WHEELING — Oglebay Park held another managed deer hunt within the park this week — one that had not been publicly announced or discussed — and that event will continue to be part of the park’s environmental stewardship program for years to come.

The hunt began Monday and ran through Wednesday evening, said Wheeling Park Commission President and CEO Bob Peckenpaugh. The hunt was created last year as a way to help control the deer population within the park’s boundaries. Last year, 16 hunters took part out of the 20 who were permitted to participate, and those hunters harvested 16 deer.

The guidelines for this year’s hunt were the same as last year’s, Peckenpaugh said. Each hunter was assigned a spot in a “remote” section of the park and had to occupy that spot in a tree stand for as long as they participated. Hunters could bag up to three deer and one must be a doe.

Signage at the main entrances of the various spots went back up for the three-day hunt, Peckenpaugh said. On Tuesday, those signs could be seen at the trailheads of the Serpentine and Falls Drive trails.

That hasn’t stopped interactions between park visitors and hunters. On Monday, a Wheeling resident contacted The Intelligencer and said that, while walking on the Hardwood Ridge trail near Camp Russell, he saw a hunter in a tree stand, but no signage at the point he entered the trail. Peckenpaugh said Tuesday that the signs were at the main entrances of that trail, but that was a trail where hikers could enter at numerous spots. Park employees would double-check that signage was still where it was supposed to be, and also look at adding signs at other points of the Hardwood Ridge trail, he added.

The hunt was not advertised or publicly discussed as it was last year. A page for the 2024 hunt appeared earlier this year on the Oglebay website but was taken down. Peckenpaugh said that page wasn’t supposed to go live on the website, and that it posted tentative dates for the hunt that were not accurate.

As to why this year’s hunt was not promoted, Peckenpaugh mentioned the city of Wheeling’s annual urban deer hunt also isn’t advertised, but continues to be held.

There is one change in the hunt this year, Peckenpaugh said. Hunters were able to spend more time on the Jones Farm beyond the three days. The Jones Farm is property owned by Oglebay, but not a location where park-goers visit.

“This is something needed to manage the deer population,” Peckenpaugh said of the deer hunt. “I don’t think it will go away.”

The hunt will happen around the same time each year, Peckenpaugh said, but he couldn’t give concrete future dates. The one guideline the park must follow from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources is that the park’s hunt must be held within the overall deer hunting season. The park may consider moving its hunt to later in the season. Both this year and last year, Peckenpaugh said, a warm front complicated the hunt.

“The deer don’t move as much when it’s warm,” he said. “It’s harder to hunt when the deer aren’t moving and the hunters are in their tree stands.”

Last year’s hunt was the subject of community protest, a petition and a court case. In October 2023, a group of residents filed for an injunction to cancel the hunt, though Brooke County Circuit Court Judge Jason Cuomo sided with Oglebay to dismiss the case.

Peckenpaugh said Oglebay officials have continued talking to the DNR and community representatives about other possible deer population control methods, like birth control, and will keep researching methods to see if they would be feasible. The park is also working with WVU Extension Service to monitor deer counts.

Deer in the region have been dying in greater numbers in recent months due to an outbreak of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease. The virus is primarily transmitted through flies normally called biting midges or no-see-ums.

Peckenpaugh said park officials discussed the deer deaths with the DNR and, after those talks, decided it would still be prudent to go on with this year’s hunt. He said that DNR officials told him that, if no other population management methods were used, the local deer population would return to pre-EHD levels within five years.

As for future hunts, Peckenpaugh said the park will continue monitoring the population and consulting with the DNR to adjust the size of the hunts as necessary.

“We’re not looking at massive hunts,” Peckenpaugh said. “We want to manage the herd as effectively as possible with whatever method that takes.”