Bloomington will likely have fewer deer by the end of November.
The city Parks and Recreation Department will close Griffy Lake Nature Preserve for the city’s first Community Hunting Access Program (CHAP) deer hunt scheduled for the following weekends: Nov. 14-15, Nov. 21- 22 and Nov. 28- 29.
The nature preserve will close at 11 p.m. on the Friday before the hunt through 5 a.m. the Monday after the hunt, according to a departmental press release.
Natural Resources Manager Steve Cotter said the hunt is meant to protect biodiversity at Griffy Lake.
"The goal of these hunts is to remove enough deer from the nature preserve to reduce deer browse pressure on understory plants and seedling trees to the point that these species are able to recover and to continue reproducing within the preserve," Cotter said in the release.
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The Parks and Recreation Department received a grant from the Indiana DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife to contract a third-party company to administer this year’s hunt. White Buffalo, Inc. vetted, trained and will supervise the 55 hunters who will participate in this year’s hunt.
Bloomington has conducted sharpshoots to remove deer from the preserve, but this is the city’s first CHAP hunt.
Because Griffy Lake is a designated deer reduction zone, each hunter may take up to one antlered deer and up to nine antlerless deer. Successful hunters may keep the deer or donate them to Hoosier Hills Food Bank.
