Featured Letter: Slow down when driving to avoid deer

To the editor:

Does culling Southold’s deer herd have to come through a sharpshooter program? I would venture to say that if you put it to a vote, as to whether to pay money to shoot deer or pay to sterilize them, a sterilization program would win. No matter what the cost. So put it to a vote.

In Legislator Al Krupski’s Guest Spot he writes, “If you are concerned about the well-being of individual deer, perhaps you should stop driving, because hundreds are killed or maimed in car accidents yearly.”

Perhaps people should just slow down from 50 and 60 and 70 on the North Road to around 40. Then you could be more alert to animals and anything moving across the road. While driving the speed limit on Sound Avenue, I am always being pushed by cars and pickups behind me. And they are not the ferry traffic people. They are just people always in a rush.

Mr. Krupski also talks about farmers who have spent thousands of dollars on deer fencing. I believe much of that money came through grants and subsidies paid for by us, the taxpayers. That money could have been spent on a sterilization program.

If sterilization were done a few years ago, when there were not as many deer, it would not have gotten to this point.

The deer are such family animals, better then lots of humans. They stay with their young for a long time. To shoot the doe or buck and take away the parents is just so cruel. Ask your children how they feel about that? Lastly, I feel these efforts to cull the herd will end when some person is seriously hurt or killed. It did happen in Greenport on Moore’s Lane North many years ago when one hunter shot another. Our area is much too dense, with people walking around and driving around, to be near people shooting any animal.

Bob Hulsmann, Orient

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