Q: With so many deer being killed by cars these days, what is the difference in the deer population now and 50 years ago? Also what is the difference in what a hunter could shoot 50 years ago and now?
—Tony V. Parrott, Fayetteville
A: The deer population in Georgia in the mid-1960s has been estimated at 125,000.
The current estimate is 1.27 million, Charlie Killmaster, the state deer biologist with the Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division, told Q&A on the News in an email.
Georgia had a human population of about 3.9 million in 1960. Its population was estimated at 10.2 million as of July 2015, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“At the same time … the number of vehicles nearly tripled, which is the other part of the equation for deer-vehicle collisions,” Killmaster said.
The bag limit in the 1960s was 1 deer (only in counties open for deer hunting). The current bag limit is 12, Killmaster wrote.
Q: During World War II, we were flying somewhere over southern Europe at 20,000 feet. We looked down and saw a round rainbow. We were told this was impossible, but there were too many to deny it. What could cause this situation?
—Frank Burnette, Decatur
A: A circular rainbow is called a glory.
Glories can be observed on clouds or fog from planes or elevated points on Earth such as buildings or mountains.
They are an “optical phenomenon that’s observable when water droplets backscatter light,” NASA states at NASA.gov. “Glories look like small, circular rainbows of interlocking colors.”
Andy Johnston with Fast Copy News Service wrote this column. Do you have a question? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
