I have documented before about where I have spent over 35 years at “our” hunting camp and about 30 years ago it seemed every tree worth anything at all on hundreds and hundreds of acres was stripped clean. The excellent deer hunting turned to starkness, followed by more moose than anyone cared for. Today, the forests are regrowing and there are signs of the deer returning. This area also faces many coyotes.

During a flyover the winter before last, one warden told me this area looked like a blood bath of deer kills by coyotes.

I remember hunting in the seventies. It was awful. In 1975 I hunted everyday except one of the open season and never saw one deer – not one. You are right that Maine, particularly northern Maine, sits on the very outer fringes of whitetail deer range. Sustaining a deer herd in northern Maine is marginal at best but now couple that with the slashing of forests and in particular the deer yards, along with too many predators and now we are staring down the barrel of a non sustainable deer population.

We still have no real predator management program. All that has really been done is to lengthen the season on coyotes.

In northern and eastern Maine where the deer population suffers the most, shouldn’t we be considering increasing the harvest on moose that directly compete with deer for food? And shouldn’t we be increasing the harvest of bears?

Follow the money and the politics and you’ll find your reasons. It bothers me that in reports readily made by the MDIFW, we continually read that for “social” reasons certain aspects of wildlife management has changed, etc. Social reasons? In other words, they are doing everything they can to avoid fielding complaints from the animal rights groups and anti hunting groups and so they try to manage wildlife in a socially acceptable manner. Where’s the science?

I don’t believe you will ever see a change in the current “Any-Deer Permit” system of population management for deer. They are completely sold on it for several reasons, one being that it works well for them politically and socially.

Please do that. I have many friends that believe your three articles are the best ones that have come along in quite some time and like myself are waiting for your proposed solutions.

One friend confided to me that solutions do not matter because the discussions in the hunting camps about deer in Maine don’t rely much on fact or accurate observations. Just rehashing tired, worn, outdated and mostly untrue tidbits passed down from equally uninformed hunting companions. All the while huntable land and huntable deer populations both dwindle.

I have several former deer hunting companions that are still hunting with the worldview of a man in the 1960′s.

Proposed solutions do matter. I suspect what you write would be agreed to (at least in private) by every respectable wildlife biologist in the state.

Thanks,

Richard

The short of it is, I will plod ahead anyway as I’ve not seen anyone else offering much in the way of solutions.

Part IV will deal with things we can do to help our deer herds. If we have healthy deer and low densities we have to figure out how to work within the parameters we are faced with and restore our deer populations. MDIFW does not have the option to do nothing about it. They are mandated to care for our deer.