One of our favorite correspondents, a long-distance walker from Bolton Hill, reports:

This morning, I came across a little herd of eight (1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 8!!!) deer in a little meadow near the tennis courts, the Reservoir and I-83. They looked up and stared at me and I stared at them. This tableau lasted a minute, long enough for me to count them, see that they were smallish and very curious. It was 6:45 a.m. No other hikers were around. Then one by one, the deer turned and disappeared into the nearby woods. Two turned around, poked their heads out and looked back at me. 

I've been strolling in the park since 1963 and never saw that many deer at once and deer only in recent years. Another walker said he had seen even more than that sometimes in winter. I went home and read about the State Trooper hurt when he swerved to avoid two deer on I-70 near Frederick and his car hit a tree. 

All this was still more evidence that too many deer and too many people are a problem for people and for deer. The animals have no natural predators, go hungry, eat valuable undergrowth, damage yards and gardens, strip bark from trees, cause highway accidents, spread disease and so on. But for one moment today, those issues were in the background as eight deer grazed in the early morning sunlight. This was not far from where sheep once roamed with a shepherd in the same park. There was no herdsman with these fellows today, just a stroller out to see what's new in the park.