Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 20:54:41 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Tom Stock Subject: Re: Turkey Season Comments: To: marshhawk@worldnet.att.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norm Saunders wrote: >>>>In all the years I've been birding I have never had any hunter/birder interactions except during deer black powder season, when it intersected, unfortunately, with a Christmas Count Fran and I were doing. Making derogatory comments about hunters isn't really the most productive route to take. Whether you hunt or not, you have to realize that hunters are our allies in fighting for habitat protection. Yes, there are some irresponsible hunters out there--just as there are some irresponsible birders.>>>> That may be easy for you to say if the "unfortunate intersection" to which you refer did not involve any personal danger to you. In the thirty plus years I've been birding, I have had several close calls with hunters, particularly in my early years as a birder, when I spent much more time skulking in woods. I was once birding along the Aquia Creek in Virginia (it was a beautiful, undeveloped area at the time...) and had paused to watch a Red-bellied Woodpecker. Suddenly, the air was rent by the sound of a gun going off and buckshot peppered the trees around me -- within inches of where I sat on a log. Just a few inches lower and I might have been something a Turkey Vulture might want to investigate.... This is not a derogatory comment, just the truth. And my conclusion? Hunting and birding do not mix. Period. Tom Stock Silver Spring, who will never forget the landowner near Bombay Hook who, on Route 9, drove up to near where I had stopped to scan a flock of snow geese, pulled a shotgun from his pick-up, and proceeded to shoot indiscriminately at the flock, sending it exploding into the sky... I hope he was shooting blanks to scare them away -- but I will never know -- and I sure didn't stick around to find out! ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================= ===========================================================================