It’s nearly impossible for any establishment to achieve success without a distinct and clear vision of what their mission is. On the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife(MDIFW) website, there is no “mission statement”. If one gleans through the many pages, they might be able to pick up certain statements that would tend to make them think certain things about what it is that MDIFW is aiming to do. However, is that clear and concise planning that guarantees success?

An example of what I mean can be found on the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources web pages. While it matters not to me or perhaps to you whether we agree with the information contained on those pages, at least there is a brief mission statement and stated goals and objectives. This gives the department written goals and objectives to strive for, provides that same information to the citizens of Utah and creates a written benchmark in which citizens can keep the department on task by a continual reference to those goals and objectives. This is basic.

Some states, like Montana, and approximately 12 other states, have gone so far as to amend their constitutions in order to protect the right to hunt and fish. Montana’s amendment reads: “Section 7. Preservation of harvest heritage. The opportunity to harvest wild fish and wild game animals is a heritage that shall forever be preserved to the individual citizens of the state and does not create a right to trespass on private property or diminution of other private rights.”

While it’s impressive that Montana has such an amendment, read carefully exactly what it protects concerning hunting. It protects “opportunity to harvest wild fish and wild game animals”, nothing more and nothing less. As citizens wishing to fully protect that heritage, wouldn’t it make sense to mandate fish and game departments to manage wild fish and wild game animals for surplus harvest for all citizens, along with protecting the opportunity?

This is the transformation that has taken place over the years by fish and game departments, hijacked by state governments, along with non governmental, environmental, and animal rights groups, to turn these departments into wildlife protection agencies. While most states’ fish and wildlife departments toss about the use of “opportunities” to hunt and fish, no longer do we find departments willing to state that their goals are to manage game animals for surplus harvest.

Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife(MDIFW) lacks a clearly written, well defined and accessible mission statement, complete with goals and objects. It also has no constitutional guarantee to provide surplus game or protection of “opportunities” and spends much of its time not only being manipulated by social pressures rather than using science, it goes out of its way to seek out and involve the public in setting management and population goals based on what the public will tolerate.

Evidently fed up with the bitching and complaining from hunters and associated industries, Maine crafted its “Maine’s Game Plan for Deer“. Prompted by a dying population of whitetail deer in Northern, Western and Eastern Maine, this plan was devised believing it would be the road map to recovery. What the plan lacks, once again is what I, personally, would consider clear goals and because of this, leaves sportsmen unsure of what exactly is going to take place, what the specific plan and achieved goals will be, specifically population objectives, and exactly who the Maine’s Game Plan for Deer was written for.

As a hunter, one would wish to see a statement from the Governor or at least the MDIFW Commissioner, stating that the objective of Maine’s Game Plan for Deer is to restore surplus populations of deer in all Wildlife Management Districts(WMD) for harvest opportunities. This would tell the sportsmen, who by the way are paying the bills at MDIFW, that the department intends to grow deer to levels that will give them surplus deer to harvest. Such a statement does no exist in Maine’s Game Plan for Deer.

As second choice, hunters might be satisfied for now if they could read or hear from the same sources that Maine’s Game Plan for Deer sets goals to rebuild deer populations that would increase hunting opportunities. That didn’t happen either.

As a matter of fact any wording or written statements that provide hunters any kind of reasonable assurances are quite lacking. The best I could come up with I’ll share below.

The MDIFW, after releasing Maine’s Game Plan for Deer, dedicated an entire newsletter to publish its new plan and discuss the whys and wherefores. Surely here hunters would find assurances.

In the newsletter, the following statement can be found:

While we’ve all been impressed by healthy deer populations, including trophy bucks, in parts of Maine, we’ve been concerned about low deer numbers in northern, eastern and western Maine. The population is below our publicly derived goals, and below the desires and expectations of hunters, guides and outfitters, rural Maine business owners, and those who enjoy watching deer.(emboldening added)

What does “publicly derived goals” mean? I can guarantee you it doesn’t mean more, better and guaranteed opportunities to harvest your deer to feed you family next fall. Further research shows us that Maine’s Game Plan for Deer is broken down into five elements.

One might also think that while publishing Maine’s Game Plan for Deer, an opportunity would be seized upon by MDIFW to assure the hunters, again those paying the bills, that this plan is for them (we are the ones who bitched and complained) and the purpose is specifically to grow deer to hunt. Instead, the preamble is about deflecting any notion of placing any blame for an abysmal deer herd away from MDIFW by stating: “there are several inter-related factors that are suppressing deer numbers” and the list does not include any slight hint of poor management. As a matter of fact, Commissioner Woodcock tells readers, “I’ve heard hunters claim that mismanagement on the part of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife caused the numbers to go down. That’s not true.” The dog ate my homework? Why does MDIFW exempt itself from blame?

So, if Maine drafts a Maine’s Game Plan for Deer, and in it there is nowhere that it even assures hunters that the plan is to grow surplus deer for harvest, then why are we paying for this and supporting it?

