On the plus side, they're very pretty, and we still get a little charge whenever we happen upon creatures we still consider wildlife. In recent years, though, they have become so numerous and accustomed to sharing their neck of the woods with us that they're about as wild as the squirrels that poach our birdfeeders (which some of the deer do, too).

And deer are far more dangerous and destructive than squirrels. Almost 20,000 car-deer collisions were reported in North Carolina last year. And, as many homeowners know, Bambi never met a hosta he didn't like.

A call has gone up in some quarters to address the deer problem by allowing limited bowhunting within the Chapel Hill city limits -- specifically, in the Mount Bolus neighborhood, where a petition was circulated among residents asking the town to explore solutions to the deer population there.

The state has a program, the Urban Archery Season, which specifies a five-week season in January and February during which participating municipalities can allow bowhunting in areas that would normally be off-limits.

Sixteen municipalities have thus far joined the program, the closest being Pittsboro. None of them are as large or densely populated as Chapel Hill. The last Urban Deer season resulted in 83 deer being killed. That's 83 out of an estimated statewide deer population of 1.1 million. The biggest city in the program, Smithfield, recorded just two deer killed.

Considering the deer population of southeastern Orange County is estimated to be on the order of 30 to 45 per square mile, it seems highly unlikely that a brief period of bowhunting in a necessarily small and restricted area, like Mount Bolus or most any other neighborhood, is likely to have any appreciable and lasting effect on the overall deer population.

The prospect of even responsible hunters launching lethal broadhead arrows anywhere within city limits is frightening. There may be cities with sufficiently remote, lightly populated areas to allow safe hunting, but Chapel Hill isn't one of them.

In any event, the whole point is to decrease the deer population in populated residential neighborhoods -- precisely were you don't want arrows flying through the woods. The places isolated enough to safely hunt are exactly the places where the deer aren't a nuisance.

Finally, as some on the Town Council pointed out, enforcing and managing the program would stretch the already stretched town staff.

Pittsboro, to take the nearest example, has adopted extensive supplementary regulations, which are under the purview of the police department. Any hunter wishing to hunt under the program must register for a permit with the police department, take an archery skills test administered by the police department, present a letter of permission from the property owner to the police department, have his or her hunting stand or blind inspected and approved by the police department, inform the police department before beginning a hunt, inform the police department after concluding a hunt and report to the police department the time, date, place and sex of any deer killed.

Our cops have enough to do. It's safe to assume that Chapel Hill, if it were to institute the program here, would be at least as stringent as Pittsboro in regulating it.

We're heartened to hear several members of the Town Council say in no uncertain terms they will not support an Urban Archery program here. As Ed Harrison suggested, let's lead the way in finding another approach.