Will County Deer Culling Paused for Now

Back in 2010, with neighboring Grundy County seeing deer dying from disease and what they saw as a deer overpopulation, Forest Preserve District of Will County officials decided to cull deer.

Now, the officials in the county are choosing to pause the culling until they can both test the deer for epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) and count the current population.

Back in 2010, the decision to cull was met differently in towns across the county. Residents in Joliet and Homer Glen did not want to see the county cull deer at all, while Channahon and Minooka residents objected more to the process and the way they were chosing to cull deer than the decision to cull them.

Don Gould, vice president of the Forest Preserve District of Will County board, said in a phone interview Thursday that it is the nature of deer culling to have to reexamine the prevelance of disease and to look at the numbers to evaluate whether a continuation of culling is necessary.

Will County Forest Preserve board members decided to cull deer in 2010 in part to help restore the balance to the ecosystems and in part to cut down on auto versus deer collisions.

Will County Board President Cory Singer said in a story in the Herald News that so far the program has been successful because the number of deer/auto collisions are down.

“Our first priority is always people,” he said. “That’s a significant outcome and that’s all I care about. It was the right thing to do.”

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