Element Two of Maine’s Game Plan for Deer is titled: Deer Population Management. Here’s what’s listed:
Strategies:
• conduct research to
• refine our current deer population model
• better understand interactions between deer,
habitat, and predation
• understand how moose management may affect
our ability to increase the deer population
• work with landowners to eliminate deer mortality
where winter feeding makes deer susceptible to
vehicle collisions
• increase law enforcement efforts to target illegal killing
of deer
• work with the legislature to increase penalties for
illegal killing of deer
(emboldening added)

If I wanted to write a book, I would address all of these issues. However, a strategy to “refine our current deer population model” needs attention because, after all, isn’t this what Maine’s Game Plan for Deer is about? How does MDIFW plan to “refine” this and what’s more, what IS the current deer population model? Oh, yeah! I recall. Maybe the statement made the other day that was published in the Bangor Daily News from Maine’s head deer biologist tells us what Maine’s “current deer population model” is.

We realize, more than anything, that moose are valued economically for viewing as well as hunting opportunity as well as being on the landscape and just the aesthetic of moose,” Kantar said. “We balance all those things. That’s our job.”

Just replace the word “moose” with “deer” and that probably fits aptly.

But I think Element Four should give us a better indication why Maine’s Game Plan for Deer is not a plan to increase your odds of bagging a deer next year or any year into the foreseeable future. It’s a plan to appease the public and in particular environmental and animal rights groups. Element Four is: “Deer Planning and Public Involvement”.

MDIF&W has employed public participation to develop management goals and objectives for many species of Maine’s wildlife, including deer. The Department has conducted species planning since the early 1970s and has refined and expanded the process with each planning update. Most recently, the 1999 Big Game Working Group set the Department’s deer population management objectives for 2000-2015.

Deer are a public resource, but live on private lands. For any wildlife management effort to be successful, especially those occurring on private property [including deer wintering area management] society must determine: 1] the wildlife management result it desires, 2] the effort that it will undertake or require to achieve the result, and 3] to achieve the result, how much of the effort / cost will be borne by the private landowner and what, if any, society will bear.

You may view this statement in much the same way as does MDIFW, the governor’s office, the Maine Legislature and probably the majority of the Maine population. You agree with it and/or find no fault with it. However, it’s this mind set of “we’ve been doing this “since the early 1970s” that people think because they have it must be right. It’s not! It’s wrong on every count. It’s why there are no more deer! Why is this difficult to comprehend?

Deer is a resource that must be managed scientifically. We are now at a point where our fish and game departments allow the dictates of social pressures, and yes, even the social perversions of extremism, to directly influence how it manages wildlife. We, as yet anyway, don’t directly control our human populations based on what society dictates, do we? Please say no.

As a hunter, here I sit trying to figure out how we have gotten to this point. Since I was ten years old, I have invested in the Maine fish and game department. I didn’t do it because I had nothing better to do with my money. I did it because I like to hunt and fish. I did it because I was told that coughing up money each year for a license was a good thing and that money would be used to make sure that I had fish and game to harvest when I was hungry. This is my investment and your investment. We are still paying for it and we have nothing to say about it while the environmentalists and animal rights advocates have infiltrated our fish and game departments and all through state governments. And they pay nothing for the privilege of telling MDIFW what it will and will not do. There once was a time when sportsmen had ownership and the influence. No more, and that’s very sad as well as a troubling commentary for our future.

Maine’s Game Plan for Deer, like the hapless MDIFW without goals, without strategies, without a mission, is not a plan that will promise to increase your hunting and harvest opportunities. The Plan makes no such promise, while only stating it will work to increase deer populations that fit social demands only. With a department that protects the predators that destroy the deer, you might get some limited opportunities to hunt deer but it certainly is not what most hunters have in mind…..or at least used to.

Tom Remington

Without even giving the debate on predator control in Maine a chance take root and accomplish goals, the debate now seems to be shifting toward the moose herd, including winter ticks and the new revelation that Maine has an estimated moose population of 75,000 or more.

Much of the fervor over winter ticks and moose began in early December when Terry Karkos, staff writer for the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine, penned an article about two guys who spent time in the woods last spring looking for shed antlers, found a lot of dead moose all covered with winter ticks.

He and a few friends said they found 50 dead moose calves and adult moose this year in the Jackman region while looking for horns and doing some spring fishing…………………

Eighteen people, including Mason, found 142 dead moose across Wildlife Management Districts 2, 4, 7, 8 and 12, which stretch from the Western Foothills to Aroostook County.

Those interviewed for the story attribute the deaths of these moose to winter ticks.

These are definitely not winter kill,” Mason said recently. “Of the typical winter kill animals like moose, it gets sick, it stands in a small area and basically you find 400 moose droppings and a dead moose in the middle of it………………………….

Every single one that I had found and that the other guys had found, the snow was just starting to come off them and they were totally untouched, so it’s obvious it’s not a predator kill,” Hall said. “You could see ticks right on them.

A deer and moose meat processor from Minot told Karkos, “I think we need a winter without any snow and about minus 30 (degrees) for a month and a half, because that’s the only way you’re going to get rid of them.”

