Carrboro Rated #1 in Backyard Hunting!

Our charming Carrboro has finally been voted #1 in a category. Not one of the top ten as seems to be the case so often, but #1. Think of it, of the tens of thousands of villages all over the country we are #1. The Best in America!

We've read all the articles about how Carrboro is one of the best places to retire...you know, low crime rates, gangs that are only in the infancy stage and no industry within our city limits(not counting the Cement Plant half a mile from the center of Carrboro and the Coal Fired Power Plant a mile from the center of Chapel Hill). Of course if you follow the bike trail, you'll be quick to note that both plants are on the other side of the tracks, so our real estate investments are safe! We can still count the murders on two hands and the guns and hostage situations in our schools on only one hand. Our police officers come to work in Carrboro because it's safe and our firemen pull more cats from trees than people from buildings. All that is enough to keep us in the top ten.

But to get to number one you have to really excel and tower over the competition....and that we are when it comes to backyard hunting. There is not a town in the country where you can sit on your back porch and snag a 14-point Buck while sipping on a peppermint schnapps, or take a pot shot from your bathroom window at a doe as she slowly wanders through your yard. Where else, but Carrboro, can you take out three(count them) three little fawns during a commercial break of The Fear Factor or Jerry Springer? This is it, it doesn't get any better than that.

The Carrboro News has interviewed hundreds of residents and they are all in agreement that backyard hunting is what makes Carrboro such a great town. Even the police officers agree. "I came from Durham where there isn't Backyard Hunting and what happens? People shoot each other. But in Carrborro with the Backyard Hunting people turn their guns on the deer. I've seen it on both sides and I can say, backyard hunting is the #1 reason that the crime rate in Carrboro is so low."

Some retired residents on fixed incomes rely heavily on backyard hunting. "I can barely afford to go to the supermarket anymore and have to supplement my food somehow. Gas is so darned expensive I can't afford to drive out to the country to hunt. Thank the Lord for Carrboro's liberal Backyard Hunting Policy!"

Four-Bagger. A family of deer large enough to feed the whole family! Photograph taken by a car that was Airborne on James Street.

Of course, not everyone is happy, but those are the people The Carrboro News didn't interview. The main complaint people do have about legal backyard hunting is that it has cut down on the number of deer available to those who had previously hunted illegally. "Thar used to be plenty deer running through our yards, but now they're all but gone. I used to catch one big buck a month that would feed my family, but now I'm down to shooting a couple of fawns a month. They're tender, but there's not enough meat to feed my family on one of those babies. Them legal hunters have just ruined it for the rest of us!"

At times it does seem that the deer population is dwindling, but it has been very difficult to get a clear census on the deer population. The Animal Protection Service asks it's employees to keep a running count of the deer(living) that they come across, but the sitings are too sporadic as the employees are only out in town when they're going to pick up a dog, who seem to be an early warning system for deer to beware.

If we're going to maintain our ranking as the #1 Backyard Hunting Community in America, we're going to have to keep that deer population high, and to keep it high we need a better understanding of the migratory patterns of the Wild Carrboro Deer. If you would like to volunteer to be a deer spotter, please visit the Carrboro Police Department in the Carrboro Century Center. The Carrboro Deer Spotter Program is run by the Carrboro Police Department as part of it's "Clean up the Streets and the Deer" program, which aims to make Carrboro a safer town to live in, if you're not a deer!