Hunting Season

YOU COULD tell that deer season had arrived. That is to say, "modern firearms" hunting season, to be more precise. There were a half-dozen of them nonchalantly lazing in the shrubbery next to the swing set last Sunday. Deer, I mean, not hunters. They ignored the half-hearted barking of the dog on the line, the faithful guardian of the homestead who has become all too familiar with the sangfroid of the unconcerned ungulates. Me? I sprinkled more blood meal around the flower garden and plonked half-bars of fragrant Irish Spring soap on wooden stakes, in the talismanic hope of warding off the cervine evil spirits.

Hindered by cold, wet and windy weather at the start of the state's two-week firearm deer hunting season, as well as an abundance of acorns, fewer deer were taken this year, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Though hunters took more than 36,000 deer during the two-week firearm season that ended Dec. 8, there was a nearly 20percent drop in the state's most populous region and a 12 percent drop throughout the rest of the state. Brian Eyler, deer project leader for the DNR, said last month that officials hoped for a harvest of between 40,000 and 50,000 of the state's minimum estimated population of about 230,000 deer.

Two people were shot yesterday on the first day of Maryland's hunting season, including a Glen Burnie man who was accidentally shot by his grandson, spokesmen for the Department of Natural Resources said.James G. Jarvis, 59, of the 1900 block of Norwich Road, was hunting with his family at about 6:30 a.m. yesterday near a gravel pit in Odenton when he stepped in front of a 12-gauge shotgun blast fired by the 14-year-old boy.In the other accident, a stray bullet likely fired by a hunter pierced the walls of a Middletown home and struck a 4-year-old boy in the arm, said Cpl. Robert Taylor of the Maryland Natural Resources Police.

Maryland's annual bear hunt will begin Oct. 22 with more hunters and the highest quota of bears allowed killed since the hunt was reinstituted after a 50-year hiatus in 2004. According to Harry Spiker, the bear biologist who runs the hunt for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, 340 hunters have been issued tags with a quota set between 80 and 100 bears. After setting a quota of between 55 and 80 bears last year, a total of 72 were killed. The number of hunters has increased from 260 in 2011.

Every hunting season, there are new wrinkles in the regulations that govern and protect the hunters and the hunted.This year in the Guide to Hunting and Trapping in Maryland, more than a dozen new wrinkles are listed, ranging from major changes in the hunter orange regulations to changes in the lottery for deer firearms season permits at Hugg-Thomas Wildlife Management Area, Hanover Watershed and the Cooperative WMAs.As of July 1, 1990, the following hunters are exempt from wearing hunter orange, a color used to mark humans because it does not exist in nature:* A person who hunts any wildlife on that person's property with or without a hunting license.

THE RECOVERY of the black bear in Western Maryland's mountain woodlands is a bona fide success story for wildlife management. It's also a horror story for some residents who share their habitat with the bears, which have become increasingly comfortable with human surroundings.That's a potentially dangerous familiarity, when these large, wild creatures appropriate porches and driveways, feast on cornfields and livestock, forage garbage cans and bird feeders.While there's no documented bear attack on a human in Maryland in modern times, the close encounters appear on the rise with the expansion of development in Garrett and Allegany counties and the growth of the state's bear population, estimated at 200 animals.

IN THE past 50 years, much has changed in Maryland. But one thing has remained the same - the state's small population of black bears has been protected from trophy hunting. This may soon change, as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the Department of Natural Resources have just proposed a bear hunting season for 2004. A bear hunt, however, would provide no relief to the citizens in Western Maryland who want concrete solutions to bear conflicts. It may be psychologically soothing, but shooting bears at random does not target the individual bears causing problems and does not address conflicts with surviving bears.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel is ending its hunting season about two weeks earlier than scheduled. The season was to continue until Jan. 31. Small-game hunting, deer-archery hunting, a restricted hunt by youths and a half-day restricted firearm hunt are affected. Administrative, management, public safety and law enforcement concerns are the reasons for the early closure. The refuge plans to offer opportunities for hunting in the fall. Information: http:--patuxent.

After months of debate over the fate of the state's beautiful but annoying mute swans, Maryland officials are proposing for the first time a hunting season to keep their numbers down. The state Department of Natural Resources recommends in a letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials that hunters control mute swan populations in the years ahead after state biologists and technicians shoot up to 1,500 of the birds. DNR officials are seeking a federal permit to kill almost half of the state's 3,600 mute swans.

Bear hunting, illegal in Maryland since 1953, will remain so at least for another two seasons. Sarah Taylor-Rogers, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, announced yesterday that she has rejected a request from the state's hunters to open a limited season. The black bear population has been growing in Western Maryland, and with it the number of complaints from rural residents and farmers. The Maryland Sportsmen's Association this spring asked for a two-day hunt, with participants chosen by lottery, to reduce the population.

