Sika are moving into the mountains above us, and the cull target will not sit still. Kanagawa's fiscal 2025 deer plan puts Yugawara's management cull at 30. The fiscal 2024 plan had it at 20, and the year before that at 70.
The fields are still quiet. That 2025 plan records no notable agricultural damage here, more deer caught in the mountains, and concern that the range is spreading. They also turn up in the boar cull. In Manazuru, the same plan says to catch a deer whenever someone sees one.
The town had already named 30
The town's wildlife damage prevention plan for fiscal Heisei 29 to 31, revised in Heisei 30 set a yearly take of 30 deer and 160 boar from Heisei 30. Fiscal Heisei 28 recorded no crop damage from deer. Sightings in the mountains pointed to damage inside the forest. The people named for the work are town staff, JA Kanagawa Seisho (JAかながわ西湘), the Yugawara branch of the local hunters' association, and the town wildlife damage control unit.
Hakone, over the ridge, has been counting for longer. A Ministry of the Environment paper on Hakone's deer measures in fiscal 2021 found camera traps photographing deer more often across most of Hakone, and sharply more often at Nagao Pass (長尾峠) and Mt. Komagatake. We fall in the zone it calls the southern outer rim, and that zone had lower priority.
In October 2026 the next valley sent word. Nippon TV followed deer through Hakone and the tourist districts, then through Odawara mikan farms that have lost half a harvest. What that asks of the groves we pick is in Hakone's deer and Yugawara's mikan. Yugawara's citrus is the fruit, and the mikan guide is when we pick it. The monkeys on these hills have their own piece, the T1 troop. The set is on Yugawara wildlife.