A deer lover at Thursday’s public meeting to discuss Loch Raven’s deer hunting season made her feelings known early.
“Hunters are chicken,” she screamed, and then challenged a responding heckler “to take it outside.”
They didn’t, the heckler was removed, and for the rest of the emotional debate, it was pretty much business as usual, thanks to the level-headedness of moderator David Carroll, Baltimore County’s Director of Sustainability.
Despite the “festivities,” early bow hunting for deer at Loch Raven Reservoir is set for Sept. 15 through Jan. 31. Loch Raven hunting will coincide with the suburban bow season allowing a total bag limit of two antlered deer and an unlimited number of antlerless deer.
Cross-bow legislation is being massaged that would allow the Loch Raven hunt conformity with the new state regulations that allow cross bows during the bow season in the suburban hunt area.
The announcement on the inflammatory subject raised the ire of animal rights groups but was greeted with tremendous applause by hunters.
The meeting at Loch Raven High School, which was paneled by representatives of Baltimore City, Baltimore County and the Department of Natural Resources, pointed out studies and specific task-force work on the protection of the watershed that supplies drinking water for 1.8 million metropolitan residents. The 1991 Watershed Management Task Force concluded that “water quality and biodiversity of watershed lands must be protected.”
Presentations noted that deer have outstripped local vegetation, caused a loss of bird life, small mammals and understory plants, and have ruined the area’s basic biodiversity. They also have killed saplings that are necessary for the next generation of trees to protect the property and prevent erosion. Numerous auto accidents were stated as another reason to reduce deer populations.
Animal rights advocates, hunters, hikers, dog walkers, landowners who live adjacent to the city-owned property, and field and deer biologists all had something to say.
The conclusion? Hunting is the only practical method of reducing deer populations on the 5,600 acres of Loch Raven property. Hunting will be restricted to north of Merrymans Mill Road, with professional hunters in January removing deer from southern parts of the property.
Most of the animal rights arguments took the approach that more study is needed, that past studies are flawed, and that development is rapidly reducing deer-available land.
Animal rights groups have to look at the facts. And they are hard facts. Society has radically changed the landscape since the deep and thick chestnut forest of the 1600s. Deer like edges, and we have given them this through homes, backyards, developments, roads, landscaping, farms, highway plantings, fields, recreation areas and suburbs.
We no longer have wolves, cougars and bears as natural predators. And coyotes are not big enough to do the serious work. Birth control for deer is not workable or practiced anywhere in the country. It is not yet even approved for free-ranging deer by the FDA, despite what some animal rights groups would like you to think.
“More studies” — suggested by animal rights groups — is just a delaying tactic to continue banning deer hunting. Admit it. Continued studies since 1991 only reinforce the fact that deer have to be reduced in number from the approximate 800 in Loch Raven now to the proposed 100 that would allow sustainability of the property.
Noted throughout the evening was that bow hunting allowed at Liberty and Prettyboy reservoirs over the past 35 years has resulted in a reduction of deer and a healthier forest and habitat at both places.
The time for debate is over; the time for the hunt is this year. Finally.
