Still too many deer

A brief in this morning's paper says hunters killed more than 136,200 deer in West Virginia last year. That might explain why I haven't see that many deer along the back roads I frequently drive since the gun hunting season ended. But when I was driving down Route 2 from Point Pleasant on Sunday, I saw at least a half dozen dead deer on or along the road. In at least two places, I saw two dead deer side by side.

We still have too many deer in this state. That's why I've gotten all of one apple from the apple tree in my back yard in the past three years, and it's probably why I haven't gotten any peaches from my peach tree. If you have any garden, plants or trees you don't want eaten by deer, you have to put up a big, expensive fence.

Will the folks in state government ever get the idea that people other than hunters should have a say in controlling the deer herd? Probably not.

But then, I was just as pessimistic 25 years ago about ever working in a smoke-free environment in West Virginia.