Deer

Ehrlich needs to put partisanship aside It was interesting to read former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s comments about President Barack Obama's inaugural speech in Laura Vozzella's column "Check out the grandkids on the front page" (Jan. 23). Mr. Ehrlich made it abundantly clear that he is part of the "us and them" mentality that has thrived since Ronald Reagan's administration. In the 18th century, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political enemies, but they understood the need to put those disagreements aside to organize the break from Britain.

The morning air is cool and as tart as the antibiotic-laced apples that Enid Feinberg feeds to dying deer in her backyard. It's September again. Feinberg draws a deep, determined breath, and then, as she does before dawn every day of whitetail season, steers her sport-utility vehicle up her quarter-mile-long driveway and starts her rounds. The first bucks are just past the mailbox; their heads snap in her direction. "Hey, sweeties," she murmurs to herself, and they bound off almost before the words have left her lips.

Tiny "balls" are falling from our trees all over my deck and sidewalk. Please advise. Those BB-size galls start when wasps in the Cynipidae family lay their eggs in leaves or twigs. As larvae feed, galls grow. This is the defensive mechanism of the tree. Each type of wasp causes a distinctively shaped gall. Galls are almost always harmless, but they don't usually drop out of leaves. This year, reported "rain" of cynipid galls may be yet another result of our extreme drought. Just sweep or hose them away.

Bill Heavey's humor columns make dandy bookmarks. That's a compliment. For a number of years, I have been carefully tearing the back page out of Field and Stream, underlining his best lines and archiving them in travel books, cookbooks and the latest best-seller that resides in my personal library on the toilet tank. This is my way of acknowledging both his writing skill and the fact that my alma mater, Emerson College (sadly named for Charles Wesley, the carnival barker, not Ralph Waldo, the essayist)

HUNTS TO cull deer herds are nothing new in Maryland. Scheduling a managed hunt in a 2 1/2-acre suburban yard, however, is new -- and troubling, too.Maryland hunters killed a record 73,570 deer last year and slowed the growth of the population in rural areas, but naturalists say the number of deer migrating to the outer suburbs continues unabated. Free from hunters, these herds feast on suburban landscaping. Tired of losing her plants to ravenous deer, a Stevenson resident, Paula Farbman, applied for and received a permit for a hunt with bow and arrows, not firearms, in her yard.

HUNTERS ARE now thinning deer herds in the 1,018-acre Middle Patuxent Environmental Area in Howard County. Faced with overgrazing that might have permanently altered the park's ecological balance, county officials had little choice but to allow a managed hunt to thin the herds.County officials hope to kill about 120 deer out of a herd estimated at more than 350. On the first three days this week, 50 were killed. Even organizers were surprised by the tally, an indication of the high degree of overpopulation.

Surrounded by suburban Columbia, the deer in Middle Patuxent Environmental Area need not fear the added perils of hunters this winter, Howard County Executive James N. Robey has decided.A scheduled winter hunt to thin the ranks of the refuge's hungry herbivores was canceled yesterday to await a report on the county's general deer situation, Robey said."In all honesty, hunting would not be my method of choice in an urban area like Howard County," said Robey, a former county police chief. The bottom line, Robey says, is no hunting in the environmental area until next winter at the earliest.

Desperate to keep marauding deer from treating their plants like canapes, gardeners in the area are shaving pungent deodorant soap, blasting country music all night and decorating freshly tilled soil with cotton puffs soaked in coyote urine."

Maryland hunters, taking advantage of greatly liberalized bag limits, set records in all deer seasons in 1998-1999, according to figures from the Department of Natural Resources."

Suburban deer hunt seeks to protect kids, not flowersThe recent publicity regarding the deer cull on my property calls for a response ("Neighbors concerned by deer hunt permit," Oct. 11).I am not holding this hunt because of plant and shrub damage, though we and our neighbors have experienced substantial losses through the years.I am taking this step because my grandson contracted Lyme disease this summer while living with us.He was hospitalized for six days and endured terrible pain. He was unable to use his arm and was on intravenous medication day and night.

