PITTSBURGH — The City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety has completed another successful year of the archery-controlled Deer Management Program. The 2024-2025 archery season included hunts in Frick, Riverview, Schenley, Highland, and Emerald View Parks and resulted in 199 total deer harvested.

Ninety-two of those deer were donated to local food banks, which provided 3,680 pounds of venison and 14,720 meals to residents.

Again this year, there were zero public safety incidents that resulted from the program.

The Deer Management Program is a partnership between the City of Pittsburgh and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to manage the overpopulation of white-tailed deer in city parks.

While-tailed deer are a normal part of the ecosystem, the unchecked and unmanaged deer population has caused increased incidents of vehicle-deer collisions, over-eating of native plant species, and loss of natural fear.

The archery-controlled program has been effective in controlling the size of the herd and not allowing population numbers to increase, but it alone isn’t enough to reduce population numbers.

“In consultation with our partners at the USDA, we have decided to introduce a pilot targeted harvesting program in the hopes of shrinking our deer population,” said Lee Schmidt, Director of Pittsburgh Public Safety. “We are grateful to the USDA for their continued expertise and guidance as we expand our program to ensure a healthy deer population in Pittsburgh.”

Targeted harvesting is the selective removal of individuals within a population to have the greatest impact and is the most effective strategy for managing the overpopulation of deer. It is often only initially needed to control the overabundance of deer with archery programs alone usually sufficient to maintain the population in successive years.

The pilot targeted harvesting program will only take place in Frick and Riverview Parks while the parks are closed overnight (park hours are 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.). This portion of the program is completed by USDA-contracted marksmen who are trained to hit a one-inch target at 100 yards multiple times. They will begin their work in the coming week and will finish by the end of March.

All of the harvested deer will be donated to local food pantries