That’s sort of the same story that seems to get spread around about winter ticks. There is information available and I think for the most part the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) biologists and others have done a respectable job getting out information about winter ticks.

In a November 6, 2011 Sun Journal article, once again Terry Karkos gets information from some of MDIFW’s biologists about the winter ticks.

Maine wildlife biologist Chuck Hulsey:

Winter ticks are affected by what the previous winter was,” Hulsey said Friday. “If you have a lot of snow and a lot of cold, that’s not good for the ticks. If you have less snow and more warmth, it’s really good for the ticks.

Maine wildlife biologist Lee Kantar:

In October and November, winter tick larvae climb shrubs and grasses, gather in huge clusters and wait to ambush moose as they walk past, Kantar said.

“When the ticks are on that bush and they sense the heat of the moose walking by, they basically grab a hold and the whole cluster of moose tick gets onto the moose,

There seems to be a bit more information about winter ticks that I haven’t found in any Maine publications that deals more in depth with what happens in the fall when the winter tick larvae are gathering on vegetation waiting for a free ride with a host. In addition to that, while these winter ticks effect all wild ungulates, why pick on the moose so much. And, it is said that the winter ticks don’t actually kill the moose, but rarely, are we looking at an honest assessment of all factors that kill a moose weakened by tens of thousands of blood sucking ticks?

Lee Kantar says that the winter tick is a “huge contributor” to the death of some moose, he also points out that, “it’s not the sole cause”. Even on the MDIFW website, information provided about moose states that, “winter tick and lung worm infestations rarely kill moose”.

This information is supported in existing studies about moose and winter ticks. William M. Samuel and Dwight A. Welch, “Winter Ticks on Moose and Other Ungulates: Factors Influencing Their Population Size” states that winter ticks (dermacentor albipictus) being the cause of death isn’t certain because, “unequivocal evidence is lacking”.

I think therefore it might be honest to conclude that the cause of death in the majority of dead moose being found in the Maine woods that are inundated with ticks, was not the tick alone. There had to have been other factors. We’ll address those in a moment.

First I think it important to better understand what takes place in the fall of the year. We have read statements from biologists and outdoor sportsmen that seem to indicate that Maine needs little snow and very cold temperatures to kill off the ticks. While that may be true it’s not the entire story in the life cycle of these ticks.

Samuel and Welch state that for there to be significant die-offs of winter ticks, you need 6 consecutive days in which the temperature does not exceed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This is not the only way to kill the ticks and/or lessen the severity of ticks on moose.

During the fall months, in Maine’s climate around September and October, the winter tick larvae find their way onto vegetation. They clump together on the ends of small branches etc. These larvae can be found on vegetation just above the ground to quite high up in trees. The larvae wait until a passing, warm-bodied host, in this case a moose, passes by and then they attach themselves to the moose and the ride begins. You can read all the splendid details by reading the studies, etc.

It is during this time of year, September/October, that certain weather events can have a significant effect on how severe the tick season will become. Early cold temperatures, especially those below freezing, will greatly reduce the activity of the larvae, i.e. limiting their effectiveness of attaching themselves to the moose or even migrating up the stems of vegetation.

Early snows can bury the larvae and stiff fall winds will blow the larvae off the vegetation scattering it around and to the ground preventing the larvae from being able to find a host. The studies of Samuel and Welch, as well as others, seem to agree that the weather events of the fall have a greater effect on tick production than hoping for enough snow and cold in winter to kill the ticks. Without a host, the larvae die.

There are other interesting things to be discovered about moose and winter ticks. For example, these winter ticks bother all wild ungulates, i.e. deer, moose, elk, etc., but most scientists will agree that it seems to be the moose that is the most effected. It is assumed that it all has to do with timing.

The aggregation of the larvae on vegetation seems to more closely fall in line with the timing of the moose mating season. During this time, moose are most active, covering greater amounts of territory than normal and male moose travel more than the females and thus explains the observation by some that it seems bull moose are more effected by the winter ticks than cows. I believe this conclusion about bull moose vs. cow moose is based on assumptive reasoning than anything concluded through scientific study.

In the Samuel/Welch study, experiments were conducted and it was determined that moose have an aversion to larvae/tick infested food. Imagine if they didn’t. If moose have an ability to smell or sense the larvae on the vegetation and in their food, it might also help to explain the claims of some and what is obvious on the ground that predators and scavengers won’t touch the dead carcass of a tick infested moose.

Studies have shown us that there can exist tens of thousands of ticks on any one moose and that this number of ticks can certainly put the moose into a weakened state. Moose are already in a weakened state just trying to survive the winters. Compound that with 50,000 ticks and the problems snowball. However, as we have learned, the ticks alone rarely kill a moose but certainly contribute to it.

When the blood sucking begins, the moose spends much of it’s time “grooming”. Studies tell us that moose that are troubled by the biting ticks do not bed down as often nor as long as non infected moose. This of course tires the animal even more.

While studies seem to be lacking on exactly what happens to the composition of the moose’s blood while all these ticks are feasting, it is honest to assume that the more female, blood sucking ticks there are on a moose, factoring also the moose’s body mass, the greater a weakened state is realized due to loss of blood.

