The other day I received an email from a reader and concerned deer hunter. I was told that it was alright to release the information in that email. Below is a draft of thoughts and ideas on how to move forward on restoring Maine’s depleted deer herd. It was authored by George Smith, Executive Director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.
The draft it appears was emailed to the Board of Directors of SAM and Smith indicates that his board instructed him to prioritize the deer problem. I will copy the proposal below and save comment for a separate post. Once that post is completed, I’ll come back and provide a link to it from here.
More responses: Fact Finding
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SN Jan Deer Solution
Everyone Must Step Up to Help Deer
By George Smith
There is a job for every one of us in the campaign to bring back the deer herd in all regions of the state. SAM intends to lead the campaign. We cannot and will not give up on deer or deer hunters.
Since writing a series of articles on 2009’s dismal deer season, I have been gathering suggestions for all quarters including groups representing landowners, sportsmen, and guides, and from sporting camp owners, SAM members and other sportsmen, and wildlife biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Deer hunters are disappointed and angry. Some are very angry. It is imperative that we act quickly to direct that anger in a positive direction and present credible plans to rebuild the deer herd. Here are the ideas that I think merit consideration.
First, keep this process in mind: Effective action follows understanding follows fact finding. Get this out of order and you could do more harm than good.
Fact Finding
Job one is to fully understand the facts of this situation. Many are casting blame in all directions. It’s time to step back and gather all available facts. This need not take long. We look to landowner organizations like the Maine Forest Products Council and to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife for the information needed to properly assess the situation. I’ve already learned a lot in meeting with these interests over the past few weeks. We’re not looking to cast blame. But we must know as much as possible about the situation.
The information needed includes: 1) an evaluation of the system of voluntary deer wintering area management agreements between DIF&W and large landowners, and LURC zoned deer yards; 2) a report on the amount and quality of deer wintering habitat now available in the unorganized territories on private and public land; 3) an evaluation and explanation of the 2009 deer season including harvest and license sales; 4) an accurate estimate of the current deer population by WMD; 5) an explanation of the major challenges in restoring deer numbers to DIF&W’s population goals for each WMD.
The Truth
We cannot sugar-coat this situation. Hunters deserve to know the truth. What is the situation? What can we expect in 2010 and the years beyond? What will work? What won’t work? Who is stepping up to help? Who is not? These truths must come from every organization, including landowner groups, SAM, and DIF&W. And we better be together on this. There is simply no room for argument, or a shading of the facts to suit someone’s agenda. SAM seeks a commitment from all major players to both fact finding and truth telling. I am promising you will get nothing but the unvarnished truth from SAM, even if some of it is hard to accept.
Coyote Hunting Network
Every Maine hunter should make a commitment to try coyote hunting in 2010.
SAM has made a commitment to aggressively promote coyote hunting. We have already posted a how-to guide on our website and will print it in the January/February 2010 SAM News. It is written by former DIF&W deer biologist Gerry Lavigne, now a consultant to SAM on deer and coyote issues. We are also working with Gerry and URSUS Productions to produce a video with similar information.
Previously we published Gerry’s articles advocating for a Coyote Hunting Network. He has made a compelling case that hunters can reduce coyote populations to a level that will sharply curtail predation on deer.
We have also asked DIF&W to be a full partner with SAM in promoting coyote hunting, through its Information and Education Division. There are other ways DIF&W can help, including gathering bait (from road-kills and other sources) for recreational hunters to use to hunt coyotes.
We are working with the outdoor industry, specifically with guides and sporting camp owners, to promote coyote hunting as an add-on to all other hunts in Maine. Get a bear on your first day? Get back in that stand and shoot coyotes. Done your turkey hunt at noon? Stick around and call in a coyote.
Help the Outdoor Industry
DIF&W should convene a meeting of the key players in the outdoor industry, including the Maine Professional Guides Association, Sporting Camp Owners Association, and Maine Tourism Association, to create a list of actions that can be taken to help those who have been hurt by 2009’s disastrous deer season and by diminished prospects for deer hunting in the north woods for the foreseeable future. SAM will help.
If DIF&W is unwilling to do this, SAM should do it in partnership with the outdoor industry.
I have two suggestions: 1) vastly increase moose hunting opportunities; and 2) aggressively market fishing opportunities for both native brook trout and smallmouth bass.
SAM already took one action to help the industry, asking DIF&W Commissioner Dan Martin and his Advisory Council to reconsider its recent decision to hold a third week of moose hunting in northern Maine in October, and to schedule it in November to help make up for lost deer hunters. Commissioner Martin agreed to do that and the Council will meet on December 22 to act on this request.
Deer Wintering Areas
Fingers are pointing at landowners for cutting deeryards, but there are many deeryards with few or any deer in them. Clearly the problem is more complicated that this. Many elements are at play. Deer wintering areas are one of them. When DIF&W’s Wildlife Division Director Mark Stadler says we do not have sufficient deer wintering habitat, I believe him. SAM’s own deer consultant, Gerry Lavigne, says we need one million more acres of deer wintering habitat.
I also know that some landowners are doing a terrific job of managing deer wintering area, in cooperation with DIF&W and on their own. For example, DIF&W Regional Wildlife Biologist Rich Hoppe reports that he has a great relationship with Irving Woodlands and the company is doing a good job of managing deer wintering habitat. Irving Woodlands manager John Gilbert recently told me that more than nine percent of the company’s extensive land holdings are managed for deer wintering habitat, a very significant commitment from them.
