is noted in the community’s deer management policy.
By the numbers
In materials previously published online, Palmetto Dunes included a roundup of deer cull numbers from other Hilton Head communities, the newspapers reported in January.
Culls in Sea Pines, Leamington and Hilton Head Plantation, for example, occurred in 2020 with little commentary from residents.
According to the data, Sea Pines killed 40 deer last year; Leamington, which neighbors Palmetto Dunes, killed 30; and Hilton Head Plantation killed 25.
