Residents against Blue Hills deer cull

Plans for another deer cull in the Blue Hills Reservation drew hostile fire from area residents at a public hearing held by Department of Conservation and Recreation officials in Milton last night.

Peter Church, DCR’s director of forest stewardship with conservation, said deer overpopulation is slowly killing the 7,000 acre preserve, by not allowing new plant growth to take hold.

DCR said a sustainable population is about 20 deer per square mile. A DCR study based on deer droppings estimated the population at 52 deer per square mile. Another based on sightings placed it between 12 and 44 per square mile. Last year, hunters killed 58 deer.

This year DCR plans to issue 75 archery permits and 133 shotgun permits for one deer each.

“You have no right to be killing deer,” insisted Susan Coffey of Quincy. “That’s the bottom line.”

Sally Adams of Milton said her house borders one of the hunting areas, leaving her with 500 feet of buffer space.

She asked them to consider increasing that buffer, but conservation officials told her that is a legal distance.

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it makes any darn sense to do it,” she said.

But Paul Johnson of Carver said, “You might not like what you see. We’re not asking you to participate. We’re asking you to respect everybody’s right to deal with this in an effective way. Starvation is a lot crueler than being hit with a bow or a shotgun. A lot crueler. And what it does to the land is even crueler than that.”