Deer

New designs can fade from memory fast at the fall Maison & Objet design show in Paris, where booth after booth peddled the latest in high-end home accessories this week. But the eye-popping insanity of French designer Frédérique Morrel's life-size trophy-head sculptures was impossible to forget. Made from a polyurethane taxidermy mold, covered in vintage needlepoint and finished with real antlers, each piece is unique and made by hand. After the initial shock, a closer examination reveals that each one tells a story thanks to the idealized scenes of life -- animals, nudes, hunters, flowers and more -- pieced together by the artist.

A family in Rio Linda is upset the California Department of Fish and Wildlife took their pet deer away. Standing in the doorway of his backyard, 6-year-old Ulises Cervantes watched Tuesday as Florecita was tranquilized, Fox40 in Sacramento reported. “A deer is a wild animal, not a pet,” said Janice Mackey of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. She and nearly a dozen others from the department spent Tuesday afternoon tranquilizing the Cervantes family pet and readying the animal to be moved.

Re "Bad Bambi," editorial, Dec. 23 "Roving urban gangs ... of troublemaking deer"? They may be slow learners, but it appears that deer have finally decided to do something about the ritual slaughter called deer season. Go, Bambi! CAROL EASTON Venice

Nobody is sure why deer bound onto rural roads, offering themselves as sacrificial lambs to unsuspecting motorists and causing crashes that take lives nationwide every year. But a Wyoming researcher, Morgan Graham, wants to find a way to prevent such crashes. Graham, with the Conservation Research Center of Teton Science Schools, is the lead investigator in a study with the Wyoming Department of Transportation to determine whether new high-tech highway reflectors can prevent collisions between vehicles and deer.

It was with horror I read "The Curse of the Broder Buck" [Oct. 19] about the world-record mule deer antlers. And it was with delight I read how this "prize" tore a family apart. A just and fit punishment for someone having killed so magnificent an animal. Therese Whitney Sherman Oaks

As a lifelong resident of the canyons of L.A., I found the deer story poignant (Cityscapes, Oct. 25). The only missing piece was how the deer was wounded in the first place. My guess it was a car roaring down Benedict Canyon. Remember, we're living in their neighborhood. However brutal the animal regulation officer's actions seem, we created the scene that was the animal's ultimate demise. The officer merely put it out of its misery and back in its natural place. And the coyotes didn't eat someone's poodle that night.

I would like to congratulate the "marksmen" of the Laguna Beach Police Department who persevered in their struggle to kill a defenseless immobile buck deer (Sept. 9). May I assume that their 22 rounds established a new record for accuracy and that the first 21 shots did not contribute to the misery he was so humanely being put out of? Unbelieveable! CHARLES R. THOMPSON Newport Beach

[ ODOCOILEUS HEMIONUS ] Many Californians know autumn as the season when deer begin their courtship. By early October, the large bucks have sharpened their impressive racks of antlers and are dueling among themselves or guarding chosen females in preparation for mating.

In Indiana, intrigue and outrage over "Bambigate" is coming to an end. That's right: Bambigate -- the unofficial moniker for the case of an eastern Indiana couple who face misdemeanor “illegal possession of a whitetail deer” charges for keeping a fawn they rescued without a permit. In 2010, Jeff Counceller reached out to an Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officer to say he'd found an injured fawn. He asked whether he and his wife, Jennifer, could get a permit to keep the animal, department spokesman Phil Bloom said.

Nobody is sure why deer bound onto rural roads, offering themselves as sacrificial lambs to unsuspecting motorists and causing crashes that take lives nationwide every year. But a Wyoming researcher, Morgan Graham, wants to find a way to prevent such crashes. Graham, with the Conservation Research Center of Teton Science Schools, is the lead investigator in a study with the Wyoming Department of Transportation to determine whether new high-tech highway reflectors can prevent collisions between vehicles and deer.

Last summer, Richard Sundeen and his wife, Rosemary, went on a road trip from Missoula, Mont., to Alberta, Canada. At the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, they were treated to a nice surprise. "I walked out of the door of our cabin and this female elk was calmly munching on the leaves of some bushes immediately in front of me. She was one of several in and around the bushes. " The Manhattan Beach resident used a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. To submit your photos, visit our reader photo gallery . When you upload your photos, tell us where they were taken and when.