All of these factors and more, make the moose more vulnerable to all the other elements that contribute to normal winter kill. In other words, it becomes more difficult to get enough nourishment; loss of blood and reduced winter hair makes the moose more susceptible to hypothermia; spending so much time “grooming” expends valuable energy needed for survival and with all these losses a moose certainly could not ward off attacks and harassment by predators.

This is perhaps where I’ll get ambushed but please consider the facts and possibilities. There is no denying that coyotes/wolves will harass and kill moose, deer and elk during their weakened winter states. Even though it is seen and believed to be accurate that predators and even scavengers will not touch a tick-infested moose carcass, at what point does a pack of hungry wolves/coyotes know their target is tick infested.

Some of us have been made aware through written and video accounts of how these predators take down and kill, often eating alive, their prey. We have also seen videos and photographs that document coyotes and wolves chasing down their prey. How long could a moose, weakened by normal winter strains and tick infestation, last in trying to run away from a predator attack? Not long I’m afraid. Would the moose have survived if the predator wasn’t there? There’s no way of knowing the answer to that question.

Which brings us once again back to the same point about predators. It seems that when all things within our forests are going well, little concern is given to predators and the effects they have on our game animals. When things get skewed, those populations of predators loom large over the forests and can raise some serious cane even to a point of prohibiting the rebuilding of a herd of deer or moose, in this case a herd that might be suffering some from these blasted ticks.

So, what do we do about the ticks? What can we do? In one report a gentleman suggested some kind of spraying program to kill the ticks but I’m not sure how feasible that is or if that’s something we want to pour onto our landscapes. We can’t control the weather but we can control the predators. But, is that the answer either to this exact equation?

In George Smith’s blog post yesterday, he explained that one Dr. Anthony who attended a recent information session on Maine’s moose, suggested that instead of trying to limit hunting permits for moose to protect them due to increased mortality from ticks, that killing more of the moose might be the better solution.

I’ll leave you with some questions. Feel free to chime in below in the comments section with some answers.

1. According to George Smith’s blog post I referenced above, in 2007 the estimated moose population of Maine was 45,000. Now Lee Kantar, Maine’s head deer and moose biologist claims there are 75,000 or more. Are there now too many moose in Maine which is exacerbating the tick problem?

2. If so, do we kill more moose during the moose hunt? Or do we protect more moose?

3. George Smith states that the new moose counts are, “more credible than any previous estimates”. He offers no substantive proof of his claim. Do you think the new counts are more “credible” or accurate than previous and why?

Who would have thought 35 years ago Maine would be asking if the state had too many moose?

Tom Remington

In Maine, not unlike many other states, biologists are scrambling to save face. I think that some thought they could hide behind the distraction of an election year cycle with Maine elected a new governor who consequently appointed a new fish and wildlife commissioner. However, the problems that once existed prior to Gov. LePage’s inauguration haven’t gone away.

I have written several times of recent about another new task force anointed with trying to figure out why out of state hunters stopped coming to Maine to hunt. It appears that all reasons under the sun are listed but the idea that they might not want to come is because there are so few deer to hunt, wants to get swept back under the rug and not talked about; I suppose hoping it will just go away and somehow global warming will reconstruct a deer herd.

Whether you think nonresident hunters are losing their preference for Maine whitetail deer hunting, doesn’t change the debate about whether a hearty population of coyotes/wolf hybrids is contributing to that deer demise and to what extent it’s happening.

This article in the Sun Journal discussing the divide between what many hunters think the coyotes are doing and what the biologists think is typical. Please take a read, as it really is the epitome of fish and game public relations problems nationwide.

None of us should ever lose track of the facts of what affects our deer herd. It is a fact that loss of habitat has an effect. It is a fact that severe winters have an effect. It is a fact predators have an effect. It is a fact too much hunting has an effect, etc. etc. etc. I would suppose that if the group of wildlife biologists in Augusta really wanted to protect severe winters and present them as a necessary and vital part of our ecosystem, they also wouldn’t want to talk about how severe winters kill a lot of deer. Am I wrong? Similarly, if I really wanted to protect hunting opportunities, I would claim that hunting is a vital part of our ecosystem management and that harvesting deer via hunting was a good thing. Am I wrong? The same for habitat and predators.

So how much of the attention the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) gives to explain losses of deer is based on predator protection, while beating the drum of everything that has a negative affect on deer as being the real problems?

As I said, there exists this divide. Many hunters spend far more hours in the field and have a unique opportunity to observe what is going on. Let’s face facts and admit that hunters, as a whole, are not trained observers…….but then again, who is? So why does it appear all the time that whatever the man in the field says is going on is denied by biologists? And why whatever biologists say is denied by hunters from the field?

Personally, I think the biggest cause for the divide is the result of the indoctrination our wildlife biologists are receiving from their institutes of higher indoctrination. Often they are fed garbage. They are convinced of the garbage they are presented and bring it with them to the job. When a crusty old hunters surfaces and says where there used to be dozens and dozens of deer is now overrun with coyotes claiming coyotes to be the culprit, that is automatically disregarded because that isn’t what they were taught in school. School says coyotes hunt alone and do not kill adult healthy deer. All else is rhetoric and emotions.

