How Tega Cay’s deer sterilization process worked
TEGA CAY, S.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — It's being called the biggest deer sterilization project ever done in the U.S., and it took place in Tega Cay.
Wildlife management company White Buffalo has successfully sterilized 200 female deer . To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, Tega Cay is a city spanning just 4.5 square miles. In that area, there are between 800 and 1,000 deer. White Buffalo's CEO, Tony DeNicola, said that's about eight times as many deer as you would see in communities with the population under control.
"I've been doing this over 30 years and you know, this is the second highest deer densities I've ever worked with," he said.
Starting October 21 and running until the beginning of November, DeNicola and his team at White Buffalo were on the ground in Tega Cay, hard at work to sterilize hundreds of female deer.
"We try to keep that whole timeline from the time they're darted until they're released to about an hour," he said.
That process starts at night when crews inject an anesthetic into the animal using a dart. After it's lying down, they put lubricant and a mask over its eyes to keep the deer from being stimulated during the process. Then it's to the operating table to remove the deer's ovaries, which takes 15 to 30 minutes.
"They get loaded back in the pickup truck," said DeNicola. "They get brought back proximate to where they were captured and kind of a quieter area, so there's no vehicle traffic, other things that might startle them or create harm."
They inject the deer with a reversal drug to wake them up and they end up back in the wild with white tags in their ears. DeNicola said he's required to put an identifying marker because the anesthesia drugs used for the procedure are not FDA-approved.
"If someone were to hunt that deer or if it got hit by a car and someone were to utilize it for consumption, there's a 45-day withdrawal from the time that that animal's handled," he said.
Twenty of the deer have tracking collars, so the sterilization team can monitor the deer year after year and track survival rates.
Up next, sharpshooters will come in to cull some deer this winter. After that, city leaders will reevaluate the population and see if they need to take any other control measures.
