Apostle Islands deer problem handed over to sharpshooters

Deer hunters have gotten the boot from two of the Apostle Islands as the National Park Service turns to sharpshooters to kill enough deer to save native plants.

The Park Service has closed Sand and York Islands to the public until next spring so sharpshooters can kill whitetail deer — all of them, if possible — because the animals are destroying native flora.

The closure, announced Tuesday, started Saturday for hunters and will ban all public visits to the islands starting Sept. 28 through May 15. Most of the shooting will be done in October.

Over the past two years, hunters had been invited to the islands to help trim the burgeoning deer herd. The park encouraged hunters to take more deer under a wildlife management plan aimed at saving one of the last remaining bastions of native Lake Superior forest, especially the rare Canada yew.

But not enough hunters made the boat trip to hunt, and those that did simply weren’t killing enough deer on the islands to help the situation. So the Park Service has turned to trained U.S. government marksmen with specialized equipment and tactics.

“Hunting is still going to happen in the Apostle Islands. But it wasn’t happening at a level on these [two] islands to get the job done,’’ said Jim Nepstad, the park’s acting superintendant. “We have nothing against the white-tailed deer. But what we have out there is so unique for our part of the world, we had to do more than we were doing. These are some of the last places in the region where you can see what the old forest looked like.’’

In a pilot test on Sand Island in May, a single marksman was able to remove as many deer in two nights (13) as public hunters removed from both islands in six weeks during the fall of 2008. In all, 27 deer were shot in May on Sand Island.

The use of sharpshooters is more common in large urban and suburban areas. Most efforts to reduce deer numbers in the Northland have used recreational bow seasons, such as Duluth’s city hunt, although Superior police marksmen have been used to trim that city’s herd.

Fred Strand, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources area wildlife manager, said there were historically few or no deer on most of the Apostle Islands until the 1950s and 1960s. Their numbers skyrocketed in recent years.

“We have worked with and completely concur with what the Park Service is trying to accomplish,’’ Strand said.

Yew once covered the floor of vast areas of the region’s northern hardwood forests - before logging, settlers and deer came to the area. In recent years, the evergreen bush has been relegated to a few scraggly stems spread across the region – except on the Apostles, where some thick stands remain.

Yew shrubs can’t tolerate the direct sunlight that logging or home building clears the way for, and they can’t stand up to deer that consider the plant a delicacy.

It’s rare for any National Park Service property to allow hunting or trapping. But under the act of Congress that created the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, hunting and trapping must be allowed when ecologically acceptable.

Deer shot on the islands will be donated to local food banks. More than

600 pounds of venison was donated during NPS efforts after the May shooting.

All other Apostle Islands remain open for public hunting and other recreation as usual.