Editor’s note: This letter to the City Council was forwarded to the Leader to be published here:

I was surprised to see Council Member Nelson take such a cavalier approach to the expanding deer population/aggressiveness problem. “The deer were here first” argument has been ignored since human migration/expansion commenced. Another dubious argument was the loss of habitat, which hasn’t seemed to bother the bucks, who apparently live in the wild and only come to town for the rutting/mating season.

Let’s face it. grazing in town is just easier and more abundant. They also eat, sleep and reproduce without fear, as there are few remaining natural predators, including native peoples and pioneers, who regularly hunted deer for food and other essentials of life.

However, a fawn will occasionally be killed and eviscerated by a coyote, which is never a pleasant site. Collisions with autos also occur infrequently to the driver’s dismay.

The black-tailed deer have a life span of 10 to 15 years and are capable of producing offspring every adult year. We have twin fawns born in our yard almost season. There was a volunteer inventory done in 2016 that noted a deer count of 230, which I believe represents an ever expanding over-population problem.

Council Member Nelson offered no ideas or solutions, as we all know that the City has many important issues to deal with, and this problem is certainly not at the top of the list.

I think a good approach would be to budget the funds to hire a consultant to supervise an updated volunteer inventory of the deer population and list the many solutions that other communities have considered. This could include a discussion of the pluses and minuses of each enumerated program. In this way there can a least be an intelligent conversation about possible approaches in the future.

We might even be able to predict when the deer population will reach a point where we will no longer have to mow our lawns. And maybe even include some ideas on how to house-break them.

Craig Britton

Port Townsend