Ric ....
I really do wish that were possible up here. I remember your writing about that in another post.
There are no incorporated towns in the county, so the whole county is governed by the County Board of Supervisors and the have bigger issues to deal with than the town deer.
The gun club actually proposed an annual cull and offered to have the meat butchered for the local soup kitchens, but there was no facility large enough in town for the freezers that would be required.
Personally, I never really had a deer problem until the drought and my neighbor above me stopped watering his large lawn. The herd that lived up there tried to move down to my tiny lawn .... less than 400 sq ft. It was the only green spot on our slope because I was watering my maple tree ...
I think of that tiny lawn as a cover crop for the roots of the maple tree.
I often found 8 or 10 deer out in front until I started scaring them off making my tiny front lawn hostile territory.
One would think they would prefer the large meadow across the road, but they were trained by their mamas to eat in gardens first. There are plenty of trees and lots of grass for them just across the road ...
The only reason the doe got into my garden is that I had not checked my deer fence. The herd that lived on my neighbor's property passed along the deer fence up there regularly for years and never tried to jump the fence. To get to my front lawn, they had to go down through another neighbors property. It was green, so they came.
Then there are those in town fighting the fuel reduction efforts done to protect the town from wild fire which does take away a lot of the habitat for the town deer.
I don't see an easy solution.