But there are other reasons for this divide. Here’s just one example that comes from the article I linked to above. The article makes a fair attempt to present differing opinions about who is correct in the amount of destruction the coyote brings to deer management, but fails in my opinion.

Lee Kantar, MDIFW’s head deer and moose biologist, has always beat the drum of loss of habitat, hunter land access and severe winters as the culprit behind the destruction of the deer herd. While at times alluding to predators as a possible problem but only when deep snows exists, he clings heartily to his theories generally dispelling any notion of predators being a serious problem.

But what are we to believe? Reaching up his sleeve to pull out the severe winter card, Kantar says:

“We’re in a cycle right now where we’ve had some pretty rugged winters for deer over the last five years,”

He further goes on to say that coyotes just aren’t killing deer when there’s no snow on the ground because he says, “There’s no evidence of that.” There is evidence of that but because it comes from them crusty ole hunters, it can’t be believed. That wasn’t in those text books.

Here, Kantar eagerly insists we are in the middle of about a five-year cycle of severe winters and that’s really taking it’s toll. However, in the same newspaper, the Sun Journal, two weeks earlier, Mr. Kantar and fellow biologist, Chuck Hulsey, are discussing ticks on Moose and how devastating those ticks have been on the moose in Maine. Here is Hulsey’s statement about winter and ticks:

“Winter ticks are affected by what the previous winter was,” Hulsey said Friday. “If you have a lot of snow and a lot of cold, that’s not good for the ticks. If you have less snow and more warmth, it’s really good for the ticks.”

The writer of the article, Terry Karkos states:

That’s what happened [less snow and more warmth] this past winter, and it’s why the biologists have heard many reports this spring of people finding more moose carcasses than usual in the woods.

On November the 6th, moose in Maine have been dying in numbers enough that it seems to concern the biologists and the reason for these deaths is from ticks because of less snow and more warmth.

On November 20th, in discussing what affect the coyote has on Maine’s deer, these MDIFW biologist tell us that it isn’t the coyotes killing the deer, it’s the past cycle of five years of severe winters. Well, which is it?

And this contributes to the divide.

The Maine sportsman, just like any other state’s sportsman, just want honest dialect. When contradictory statements are made, it lends to suspicions of dishonesty and cover-up. When no communication is accomplished, all hell breaks loose.

Somehow sportsmen and state officials have to find a way to destroy this divide. State fish and game departments should do the jobs they are paid handsomely to do. They should come to the office with the attitude that they don’t know everything and things are changing. Science research changes old assumptions and applications. It’s alright to accept that and move on.

When hunters are repeatedly telling wildlife biologists coyotes are killing all the deer, spring, winter, summer and fall, what is gained by disregarding that information and clinging to the old myths about coyote predation and habits just for the sake of belligerence needing to be right?

This repeated denial, scoffing and demonization by wildlife biologists sends the message loud and clear that they are more interested in predator protection than managing game for surplus harvest. And yet, still, they refuse to understand where the money comes from that pays their salaries.

This is the epitome of arrogance.

It is not my intention to brow-beat MIDFW but until I hear satisfactory answers, based on modern science and not fiction and begin to see actual action being undertaken to rebuild a deer herd, as we have been promised, right on up to the governor, I will continue to call out what appears to be dishonesty and corruption.

Tom Remington

The fifth of Five Elements of Maine’s Game Plan for Deer looks like this:

Public understanding of the Department’s deer management plan and public support for the plan is essential for it to be successful.
Strategies:
• the Department will enhance its public outreach on two fronts:
• better informing the public about the many aspects of deer management and updating the public on progress in deer rebuilding efforts, and
• better providing information on ways concerned individuals and groups can improve deer habitat
• MDIF&W will increase public understanding and support for it efforts to increase the deer population

How is MDIFW doing? Are you satisfied? If you’re not, don’t remain silent. We were promised better. Now ask yourself if you are getting it.

There is one thing I learned very early on in life when it came to public service as well as my own adventures in business – keep the people informed. This is the best money spent. There’s several things wrong with our government and a lack of communication is one of them. The other is communicating the wrong information. If those two things could be overcome at MDIFW, many of the other problems with public relations would go away. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. After all, we are talking about a government agency here, one that is no different than any other and fails are communicating effectively because they want to keep information from us.

Sorry if I’m stepping on someone’s toes here but that is the reality and until someone can show me differently, I certainly will not change my approach.

To give credit where credit is due, at least MDIFW and all those involved in creating the Plan, if there were others, recognized that it was important enough to include as one of their five elements of things necessary to accomplish in order for the plan to work. If that is true and they fully believed that, then I ask sportsmen again to ask themselves if they are satisfied with the information and the amount of it that MDIFW is giving us about our deer plan to restore the Maine herd.