For those venturing out on the first day of firearm hunting season Sunday, where you shoot from is as important to safety as the weapons of choice. According to George F. Johnson IV, superintendent colonel for the Department of Natural Resources, "tree-stand incidents account for most hunting accidents. " Johnson and others suggest hunters use a full-body safety harness to keep them tethered to the tree. Broken or worn equipment should be replaced or fixed before hunters climb into the stand.

The state Department of Natural Resources says Maryland's bear hunt is closed after 67 kills in five days. The seventh annual black bear hunting season, which opened Monday in Allegany and Garrett counties, was officially closed at 9 p.m. Friday. "The 2010 bear hunt was another unqualified success," Harry Spiker, Game Mammal Section Leader for the department's Wildlife and Heritage Service, said in a release. "Unseasonably mild weather made the first part of the season a challenge and kept hunter success low. Despite marginal conditions we safely reached another harvest quota while allowing the first five-day bear hunt in Maryland history.

— After her mother died of cancer "too young" and her father was diagnosed with the disease, Leslie Nightingale sat down and wrote her bucket list. Take a cruise, ride in a hot-air balloon, go skydiving, finish her master's degree, shoot a bear. "You just never know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen," said Nightingale, 39, explaining the list. "Life's too short to hesitate. " On Monday she checked off the first of the items, shooting a 234-pound black bear during the opening minutes of Maryland's season.

Wildlife officials expect deer kills to be about average during the firearm season that begins tomorrow, traditionally one of the busiest hunting days of the year. Bow and muzzleloader deer kills this year were down 19 percent from last year for a variety of reasons, but Brian Eyler, deer project leader at the Department of Natural Resources, said he expects that to turn around during the firearm season, which runs through Dec. 8. That's already happening, some hunters reported. The season "started out a little bit slower than average but looks to be pretty good," said Randy Roof of Chesapeake Outdoors on Kent Island.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel is ending its hunting season about two weeks earlier than scheduled. The season was to continue until Jan. 31. Small-game hunting, deer-archery hunting, a restricted hunt by youths and a half-day restricted firearm hunt are affected. Administrative, management, public safety and law enforcement concerns are the reasons for the early closure. The refuge plans to offer opportunities for hunting in the fall. Information: http:--patuxent.

THE QUESTION Open Season, an animated film about a domesticated bear caught in the woods at the start of hunting season that features the voices of Ashton Kutcher and Martin Lawrence, opened last week. What are your favorite animated movies this year and why? Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We'll publish the best answers we receive.

LITTLE ORLEANS -- Ed Harmon arrived at Green Ridge State Forest from Pasadena well before noon yesterday, parked his 25-foot camper along the slope of a snow-dusted ridge, and waited.The 40-year-old corrections officer was looking for his buddies from the Baltimore area to show up with their hunting and camping gear -- and even their children -- to help perpetuate a tradition that, for some, goes back generations: hunting at Green Ridge State Forest.The opening of Maryland's firearms hunting season today will attract about 3,000 hunters to the 38,811-acre forest in Allegany County and transform the usually serene woods into bustling villages of tents and campers -- "tent cities," as park rangers call them.

Hoping to ambush an unsuspecting deer, Chris McAvinue perched precariously in an oak tree as darkness became dawn.The distant drone of traffic from Interstate 83 penetrated the dense woods of Gunpowder Falls State Park in northern Baltimore County. Pulley-aided compound bow in hand, McAvinue stood almost statue-still, peering slowly about for his quarry.For most Marylanders, autumn is a season of colorful foliage, falling leaves and migrating waterfowl. But for thousands of outdoors enthusiasts, it is also hunting season, a chance to get into the woods, to fight off cold, sleep and boredom and maybe bag a deer.

For the first time since Harry Truman was president, hunters are taking their weapons into a 1,700-acre section of woodland just outside the little town of Dublin in search of deer. The Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America has opened its Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation in northeastern Harford County to hunters in an attempt to control an exploding deer population. "It's the first time since 1948 that hunting has been allowed," said Reed Blom, director of support services for the Boy Scouts council.

Anne Arundel legislators want to make the county the 13th in the state -- and the first in the Baltimore area -- to allow biannual Sunday deer hunting. Del. Robert A. Costa said he submitted the bill, co-sponsored by nine other delegation members, that would permit hunting on private land on two Sundays during deer season because the county's deer population causes hundreds of traffic accidents a year and needs to be controlled. Maryland had not allowed Sunday hunting for hundreds of years until the General Assembly passed a bill in 2003 permitting the practice in 12 rural counties.