Unless you live in Western Maryland, it's rare to see a bear. And even there - home to more than 600 bears - it's pretty rare. To address the bruin identity crisis, Department of Natural Resources biologists worked with teachers seven years ago to develop black bear education trunks, a half-dozen wheeled, 30-gallon plastic storage bins stuffed full of the bear necessities for a tutorial. Each box contains a hide, a plastic skull, a rubber paw print and scat replica along with a lesson plan tailored to grade levels K-12, a slide show and a video.

Bow hunting is humane We read the same ill-informed criticism of bow hunting every September, and all the misrepresentation, and even the lies that go along with them (Readers respond, Sept. 19). I really do believe that it's time for the emotional reactionaries to learn to tolerate lifestyles and activities that have been accepted and practiced for centuries. After the Native Americans advanced bow hunting, our forefather migrants to this land have carried that torch to even greater advances with compound bows, fiber optic sights, razor tipped arrows and mechanical string releases all in the sole effort of making clean, accurate shots that will dispatch an animal as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Police shoot Lochearn man after confrontation at home A 27-year-old Lochearn man was shot Thursday afternoon inside his home during an altercation with Baltimore County police and was undergoing surgery at an area hospital last night, said a police spokesman. His condition was not available and his name was withheld pending notification of family. Bill Toohey, the spokesman, said the man called 911 about 4:30 p.m., told a dispatcher there was an emergency at his home in the 3600 block of Forest Grove Ave., then hung up. Toohey said after officers arrived, the man became "confrontational."

Ehrlich needs to put partisanship aside It was interesting to read former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s comments about President Barack Obama's inaugural speech in Laura Vozzella's column "Check out the grandkids on the front page" (Jan. 23). Mr. Ehrlich made it abundantly clear that he is part of the "us and them" mentality that has thrived since Ronald Reagan's administration. In the 18th century, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political enemies, but they understood the need to put those disagreements aside to organize the break from Britain.

State still struggles with infant mortality Frank D. Roylance's article "CDC reports a sudden uptick in births, along with some troubling medical details" (Jan. 18) does point out "some worrisome changes in recent childbirth patterns across the nation." However, the idea that "Maryland women generally scored as well as or better than the national average" may give Maryland health care providers and state legislators an ill-founded sense of complacency. In 2007, 112 babies in Baltimore died before their first birthday.

To cull a burgeoning deer herd that is rapidly destroying vegetation and stripping trees, the Baltimore County Council is expected tomorrow to approve a program to allow firearms hunting for the first time in Loch Raven Reservoir. "We absolutely have to do something," said Harry Spiker, game mammal leader with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "All you have to do is look at the landscape." The use of sharpshooters with rifles in February would follow a 4 1/2 -month season of bow hunting, also a first-time event, in a 1,600-acre northern area of the Loch Raven watershed.

This is a column about nothing. Or, as the Maryland-based company W.L. Gore and Associates calls it, "the science of nothing." Nothing is what scientists and military camouflage experts say deer see when a hunter wears a jacket and pants made of Optifade, a new pattern that will go on the market next season. For years, hunters have donned gear with leafy patterns, such as Mossy Oak and RealTree, that are supposed to make humans look like shrubbery. Blending in, it was thought, worked for hunters the way it worked for a geeky transfer student at a new high school.

Note: With the exception of the author, this will be a turkey-free column. Tens of thousands of deer hunters took to the field yesterday under the skies we wish for when the Orioles first take the field. The opening day of firearms season started frosty but quickly warmed to shirt-sleeves weather. After years of too hot and too cold (with the occasional snow flurry to give us something to whine about), the weather gods delivered the goods. And hunters delivered, too. At Austin's Deer Processing, a 10-point buck shot in Talbot County was dropped off before the butchers could finish their first cups of coffee.

Trophy hunt will do little for watershed The first wave of hunters returned from the Loch Raven Reservoir bowhunt largely empty-handed ("Bowhunters descend to thin Loch Raven herd," Sept. 16). This puts a bit of a crimp in the claims by the city and county about overabundant deer herds at Loch Raven. The city has claimed that deer are destroying the forest and causing erosion at the reservoir. Yet on the first day of bowhunting season, one hunter complained to a reporter from WJZ-TV that he could not take shots because of "too much brush."

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.