I’m not and here are the reasons why. In early February, MDIFW began sending out Deer Progress Reports. What was planned to be a weekly report began getting scattered until the first part of April when it was announced that aerial surveys of deer ceased because deer were no longer restricted to deer yards.

Three months passed by and MDIFW sent out a “Summary” of the past progress reports which I’m not sure I would call it a summary of deer progress but more of an update of plans with no specific data to satisfy the masses of sportsmen.

Perhaps I am different than most sportsmen but nothing I received all winter and into the summer told me much of anything as it pertained to the condition and the status the deer herd. While each progress report included a report of any predation issues, mostly what we were subjected to were copy and paste reports like this:

Staff monitored winter conditions [temperature, snow depths, deer sinking depths, and snow profile characteristics] at 26 individual monitoring stations throughout the state to estimate the impact of winter conditions on deer mortality.

How difficult would it have been to provide that information? If staff monitor winter conditions do they record it? I’m assuming they record it because I was told by Lee Kantar, head deer biologist at MDIFW, that this information is used to come up with a Winter Severity Index. This index is used as part of their calculations to formulate an educated guess as to how many deer died from the bad winter and how many survived.

My point is, if it’s recorded, why can’t it be at least placed on the MDIFW web site where sportsmen can go look at it? I don’t see this as being a difficult thing to do for this and/or all other data collected. Is there something to hide or are we just being “protected” by the enlightened here?

Sportsmen can view this in any fashion they so desire. I’m not so naive that I don’t understand that certain things cost certain money. I am however, savvy enough to know that certain monies, invested the right way can pay big dividends. If MDIFW wants our help as they claim, that begins by helping us.

However, there is more to replenishing Maine’s deer herd than monitoring winter weather stations, doing winter aerial surveys and trying to figure out if coyotes are killing many deer in the deer yards during winter. Maine has four seasons. Do we ignore them?

There are two major issues that I would like to see reported in deer progress after the winter surveys are improved upon. At some point in time, the biologists at MDIFW arrive at a fawn recruitment rate or percentage. This is done by compiling data from several areas, including spring time observations in the field. It’s not complicated this part of it. You look in a field with deer and you count how many does and how many fawns and do some math.

We can talk about predation mortality until the caribou come back but the survival of the Maine deer herd is dependent on the number of fawns that survive to replace the adult deer that die off from various things. Simple math can show that if more adult deer die off than new deer can replace them, eventually you will achieve ZERO.

Also, it is not being passed on to the public that predators’ have great impact on new-born fawns in the spring. Black bears are up and about and hungry. They know, as do the coyotes, bobcats, lynx, etc., where the deer traditionally go to fawn. They kill new born deer. These same predators understand migration routes for when pregnant does leave the deer yards and head back to their stomping grounds. They lie in wait.

Do we ignore this and hope it goes away? Perhaps monitoring this event is more important than reporting on “reports” of depredation problems during winter. Let’s demand that we have an accounting. Let’s see if there is anything we can do as sportsmen to limit or reduce fawn mortality in the spring. Let’s demand an accounting from MDIFW of recruitment and fawn mortality.

Here are questions for readers: Do you know what the current estimated deer population is in Maine? Do you know what the total deer mortality rate is per year? Do you know what the adult male, adult female and yearling mortality rates are each year? Do you know what the fawn recruitment for Maine is? Do you know at what level it needs to be just to sustain a population? Do you know what the mortality rate is for vehicle deaths? Do you know what data MDIFW biologists collect at tagging stations? Do they test for any diseases and if so what? Do they test for age of deer? Do you know what the age structure is for Maine’s deer? Do you know why age structure is vitally important? Why can’t we have all this information made easily available to us?

The second thing is harvest data. I see few legitimate reasons why sportsmen can’t have first count data on deer and bear harvests without waiting 4 – 6 months for that information. Yes, for some of us it’s nice to have the full report and examine harvest data by town, etc. but the overwhelming majority of hunters would like to see preliminary numbers within days of the end of hunting season. Let’s demand it.

I’m sure there are tons more issues sportsmen would like to see addressed. Demand it. Make noise. Don’t let officials off the hook. They told us they were going to do a better job of communicating information to us. I’m not satisfied. If you’re not, demand more. It’s your investment.

Tom Remington

Finally! The province of New Brunswick has weighed in on antler point restrictions in Maine with a rebuttal to “The Argument for Whitetail Antler Restrictions in Maine” from its chief deer biologist, Rod Cumberland. It’s curious to me though that I’ve heard nothing back from Maine Commissioner of IF&W, Chandler Woodcock. I personally had given the commissioner a copy of this op-ed for his review and comment prior to its being published here on the Black Bear Blog and later in the June edition of The Maine Sportsman.

Mr. Cumberland’s assertion that “there are few BIG bucks in Maine because there are FEW DEER in Maine” is spot-on. However, the percentage of those few BIG bucks (2-1/2+ years) to the total herd is much lower than it could be with APR management in place.

Maybe Mr. Cumberland misunderstood my article. I’m not advocating shooting does instead of bucks. I’m in favor of not killing does AND little bucks. I want more deer of all kinds with a bias toward quality (i.e., older bucks).

