Game & Fish Deer Kills Draws Cammack Village Uproar

It’s an extraordinarily rare day that a deer hunt is mounted on a college campus in the middle of the state’s biggest city. But Little Rock’s Cammack Campus of the University of Arkansas isn’t a normal collegiate setting, and the men downing the deer on the unconventional early October hunt weren’t permit-toting hunters.

Arkansas Game & Fish staffers killed four bucks, a doe and a male fawn after tranquilizing and hauling the animals from the UA’s mostly wooded 40-acre campus in the Heights area.

The deer were deemed nuisance animals and removed at the behest of a man who lives and works on the property: Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System.

The deer kill brought to the forefront the growing debate over how to deal with bothersome critters as well as the logistical and political challenges of managing urban wildlife.

Was the minimal property damage caused by the deer sufficient to justify a depredation hunt? Did the whitetails pose a legitimate health and safety hazard? If so, was killing and disposing of the carcasses good stewardship?

“Nothing about it was right,” said Heather Drew, a neighborhood resident. “We’re a hunting family and love animals. When you live in the Natural State, you have to figure out how to cohabitate with the wildlife. It’s part of living in Arkansas.”

Queries on social media about the noticeable drop in neighborhood deer sightings in the Heights area and adjoining Cammack Village spread the word about the October deer removal. The residential blowback triggered by the Cammack Campus deer kill didn’t dissipate heading into the November modern gun season.

Following the ramped-up public awareness, a flurry of public information requests was unleashed on the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and others that uncovered two more capture and kill operations on the UA property.

Three deer, a 2½-year-old buck, a doe and a female fawn, were taken earlier this year. Four unspecified deer were removed in 2019.

Area residents are concerned that annual deer kills initiated by Bobbitt and executed by Game & Fish are becoming entrenched. Some believe the headcount of dead deer is dominated by animals that wander on and off the UA property or are lured there during the capture and kill operations.

The chance to see deer roaming the neighborhood is considered a natural asset by more than a few, and for some UA staffers, deer watching is a workplace amenity on the Cammack Campus.

“You might see them one night; you might not another night,” said Vanessa Donagher, a neighborhood resident. “The deer were an iconic part of the neighborhood. How does he get to do this?”

Deer Poop & Ticks

Bobbitt declined to comment about the growing controversy surrounding the deer kills, which literally took place in his expansive backyard.

He and his wife, Susan, live in a 5,000-SF residence on the Cammack Campus, a housing perk for whoever holds the office of president of the UA System and a place to entertain university guests.

The grounds also are home to the UA System’s administration building, with 35 employees, and its online eVersity program, with 20 staffers. A three-man grounds crew also works on site.

In the wake of the October deer kill, two neighborhood residents said they met and talked with Bobbitt on different occasions in hopes of heading off future capture-and-kill operations.

“I can’t give you a commitment that I won’t do it again” was the first thing Emily Pennel remembers Bobbitt saying to her on Oct. 30. “He said, ‘I will do this again if I deem it necessary. And if Game & Fish won’t do it, I will hire a private firm to do it,’” Pennel said.

She and Vanessa Donagher were surprised to learn Bobbitt’s two biggest reasons to get the deer off the UA property. No. 1 on his list was eliminating No. 2: deer dung.

“He called it defecation,” said Vanessa Donagher, who met with Bobbitt on Nov. 5. “He said the deer were defecating on the sidewalks and the parking lots, all over the place and causing a real mess.”

In addition to deer poop, disease-carrying ticks are a big concern for Bobbitt, and he sees deer as a tick-hosting threat to everyone on the UA property.

The goal of reducing deer droppings and ticks isn’t typically associated with depredation-related deer kills. The one item specifically linked with property damage was deer foraging in the UA property’s master garden.

When talk turned to deerproofing the master garden on the Cammack Campus as the UA does with its master garden in Ferndale, Bobbitt told Pennel that keeping deer out of the garden was not a motivating factor, she said.

“This is not about the master garden,” were Bobbitt’s words, according to Pennel. “He said it twice.”

While Bobbitt didn’t necessarily want the deer killed, he definitely wanted them gone. And if killing was deemed the only option by wildlife management professionals, that was OK by him. As it stands now, the Game & Fish Commission won’t capture and relocate deer.

Preventing the potential spread of chronic wasting disease is the official reason behind the policy. The lack of a reliable live test for the disease is cited as the big roadblock.

If the deer had to be killed, why not donate the deer to a meat processor participating in the Hunters for the Hungry program, which gives meat to needy families? Game & Fish officials ruled that out because they considered the meat to be contaminated by the tranquilizers.

Then why not kill the deer by bullet or arrow to avoid the tranquilizer residue?

“It was a matter of public safety,” said Pat Fitts, director of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission. “Within the city limits, there’s a limited array to take care of it.

“From a conservation standpoint, we’d love to be able to go in with an urban hunt to control the population. Little Rock has a very high density of deer. What I’m hoping for is an urban hunt here.”

That sort of special bow-hunting possibility isn’t allowed in Little Rock for the same reason Game & Fish wouldn’t use bows to kill the Cammack Campus deer: public safety.

Even urban hunting is no guarantee of keeping deer off the UA property. After every Game & Fish deer kill, including the most recent one, new whitetails have wandered onto and off the campus.

White-tailed deer have a range of about a square mile, or 650 acres. With entry gates often open to the UA property, deer of any age can stroll onto and off the grounds. Mature deer can easily bound over the perimeter fence surrounding the 40-acre Cammack Campus.

Tommy Drew, an avid outdoorsman and land manager, shakes his head at the portrayal of the deer taken by Game & Fish from the UA property as trapped, captive or tame.

“Those deer aren’t any more tame in the middle of Cammack Village than they are in the middle of the White River Wildlife Refuge,” Drew said. “They don’t spook people. They are spooked by people.

“To me, it was just a pretty brutal and unnecessary execution of those deer.”