Deer

A builder has provoked emotional protests with a plan to hire a sharpshooter to kill 200 deer to make way for a housing development. City Council Vice President Geri Edens said at a public hearing Tuesday: "There's no reason for us to be leaping to a fatal conclusion here." But state officials agreed that developer Tom Natelli's shooting proposal for the 383-acre tract in the Washington suburbs is the most effective.

Animal researchers examining the partially eaten carcass of a deer found on the campus of UC Davis concluded that the killer was a mountain lion. The deer was one of a research herd of black-tailed deer surrounded by an eight-foot fence in the western section of the campus. There had been three or four sightings of mountain lions, or pumas, on the campus since July. Campus safety director Bern Shanks said. "It's almost unheard of for mountain lions to attack people unprovoked.

The state is not responsible for damage caused by marauding deer, despite a program by the Ohio Natural Resources Department to increase the number of wild deer in Ohio, a court has ruled. The 10th District Ohio Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 this week that the state owns wildlife for the benefit of the public. But it rejected a suit by Robert D. Bowers II and Carol Bowers, operators of the Laurelville Fruit Co., seeking $26,558 for damage done by deer.

It was a simple suburban pleasure for Melissa Caven, watching from her Burbank living room as three deer that had wandered down from the nearby Verdugo Mountains grazed in her front yard. Then, to her horror, a man slid from a nearby car with a crossbow. Her scream sent the deer scattering for the hills Sunday, but an arrow killed a fleeing 100-pound doe. It dropped dead in a driveway a block away. The urban hunter is being sought on animal cruelty charges, said Burbank police.

Near tract homes and strip malls, archery hunters in camouflage gear stalk the portly deer that roam here, just outside Kansas City. This is not a wilderness experience. The hunters are conducting a controlled deer kill in a suburb, one of many calculated attempts to thin the Midwest's healthy herds of does and bucks this fall.

A glut of hungry deer are making landings and takeoffs difficult at a rural northern Sonoma County airstrip. A herd of eight deer seem content to nibble grass along the edge of the runway at the Sea Ranch airstrip, often blocking the path of moving planes. "It's pretty amazing," said pilot Steve Kaplan. "The deer just stand there and watch you roll by, or they prance across the runway, oblivious that something is coming toward them."

The National Park Service has approved a disputed plan to eliminate about 1,300 nonnative deer from Point Reyes National Seashore over the next 15 years. Park officials said they would use a combination of shooting and contraception to kill off about 300 axis deer and 1,000 fallow deer in the 100-square-mile national park in western Marin County by 2021.

Game officers and volunteers headed into the Everglades on Wednesday to gather native plants to feed starving deer that are trapped by high water. So far this month, more than 50 white-tailed deer have been found dead, some in water too deep for foraging, in an area west of Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Game officials estimate that 1,500 deer are stranded in the area. Gov.

Humans and deer long have coexisted peaceably in Sierra Madre Canyon, nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains about 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Deer trails there meander through backyards of bohemian cottages and hillside houses. But in the past few months, that relationship has been shattered by the deaths of at least five deer and subsequent protests against a fence that critics say caused those deaths.

Two state troopers responding to a fatal accident caused by a moose each hit a deer on their way to the wreck. A truck had collided with a tractor-trailer that had stopped to avoid hitting a moose near the Canadian border, killing one driver and injuring the other, authorities said. Trooper Mark Lopez said that both he and trooper Bruce Staples collided with deer en route to the accident. Neither officer was hurt.