The Dublin City Council unanimously voted Sept. 28 to waive the city's hunting ban to allow a U.S. Department of Agriculture deer culling program to take place this fall and winter.
The council's 6-0 vote is the last the body will take on the deer management program before it begins Nov. 1, the city communications and marketing director Lindsay Weisenauer told The Dispatch.
The waiver applies only to trained sharpshooters from the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services involved in the city's upcoming deer management program, not to the general public. These sharpshooters will shoot and kill deer on several approved
sites – mostly city parks – from Nov. 1 to March 31.
Attached to a city memo on the council's Sept. 28 ordinance was a map of these approved sites for the USDA sharpshooting program. The map includes several city parks, city-owned sites and parts of the Muirfield Village Golf Club, which is willing to include its properties in the deer management program, according to the memo.
No new sites will be approved for the program before it begins, and not every approved site will be used this year. Weisenauer said.
Dublin plans to put up signs at the parks where deer management will take place, and it plans to send out mailers to every resident about the program, Weisenauer said.
The city will also host a public education session on the program from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 in City Council chambers at Dublin City Hall, 5555 Perimeter Drive.
Dublin's deer management program is in response to the city's growing local deer population and increased complaints from residents about the animals, Weisenauer previously told The Dispatch. A recent index of Dublin's deer population counted 528 deer in the city, which covers nearly 25 square miles.
The nearby city of Worthington also plans to use USDA sharpshooters to kill deer this fall after a controversial inaugural year in 2025. Some Worthington residents opposed the program over safety issues and transparency concerns, and some even launched a short-lived legal challenge. Worthington harvested 100 white-tailed deer and donated more than 4,200 pounds of venison to the Worthington Resource Food Pantry in the first year of the program.
Transportation and neighborhoods reporter Nathan Hart can be reached at NHart@dispatch.com, @NathanRHart on X and nathanhart.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Dublin City Council waives hunting rules to allow USDA deer culling
