"It's David against Goliath," Dussault said in an interview Tuesday. "We are slowly heading toward a dead end." Longueuil had planned to cull half the white-tailed deer population living in Michel-Chartrand park — about 15 animals. But the city backtracked last November after the idea sparked outrage and led to the mayor being threatened. Instead, Dussault's group proposed to relocate the animals to a sanctuary but the plan fell through in February after a veterinary ethics committee with Université de Montréal deemed the strategy unsafe. In the meantime, the deer population in the park kept growing. There are now about 70 deer in the park — a number Dussault said is several times what the urban green space can support.