REGINA – Saskatchewan food banks could benefit from a large deer population that is causing farmers and landowners trouble.
A group of landowners from southeastern Saskatchewan met with environment minister Lorne Scott last week to discuss how they could alleviate the damage deer are causing to feed stacks and crop left in the fields.
One of the proposals, to harvest deer for food banks, was favored by both the landowners and Scott.
The minister said a “hunt for hunger” is something the government has experimented with and he wants to continue.
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More organization
“We want to organize it better,” he told reporters. “We want to make it more effective and efficient. The (provincial) wildlife federation has indicated they’re prepared to help, as well as the RMs.”
However, he ruled out having a hunt right away.
“We’ve all agreed that at this stage in the year the animals are quite thin, they’ve exhausted their fat supply, plus the females are carrying fawns,” Scott said. “The appetite for a harvest at this time of the year, really after the middle of January, is not very appetizing at all.”
Alan Stein of Moosomin, chair of the District 5 Agriculture Development and Diversification board, said the food bank option is a good one.
“I think with a little bit of organization and some long-term plans the food bank concept will work extremely well,” he said on behalf of the land-owners.
The landowners also proposed earlier big game hunting seasons to eliminate more nuisance animals.
Scott said that is something the government could do next fall.
“The reason that the season has been open later in November in the last 10 or 20 years is that farmers have livestock out quite often until the end of October or even into November depending on the year,” he said. “But if the landowners want an earlier season we can accommodate that.”
Problem worse this year
The large deer population, combined with this winter’s extremely cold weather and 160,000 acres of crop left out in the fields, have worsened the perennial deer problem for landowners.
Stein said they are interested in long-term solutions, “something that would address the problem every year, not something that would address it every 10 years.”
Scott said the government has been providing assistance to landowners through intercept feeding.
“We’ve exhausted our budget several weeks ago but we will continue to find the money to do this,” he said. “It’s certainly a Band-Aid solution.”
