http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19950-2003Nov28.html
Where do these people come from?
My mom mentioned seeing three deer in our yard the morning before I got home for Thanksgiving. (the 100 acres behind our house are being logged, so all the deer are starting to wander the development) I asked why we were still having turkey for dinner. She didnt get it.
Kharn
Fed-Up Suburbanites Ponder Deer Hunts
Sprawl Fosters Increase in Animals
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2003; Page B01
For five years, Molly Turkewitz has waged war against deer in her Montgomery County neighborhood.
The Brookeville teaching assistant has planted strong-smelling deodorant soap in trees and laced the soil with human hair and blood-meal fertilizer. She has shrouded shrubs in nylon netting and swathed tree trunks with sheets of plastic. But nothing has chased the deer from her back yard, where they have nibbled the bushes into poodle-size topiary.
"When we moved in, I loved deer," said Turkewitz, 46. "I do not feel that way anymore."
Would she bring in the big guns, inviting a few hunters into her neighborhood?
Turkewitz paused. "Um . . . that's hard. I don't know how it could be accomplished safely."
That sound you hear is the opening of deer season today for Maryland firearm hunters, accompanied by the agonizing of suburbanites, who live closer to their white-tailed neighbors than ever before.
Firearm season runs through Dec. 13. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources said it is the best method for keeping the state's deer population in check. But as residential development continues to expand in the Washington area, deer keep multiplying because people keep getting in the way of hunters.
"Our biggest problems are in urban and suburban areas, where hunter access is minimal," said DNR official Steve Bittner. "And there really isn't anything else that's economically feasible for controlling deer on a regionwide basis."
Not migratory by nature, deer organize themselves in family groups and tend to stay put as people move in around them, bringing problems for both sides.
More than 90 percent of Maryland farmers report deer-related crop losses each year, with annual totals reaching into the tens of millions of dollars. Deer-vehicle collisions cost more than $10 million annually in Maryland. The DNR said that although human casualty figures are not available, the collisions killed a reported 4,000 deer last year; many other cases went unreported. Lyme disease, carried by a tick that lives on deer, has risen in Maryland from a few cases in the late 1980s to 738 last year.
As their habitat shrinks, deer graze native plants down to the turf, risking starvation and allowing less-appetizing exotic plants to take over, disturbing the state's ecosystem.
The DNR said there are perhaps 300,000 deer in Maryland, in environments that can sustain about 250,000. Hunters kill about 100,000 every year, but the population quickly rises again. And the deer harvesting is not spread equally across the state because of development in many areas. In some Montgomery parks, for example, Bittner estimates that the deer population is 100 per square mile, far too many for those areas to sustain.
As deer-related damage continues to grow, the DNR has lifted bag limits in more-populated areas on deer without antlers and has helped organize controlled hunts in subdivisions, farms and parks. Statewide, hunters need permission to hunt within 150 yards of an occupied residence. Near a subdivision, that means securing dozens of permissions from homeowners worried about children and pets, and others who oppose hunting on moral grounds.
"You can't get in there," said John Ramboz of Lake Linganore in Frederick County. He plans to spend most of this firearm season hunting bear in Virginia. "It won't be long before Maryland will be a bowhunting-only state," he predicted.
Indeed, bowhunting has become more popular. The shorter range of a bow and arrow is better suited to suburban areas, and while the state's firearm season lasts only two weeks, bowhunting season stretches from mid-September to the end of January. However, bowhunting's relative difficulty means smaller harvests.
Statewide, bowhunters killed 19,088 deer last year, while firearm hunters, despite their abbreviated season, bagged 51,290. Hunting with muzzleloaders is classified separately and last year accounted for 24,000 deer.
In Montgomery, bowhunters harvested 1,151 deer, and firearm hunters, 2,204.
Some areas have tried using special reflectors and lighting to drive away deer, with limited success. The DNR has tried inoculating females with a contraceptive dart, but the shots must be administered every year, making the method too unwieldy and expensive for large areas.
Without many viable alternatives, some homeowners have begun rethinking what had been unthinkable, Bittner said. "We're seeing a shift, from people who say they're cute and cuddly to those who say, 'I'm sick and tired of replanting my shrubs, so let's get rid of the damn things,' " he said.
In Brookeville, Turkewitz's more-desperate neighbors are spending thousands of dollars on fencing. In many cases, she said, the deer jump right over.
"I know this sounds far-fetched," Turkewitz said last week. But she's wondered whether deer could first be shot with a sleep agent. "If you could dart the deer, the hunter could do his thing when he's right next to it," she said.
Where do these people come from?
My mom mentioned seeing three deer in our yard the morning before I got home for Thanksgiving. (the 100 acres behind our house are being logged, so all the deer are starting to wander the development) I asked why we were still having turkey for dinner. She didnt get it.
Kharn