Those deer that were gobbling up house and home at the Loch Raven watershed were dealt a severe blow with the five-part split-season bow hunt that closed Jan. 31. Hunters took 184 deer (46 antlered, 138 antlerless) during the newly authorized hunt located on the Loch Raven property north of Merrymans Mill Road. The kill is about one-quarter of the estimated population of 800 whitetails munching on the area.
The bow hunt was approved for this year since Department of Natural Resources experts calculated that watershed area can only support about 100 deer. Lacking a deer hunt, ultimately there would be further or even total destruction of watershed and its protection for the Loch Raven/Baltimore City water supply, along with destroying plants on which other furry and feathered critters depend. Mother Nature had teetered well past the balance point there.
Tentative future plans, according to DNR deer program manager Brian Eyler and city public works spokesman Kurt Kocher, are to continue the Loch Raven hunt next year in an annual effort — and into the future — to take out enough deer to get and keep the area, and deer, in balance. That’s tentative from the city, but hopefully the hunt will continue.
Otherwise, after a year or two of no hunting, deer from other areas will pack their bags and move back into the Loch Raven watershed. The result would be ending up where we were in early September when this past-due hunt was finally approved.
Other plans to further knock down the Loch Raven deer herd in human-populated areas are to have professional hunters take out another 250 deer this year from the southern part of the reservoir property. These will be taken through a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Paul Peditto, DNR wildlife head, likes to think of these guys as federal “deer-control cooperators,” who can safely take out deer in populated areas. Baltimore County and Baltimore City, which will control this aspect of the deer elimination together, are still working on details, including the deer meat going to Hunters For The Hungry-type soup kitchens.
Overall, the deer kill is up this year, with a higher-than-normal harvest from state-wide bow, muzzleloading and firearms seasons in the 2008-2009 season. The overall deer kill was 100,437, about that predicted by Peditto 10 years ago.
Peditto remembers the time with a kill of 77,660 deer in 1999, when he predicted annual takes of around 100,000. People laughed at him. Now, he can have the last laugh. It is a good one, since the high hunter numbers have and continue to reduce damaging browsing by deer (as per Loch Raven) and also car damage and possible injury. The only ones who benefited with the increasing road kill numbers of deer were the auto body shops.
With perhaps more hunting on new deer areas similar to Loch Raven, and the use of “deer-control cooperators,” the onus is on safety to prevent unfortunate situations such as the one in which a Clarksville day care center window was shot out in Howard County. To stop this, an initial Howard County bill was for safety zone increases from 150 yards to 300 yards.
Considering that Howard County deer hunting is limited to shotguns, that would not really make anything safer. The maximum range with a rifled slug is about 1,200-plus yards, with a few hundred yards or more with other shotgun ammo, according to the NRA Firearms Sourcebook. Were this philosophy to extend to other areas, such as those counties where rifles are allowed for deer, the maximum range, depending upon the rifle and cartridge used, could be a half-mile to one-and-a-half miles.
The bottom line of the Howard County bill finally passed earlier this month suggested increased education and not firing unless a safe backdrop is visible. That’s a given and taught extensively and repeatedly in hunter safety education courses. These are given through the state and required now unless providing proof of hunting prior to 1977. It is a must when teaching junior hunters.
The other part of the bill puts some teeth into Howard County hunting laws by providing for civil fines of up to $1,000 for ignoring standard safety rules or damaging private property with gunshots.
>> This is my last column, in this, the last issue of The Baltimore Examiner. I appreciate your reading the column, along with your ideas, thoughts and comments over the past three years. Thank you. I hope that we meet sometime in the field or on the water.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting and the outdoors. He can be reached at [email protected]
