Deer complaints return to city agenda

Florence Teitrick of Colfax last Tuesday night, Jan. 18, revived the deer problem topic with a visit to the city council session. Teitrick, who resides on Cromwell, said she believes the deer population in the town is blooming and that she has counted 14 to 15 on her property.

“They are ruining the quality of life,” Teitrick said. She noted seven shrubs on their property were taken out by deer last year.

Teitrick suggested deer could be tranquilized and re-located.

Councilman Earl Leland said such an operation would be costly and probably not possible given the current condition of the economy.

Councilwoman Jeanette Solimine said any deer control for the town has to be done by the state Fish & Wildlife. She said any effort to get stricter controls and funding through the legislature would get no support from west side legislators who hold the majority of seats.

Solimine added a proposed city ordinance to prohibit feeding of deer in Colfax was dropped by the council because it was pointless and couldn’t be enforced.

At one point, Mayor Norma Becker, who pushed for the anti-deer feeding ordinance, asked for volunteers to serve on a council deer problem committee. Nobody volunteered.

Public Works Director Andy Rogers volunteered to check with the State Department of Health about the possibility of a solution.

Police Chief Bill Hickman said health officials will not respond unless the city can show an eminent threat to health.

“We’re being held hostage by a deer population,” said Hickman.

Howard Ferguson, biologist for Fish and Wildlife, told the Gazette Tuesday, the deer are attracted to the “yummy” plants and trees in back yards. Some other citizens have been known to feed the deer.

Ferguson said the state agency has received a number of complaints about deer from Colfax citizens, and is developing ways to end the “hostage crisis.”

“We’re trying to do as much as we can,” said Ferguson. “At this point, though, we’re really not sure what else we can do.”

The state issued 50 permits last fall for a new hunting area in Colfax. Results of that hunt will be known early next month. Until those results come in, said Ferguson, the state will not know how effective the extra hunt was.

“If all 50 of those permits were cashed in, then we’re probably going to look at increasing it by another 50 or so,” he said. “If not, we’re going to have to find some other solution.”

One of those could involve asking in-town landowners to allow master hunters to take down deer inside city limits. Ferguson said that program worked for a while in Republic, before the agency received a number of complaints from neighbors who did not want to see the deer shot inside the city.

“The problem is they concentrate inside the city during the winter,” he said. “So it’s really hard for hunters to access areas that may need to be hunted.”