Quality deer management is all about allowing little bucks to mature into big bucks. Brook trout have to be at least 6” long to keep in Maine. Catch-and-release doesn’t work with whitetails.

Hard data is difficult to come by. Until recently, the Maine DIF&W managed the Maine deer herd under the assumption that (in at least two WMDs) the deer densities were “about 20 deer per square mile”. After the aerial surveys, Lee Kantar [head deer biologist at Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife] discovered that the density was “likely less than 15 deer per square mile”.

Tom Remington (Black Bear Blog), in referencing an article by John Holyoke (Bangor Daily News), questioned Kantar’s quote in an April 18th article by asking the obvious. “So if it’s less than 15, is it 14.5 or 2?” Remington expanded: “What makes me “overly” concerned is that after one winter of flying over 2 Wildlife Management Districts (there is) a rush to chop permits by 46%. This should be overly concerning to everyone because it tells me estimated deer populations, by modeling, in the southern part of the state aren’t anywhere near what MDIFW thought they were. Making a 46% adjustment isn’t “staying on top of the game”. If that’s the case, what else isn’t quite what MDIFW thinks it is?”

Mr. Cumberland maintains that best estimates of buck-to-doe ratios in Maine are at 1 to 2. Does any Maine hunter really believe the buck-to-doe ratio in Maine is 1 to 2? I want to see the empirical data on this metric!

Reducing either sex permits by 46% in those WMDs where they haven’t already been completely eliminated is necessary in my book to help bring back the total size of the deer herd in Maine. But, now hunting pressure is either exclusively or at least keenly focused on buck deer. Wouldn’t it make sense to take some of that pressure off 1-1/2 year old bucks? Do we have to wait until the problem gets worse (e.g., Pennsylvania) before taking action?

It’s true that a small number of bucks are able to inseminate a much larger population of available does. But no way can they do it in a single estrus cycle. Late born fawns will do better in Pennsylvania winters. In Maine, late born fawns will be the first to succumb to winter kill …if they make it past the gauntlet of coyotes here in Maine. A drawn out rut exhausts the few breeding bucks to the point that they too are at risk to Maine’s winter kill.

Read this page from Buckscore about the negative affects of skewed buck-doe ratios:

“Breeding is mainly controlled by photoperiod (day length) and genetics, but adult buck to doe ratio can also greatly affect when fawns are born. In many areas of the whitetail’s range, there are too many does than bucks and this can have profound effects on the herd.

If the ratio is too skewed towards does, there likely won’t be enough bucks to bred all the does coming in to estrus during the rut, causing the does to come back into estrus again 28 days later, and the cycle repeats until she is bred. This causes fawning to occur over a longer period of time, which can cause issues.”

As far as being accused of contempt for government, I guess I’m guilty.

Harry Vanderweide sums it up pretty good for me in the June Sportsman. “In the past, the legislature voted to match 20 percent of the Department’s budget with money from the state’s General Fund. They then ignored the law they passed and didn’t allocate the dollars. When Governor Paul LePage was running for office, he promised he’d include $16 million from the General Fund in his budget to better fund the Department. So far, he’s not kept that promise.”

Mr. Cumberland’s rebuttal contains good points. Some of those points are in my opinion out of context here in present day Maine. There is one of Rod’s assertions, however, with which I am in total agreement. “One thing is certain, APR’s do lower buck kill, so maybe hunters in Maine would like this – it would be a benefit. However, if you have very few deer, the salvation of your deer herd does not lie in the use of an Antler Point Restriction.“

You’re correct Mr. Cumberland. The salvation of the Maine deer herd lies in the proper funding of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Bob Provencher
Freeport, Maine

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is up to its usual shenanigans, playing games with science, misleading the people and playing into the hands and agendas of the leftist environmentalists. The USFWS has planned a public meeting in Augusta, Maine on June 8, 2011 in order to take public comments on the proposal to remove the gray wolf from Federal protection in the Western Great Lakes (WGL) Distinct Population Segment (DPS). What they are not telling the people is the truth, which for those who follow the workings of the USFWS, should come as no surprise.

Everyone should be made aware that what the USFWS is proposing is political only and doesn’t even have any semblance of science involved at all.

Consider! The gray wolf issue has become a conundrum that has no political, legal, or scientific resolve. It is a mess of giant proportions whose sole creator is the USFWS. They rightfully own it all. Because of this quagmire, Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg proposed in the United States Congress, H.R. 549, a bill that would exempt gray wolves from any tyrannical grip of the Endangered Species Act.

Therefore, it is of no coincidence that the USFWS would respond in the way they have by simply creating a “new” species of wolf. I’ll explain further.

While the wolf wars remained at a fever pitch in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, pressure was being put on the USFWS to remove gray wolves from Federal protection in the Western Great Lakes DPS. It is my opinion that the USFWS actually never intends to delist wolves but that doesn’t slow them from implementing their shell game.

