After skipping a couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual controlled deer hunts returned to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina during December, and 261 deer were killed, according to the site’s top fed.
“Finally we did the deer hunts in December,” Michael Budney, who heads DOE’s Office of Environmental Management at Savannah River, told the Citizens Advisory Board during a meeting last week.
There were 261 deer, 38 wild hogs and eight coyotes killed during the annual event that was canceled for the prior two years due to the pandemic.
Since 1965 the government has held annual deer hunts, typically half-day affairs with dates in November and December, to cull the populations of deer and certain other animals, such as wild pigs, roaming the 150,000 acres of federal land within the Savannah River Site complex along the South Carolina-Georgia border.
The participating hunters, who register in advance subject to a lottery system, must have their kill screened onsite by DOE for Cesium-137. Also during the Citizens Advisory Board meeting a South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control representative said Savannah River officials examined the radiation levels in roadkill to monitor wildlife radiation levels during the pandemic.
