Perched in an oak tree and wearing camouflage from head to toe, Raymond Pryor was barely visible in the dense forest north of the Loch Raven Reservoir.
Bow and arrows in hand, he had come to kill deer.
As dawn broke yesterday in the stillness of the woods, a flock of geese could be heard in the distance, honking over the surface of the water. Pryor remained almost immobile, his eyes intently scanning the gaps between trees for any sign of movement on the ground.
"Everyone else golfs, or they fish," said Pryor, 56, an electrical contractor. "We hunt."
After years of battling opposition from animal-rights activists, dozens of licensed hunters fanned out across a 1,600-acre area of the Loch Raven Reservoir watershed on the first day of the state's fall bowhunting season, which lasts until Jan. 31.
The cull was unusual in that the area around the reservoir has traditionally been out of bounds to hunters. About 400 signed up in advance, although it was not clear to the Department of Natural Resources how many showed up yesterday, nor how many animals were taken.
Officials allowed the hunt because they fear the population of white-tailed deer has grown too large for the local ecosystem. Many deer starve, the officials say, and many more are hit by cars.
A self-described trophy hunter, Pryor dismissed opponents' concerns that wounded animals sometimes flee the scene and spend hours suffering before dying. "If you hit a deer with an arrow in the proper place, he'll bleed out," Pryor said. "They'll go unconscious from the loss of blood."
By "proper place," Pryor meant the animals' lungs, which when pierced fill with blood, preventing breathing. "That's a real quick death," he said. "It's like an anesthesia to them. They just pass out and die. Everybody ends up wounding an animal at some point - you can't help that."
As the morning emerged from a full-moon night near the reservoir in Baltimore County, Pryor set up his perch, a contraption known as a stand, about 15 feet off the ground. He said he had only wounded just three deer in his years of hunting, usually by "hitting him a little back of the lungs." The rest were clean kills, he said.
Wounded animals cannot be approached until they have lain down to die or show no signs of life. "You wait four of five hours," Pryor said. "They're very strong animals. They go miles. You just have to wait for him to expire, and then walk up on him. He's trying to survive just like everyone else. But if you put an arrow through both lungs, it'll only go 100 yards, maximum. By the time you get out of your stand, it'll be dead."
