George and others,
   I have read all the comments on this debate.  Rather than rhetoric or opinions I must offer two stories of personal experience.
   During the first Baltimore Harbor CBC John Barber and I were covering the islands, years before the Hart-Miller impoundments were built.  It was duck season.  We were walking along the beach of Hart Island.  About a quarter mile up the beach was a hunter blasting away at a flock of Killdeer flying past him.  He hit one and waded into the water to retrieve it.  Just then he happened to look up and saw us watching him.  He tossed the bird into his boat, jumped in, and sped off in the opposite direction.  When we had walked up to his firing point on the beach we found another of his targets, a freshly killed Snow Bunting.  Neither resembled a duck but both were killed intentionally by a hunter who didn't care what he shot.  I reported his boat number to DNR personnel who told me they had had trouble with him in the past and would prosecute again.
   Years later I was walking the dike at the Hurlock sewage ponds to get a better view of some of the birds there.  I unexpectedly flushed a hen Mallard and five downy young from in front of me.  As young ducks will do they started paddling furiously across the water in panic.  One by one they disappeared below the surface, taken by snapping turtles, leaving the hen calling mournfully for her babies.  I lamented with her but the damage had been done.  The only lethal weapons were me and my binoculars.
   There's no moral here.  No endangered species were involved.  Just do the best you can, educate others whenever possible, and let nature take its course.


> 
> From: "George M. Jett" <>
> Date: 2004/11/11 Thu PM 07:00:11 EST
> To: 
> Subject: Re: [MDOSPREY] Endangered Cranes Shot
> 
> Chris
> 
> I have never killed anything with my binoculars.  If you make the wrong 
> identification with binoculars, it does not harm the bird, butterfly, 
> whatever.  Guns are more dangerous and you are supposed to be more careful 
> with them.  If you can't see what you are pointing your weapon at, don't 
> pull the trigger.
> 
> From one of the earlier posts it sounds like these hunters (seven) left the 
> birds in the farmer's field.   Birds that are shot don't usually fly away. 
> Is this standard hunting ethics - shoot the wrong thing, regardless of its 
> endangered status, and walk away?  Aren't hunters supposed to eat what they 
> shoot?   Bad or unethical hunters don't help their image either.
> 
> George
> 
>

Bob Ringler
Eldersburg MD