Dunes West · Mount Pleasant, SC · November 2025 POA survey
The proposal is an annual cull of roughly 100 animals, carried out with live rounds on common property that borders residential lots, and paid for out of homeowner assessments. The November survey is the step that unlocks it.
01 — What it costs
These figures come from the POA's own presentation. They describe a single year. The proposal is not a one-time event, so every line below repeats.
Figures as presented in the POA's deer management presentation. If any of them have changed, a correction will be posted here.
02 — The case against
Not one of these depends on how you feel about deer. You can dislike what they do to your landscaping and still conclude this is the wrong instrument.
Dunes West is not an island. Deer move in from Park West, Rivertowne, and the surrounding woods, and an easier food supply produces more fawns. The population is back within two to three years, which is why the cull is described as annual rather than one-time. No other Mount Pleasant neighborhood has adopted this.
A per-event insurance premium of that size is the clearest available measure of the hazard. Shots would be fired on common and golf course property that borders residential lots, and the golf club has not granted permission. Every error is a claim against the association, and every claim is paid by homeowners.
An annual sharpshooter program is something buyers hear about, from an agent or from a neighbor. With a median around $1.2 million, arithmetic makes the exposure plain: a ten percent move is $120,000 of equity per household. We are not predicting that figure. We are pointing out that the downside is far larger than a season of replanted shrubs.
Discharging firearms for this purpose is prohibited under Mount Pleasant's ordinance. A 66% result is not the end of the process, it is the mandate the POA would use to pursue a change in town law on the community's behalf. Answering No stops that at the first step.
03 — How to answer
Only two responses register as unambiguous opposition. Undecided is not neutral in a threshold vote, and neither is asking for more information.
How likely are you to support a deer management program that includes culling?
Response options as written
If you oppose culling, select Very unlikely. Anything softer can be read as a community that is open to it, and that reading is what carries the vote.
04 — Point by point
We have quoted the association's position as fairly as we can. Where we disagree, we say why.
There is no vote in 2025.
Correct in the narrow sense, and that is the point. The November survey is what the POA would carry to the town as evidence of community support. Reaching 66% is the deciding step, whatever it is called.
Any effect on home values would be brief.
A one-time event fades. A standing annual program does not. Buyers price the schedule, not the first year of it.
Most shooting would occur on common and golf course property.
The golf club has not agreed to participate. Common areas in Dunes West are bordered by residential lots on nearly every side, so "common property" and "away from homes" are not the same statement.
The survey is neutral.
Five of the seven options can be tallied as openness to culling. Two are clear opposition. A neutral instrument would offer a balanced scale.
05 — On "low velocity" rounds
Low velocity generally describes cartridges leaving the muzzle under roughly 2,200 to 2,400 feet per second. It is a category of hunting ammunition, not a safety feature.
06 — What we support instead
The deer are here and they are staying. The question is whether Dunes West manages that with methods that hold up over a decade, or with an annual event that resets itself every two to three years.
A published, community-wide list of deer-resistant plantings, with ARB guidance that makes the resistant choice the easy one. This addresses the actual complaint, which is landscape damage.
Supplemental feeding, intentional or not, is what concentrates a herd. Coordinated deterrence programs have measurably reduced density in comparable communities without a single round fired.
Immunocontraception is now in routine use across the Southeast. It is slower than a cull and it does not produce a headline, which is precisely why it does not damage a neighborhood's reputation.
Stay informed
We send short updates only when something changes: the survey opening, the results, and any town or POA action that follows. No more than a few emails, and nothing shared with anyone.