Three Michigan cities begin joint deer cull because "deer don't respect municipality limits"

Three Southeast Michigan cities are teaming up this month to reduce the rapidly growing deer population.

Farmington Hills, Farmington, and Southfield will hire trained sharpshooters with the USDA to kill hundreds of the animals in non-residential areas.

Deer overabundance in Michigan means more deer-car collisions, habitat damage

Deer remain a big problem for Michigan drivers. They're involved in tens of thousands of crashes annually, and in certain urban and suburban areas of the state, an abundance is affecting motorists as well as farmers, insurance companies, and residents.

Southfield Mayor Kenson Siver said it makes a lot of sense to do it this way, rather than going it alone.

"Deer do not respect municipal boundaries," he said. "We've always felt that any reduction in the deer herd would need to be a multi-jurisdictional effort."

Siver said a majority of residents in Southfield, Farmington, and Farmington Hills have said they support a cull. Deer are destructive to wooded areas and residents' yards and gardens in suburban areas, he said, and large numbers of deer in close proximity can spread diseases, including Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD).

Deer also breed very rapidly, with a single doe able to have two dozen or more offspring in her lifetime. Siver said deer-car collisions are rising throughout southeast Michigan because the deer population is growing unchecked.

"In Southfield we average two deer-car accidents a week. The automobile is the only predator of deer," Siver said.

Opponents of deer culls say they are inhumane. They urge people to find ways to co-exist with deer, such as imposing lower speed limits to reduce deer-car crashes, and only planting things that deer don't eat in yards and gardens.

1/14/26: This story was corrected to state that it is a division of the USDA, not U.S. Fish and Wildlife, that will provide sharpshooters for the cull.