BERLIN -- Contrary to the title, there are many shots in David M. Rosenthal's film “A Single Shot,” world-premiering Saturday at the Berlin International Film Festival.  But the one that sets this story in motion takes place in the first few minutes of the movie.  John Moon (Sam Rockwell) intently hunts a deer through a damp forest, but ends up hitting the wrong target, in cold mud. His shotgun blast catches Ingrid (Christie Burke), who, like John, is in the wrong place.  She's hiding out in the nature conservancy where he has been poaching deer and pheasant.

In Indiana, intrigue and outrage over "Bambigate" is coming to an end. That's right: Bambigate -- the unofficial moniker for the case of an eastern Indiana couple who face misdemeanor “illegal possession of a whitetail deer” charges for keeping a fawn they rescued without a permit. In 2010, Jeff Counceller reached out to an Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officer to say he'd found an injured fawn. He asked whether he and his wife, Jennifer, could get a permit to keep the animal, department spokesman Phil Bloom said.

It all started with the Kingston Trio. One day in 1963, a San Diego kid and his friends got their hands on an album by the popular folk group. Greg Deering, 12 at the time, recalls studying the musicians on the cover and thinking, "I've got to get a banjo" - not out of love for the twangy instrument but mainly because his pal already had a guitar. Fifty years later, Greg, his wife, Janet, and daughter Jamie preside over the bestselling banjo-making business in the U.S. From a small Spring Valley factory, the Deering Banjo Co. is having its best year ever, defying the U.S. skills gap and California's manufacturing doldrums.

I've used deer antler spray for two days now, and I've rarely felt better, though I do find myself with an overwhelming urge to grind my itchy noggin against big birch trees, and last night, as someone pulled into the driveway, I just suddenly froze in the high beams. Does deer antler spray really work? Obviously. Or it could be the latest take on snake oil. To find out, I'm testing the legal product personally. So far, there are no signs of aggression, a reported side effect of these so-called IGF-1 supplements.

Vijay Singh has admitted to taking a deer antler spray, which contains a substance banned by the PGA Tour, but the professional golfer says he didn't do so intentionally.   “While I have used deer antler spray, at no time was I aware that it may contain a substance that is banned under the PGA Tour Anti-Doping Policy,” Singh said in a statement released Wednesday in response to a Sports Illustrated report that the golfer has taken a banned substance. “In fact, when I first received the product, I reviewed the list of ingredients and did not see any prohibited substances.” Singh was recently named in a SI report about a sports supplement company, Sports With Alternatives to Steroids, which claims to also have provided products for athletes including Singh and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.

Last summer, Richard Sundeen and his wife, Rosemary, went on a road trip from Missoula, Mont., to Alberta, Canada. At the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, they were treated to a nice surprise. "I walked out of the door of our cabin and this female elk was calmly munching on the leaves of some bushes immediately in front of me. She was one of several in and around the bushes. " The Manhattan Beach resident used a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. To submit your photos, visit our reader photo gallery . When you upload your photos, tell us where they were taken and when.

The latest test results of deer killed in Wisconsin's fall hunts continue to show that a fatal brain disease in whitetail deer is confined to an area west of this city, the state Department of Natural Resources said Friday. But the testing found four more deer killed in the Mount Horeb area southwest of Madison were infected with chronic wasting disease, bringing the total to 48 since the disease was discovered in February.

The breeze off Biscayne Bay and playful fountains cool Vizcaya's elaborate gardens even on a sweltering summer day - not that International Harvester heir James Deering would have known. The Coconut Grove, Fla., mansion was his winter estate. When it opened in 1916, Miami's population was a mere 10,000. Why it's a treasure: With the help of painter and designer Paul Chalfin, Deering handpicked every item in his marbled mansion, deftly mixing a French harpsichord, Pompeian table, Venetian gates with an English manor house library, Chinese bedroom and south Florida coral rock.

The population of mice that carry hantavirus may have swelled in Yosemite National Park, a possible lead in the ongoing investigation into an outbreak of infections that has killed three people since mid-June. Recent trapping related to the investigation indicates that the park's deer mouse population is larger this year, said Dr. Vicki Kramer, head of the California Department of Public Health's vector-borne disease section. Deer mice are the primary carriers of hantavirus in the U.S. Agency officials have twice laid peanut butter-laced traps for the rodents at the park, Kramer said.