DIF&W’s Director of Resource Management, Dr. Ken Elowe, says on Maine’s two million acres of conservation land, deer wintering habitat management is a top priority. But these areas don’t seem to have any more deer than other areas. We need to know why (see fact finding above).
The Maine Forest Products Council, Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine, and DIF&W have created new guidelines for managing deer wintering habitat, and both MFPC and SWOAM have promised to encourage their members to utilize the guidelines.
SAM is insisting that this new voluntary management system include real accountability. We appreciate the commitment of MFPC and SWOAM to encourage landowners to participate. And we’re especially grateful to those landowners who have already stepped up. We will tell you who those landowners are in the near future.
DIF&W must measure that level of participation and report to all of us on an annual basis. We want to know how much land is being managed for deer wintering area, where that land is, which landowners are participating in the voluntary program, and most importantly, which landowners are not. SAM will praise the participants and get after those who refuse to help.
DIF&W may also need to beef up the state’s deeryard zoning rules, so they can be effectively applied to landowners who refuse to participate in the voluntary program. This stick need never be used. But if it is needed, it ought to be available. The current zoning rules are unworkable, ineffective, and rarely used.
Multi-species Management
Other species are negatively impacting deer. Moose have over browsed the food supply. Bears are eating a lot of fawns in the spring. Coyotes are slaughtering deer in the winter. Even the resurgence of bobcats is hurting deer. And some sportsmen think turkeys are also having an impact.
All of this is simply what I have heard or think. We must know the truth. And most importantly, we have to get together, as a sporting and landowning community, and decide how we want all of these interactions to be handled.
The Maine Forest Products Council and SAM have asked DIF&W to convene a new multi-species working group to sort through the facts and issues and prepare a plan that resolves the conflicts and specifies our preferences and expectations including favored species and habitats.
We will learn a lot from this process. For example, it will shock some folks to learn that some species would benefit from more clear cutting. Maine’s Forest Practices Act limits clear cutting to small areas and has resulted in harvests spread over a greater amount of the landscape, not a good thing for some critters.
DIF&W’s Mark Stadler responded to the request from MFPC and SAM with a commitment to host a meeting in early 2010 to present DIF&W’s process and work plan for conducting the multi-species planning work. Included in the discussion will be the make-up of the working group, its role, and a meeting schedule. This is a very positive and critically important effort.
Deer Harvests
All aspects of the deer harvest must be re-examined. This would include the locations of expanded archery hunts and the bag limits for those hunts, and the number of any deer permits issued in each district. Deer hunting seasons should not be curtailed or closed. There is no need to do this, and it would be harmful to the sport, to the economy, and to the department. The any-deer permit system works, and can be ratcheted back as necessary (2/3 of the state already gets no permits).
Best Management
The state should create a policy that makes deer wintering area management and predation control the top priorities for all public lands, state parks, and easement lands. We should work with private and nonprofit landowners to encourage them to do the same. SAM will ask the legislature to establish this priority in law.
DIF&W should also work with SWOAM to publish and provide information on roadside plantings, food plots, and other ways landowners can help sustain deer.
Landowner Relations
Deer are more plentiful in suburban areas. DIF&W, and every individual sportsman, should make landowner relations a top priority, working to maximize the amount of huntable land in suburban areas. Suburban hunting does involve different techniques than deep woods hunting, and we should all work to educate ourselves about these new techniques, and look for areas where they can be employed.
I have found that much posted land can be hunted, if the hunter gains the respect and confidence of the landowner.
It would help if the state required a phone number on all posting signs, especially those that the state gives out free of charge that say “Access by Permission Only.” SAM will work with SWOAM to see if we can get agreement on this.
SAM intends to sponsor and organize a conference for sportsmen and landowners in the spring, to explore deer management issues and other similar topics. We will also devote a significant portion of our 15th Annual Sportsman’s Congress to deer issues.
DIF&W Staff
The department must reallocate staff time and resources to the management of deer and deer wintering habitat, and the other programs specified in this plan. No other hunting constituency comes close to the numbers of deer hunters, and the challenge of rebuilding the deer herd must not fall short of receiving the resources necessary to get the job done.
Other Ideas
The following suggestions intrigue me. I offer them here merely for the purposes of discussion. Some may have merit. Others may not.
Deer Feeding: DIF&W appears willing to rethink its strong message against deer feeding, at least to the extent that it would offer information about the most effective ways to feed deer, and the specific areas (including deeryards) where such feeding would be most helpful. This would be a major departure and another indication of the department’s willingness to think outside the box.
Deeryard Protection: DIF&W could revive its program to hire ADC agents to protect deer in specific yards, mostly with coyote traps, perhaps combining this with a targeted deer feeding program in those same yards. DIF&W might also designate important yards that hunters could protect, perhaps with help from wardens in locating coyote bait.
Money: hunters might be asked, through higher license fees or other mechanisms, to fund initiatives to pay for management of deer wintering areas, deer feeding, and predation control programs.
Coyote Night Hunting: the season could be expanded and the permit fee suspended to encourage more hunters to try it.
