More blood will spill in Shawnee Mission Park

When officials with Johnson County’s parks and recreation started noticing stripped vegetation and sickly skinny deer in Shawnee Mission Park they did some survival math.

In late 2008, they surveyed the park and discovered a staggering 200 deer per square mile. Then they crunched some more biological numbers and decided that, to keep the green space and the furry herbivores healthy, they’d have to cull the herd to approximately 50 deer per square mile. Well, those police officers with guns, who picked off more than 300 deer in early November, didn’t do the trick.

“According to a survey completed last week by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, an estimated 73 deer per square mile still remain within Shawnee Mission Park,” Randy Knight, community relations manager for the parks district, announced earlier this afternoon.

That means, the deer management plan moves to phase two: bow hunting. This fall, more than 30 archers applied with the district to get a piece of the harvest action. According to Knight, 15 specially certified archers “have been carefully screened and selected by the District to assist with the harvest.”

That secondary harvest is scheduled to begin December 9 and could continue through January — depending on how long it takes to hit that 50-deer-per-square-mile target. Just like the police sharpshooters, the bow hunters will be contained to closed sections of the green space and won’t impact park hours.

Probably not the kind of news the animals rights activists at Bite Club of KC were hoping for the week of Thanksgiving.