To appease those putting on the pressure, the USFWS announced their intentions to delist gray wolves in the WGL, but what they didn’t explain in any honest fashion, this magical discovery of a brand new species of wolf, the eastern wolf, in which the USFWS declares, “that the gray wolf subspecies Canis lupus lycaon should be elevated to the full species C. lycaon.” How convenient I would say. What a better way to avoid H.R. 549 than simply renaming the wolf to eastern wolf. Should we now run back to Congress and have them amend the bill to just say, “wolves” of all kinds? Absolutely!

It is quite amazing how the USFWS plays these games with species and subspecies only to benefit their own agendas of what they intend to accomplish.

Regardless, people all across the U.S. should pay very close attention as to what is actually being proposed here.

The USFWS announced its intentions to delist the gray wolf in the WGL. In addition, it will remove 29 states from the list of states that provide habitat for the gray wolf because the USFWS have now decided after 38 years that gray wolves never actually lived in these states. Instead it was the eastern wolf.

In addition, it was announced that in the WGL DPS, both gray wolves and eastern wolves occupy the same territory. What then does that mean? I believe it is the intent of the USFWS to name the eastern wolf as an endangered species. Why else would they go to all this trouble? Should they do this, it effectively renders the delisting of gray wolves in the WGL as nothing but a political ploy to turn the cost of managing wolves over to the states and at the same time will be stripped of any means of controlling those wolves.

Once the USFWS announces the eastern wolf as endangered, any ideas of hunting or trapping gray wolves in the WGL will become impossible. Between gray wolves, eastern wolves and coyotes, even the most trained eye cannot distinguish between the three critters. How then can there be hunting and trapping?

Consider the remainder of the 29 states. With the eastern wolf declared an endangered species, the same effect will be realized. All hunting and trapping for any canines will effectively be halted. Hasn’t this been the goal of USFWS and their Pied Piper friends within the animal rights and environmental groups?

Maine is one state that faces a very serious problem already with a rapidly dwindling deer herd. Deer slaughtered by predators is one of the problems and even now with ESA restrictions in place and a fish and game department that refuses to address predator problems in any serious fashion, what little coyote control that is allowed with hunting and limited trapping, will be gone. What then happens to the deer herd and other species that are being decimated by the coyotes?

But if you think this isn’t bad enough, I’m afraid is does get worse. Wolves, coyotes and other canine members carry disease. Wolves are rampant carries of up to 30 infectious diseases, among them hydatid disease, that can be fatal to humans.

The naysayers will deny the existence of such diseases and some will acknowledge it exists but insist it’s never been a problem. That’s not true. It has been around and probably is in place to some degree in many of our ecosystems but we have never had the “perfect storm” in which this disease is enabled to spread.

Wolves, coyotes, foxes, etc. carry the echinococcus granulosus egg. They are known as the definitive or primary host. When they leave their scat (feces) behind, carriers also leave behind perhaps hundreds of thousand of tiny echinococcus granulosus eggs that actually can become airborne. These eggs remain alive and potent for long periods of time getting into the ground and vegetation, even the waterways, to be ingested by elk, deer, moose, cattle, sheep, etc. These animals become secondary hosts and most often develop cysts, where the tapeworm that grows from the eggs live and thrive. These cysts are found in lungs, liver, the brain and even in bones.

Humans can contract this disease by breathing in or ingesting these tiny eggs. Think of the possibilities. You’re out in the woods hunting, hiking or just taking a leisurely stroll. Knowingly or not you encounter wolf or coyote scat. You step in it or even worse, you decide to kick it out of the way or inspect it. Tiny eggs become airborne and you breath them in.

These eggs can get into water. On the same hike, you stop at your favorite pool for a drink of cool and refreshing mountain water. As a result you ingest the tiny eggs.

Wolves and coyotes regularly are hanging about ranchers, farms, residences, etc. or you let your dog run free. Your dog rolls in his favorite pile of wolf/coyote scat and comes home to play with the kids. The dog licks their face, etc. etc. Do you see the possibilities? Endless!

What makes the wolves such profuse carriers of this disease has a lot to do with diet and the extensive distances these animals are known to travel. Wolves make ungulates (deer, elk, moose, etc.) their main diet. Once the disease is established, the wolves can take down an infected elk or deer. They consume the worms and the process starts all over again. This is repeated hundreds of thousands of times resulting in unbelievable piles of scat dotting the countryside. It perpetuates until nearly every wolf and coyote is infected.

I learned in my early years of education that when you allow too many animals into too small areas, you get disease outbreaks. That’s what’s happening here. If the wolf and coyote populations are allowed to go unchecked the potential exists for some serious exposure to this disease.

In Idaho, already 2/3 of all gray wolves in that state alone, are infected with echinococcus granulosus eggs. It’s only a matter of time before we learn of our first human infection of hydatid disease. It is not easily detected and most times is discovered by accident. Should these cysts rupture, a person can die from the toxic shock.

Authorities will tell us that their states don’t have these diseases. Don’t necessarily believe them. Ask them how they know that. Lee Kantar, head deer biologist in Maine, told me Maine doesn’t have this disease but also admitted they never test for it either. It’s impossible to find something if you’re not looking for it.

So, as the USFWS begins their process of magically creating a new species of wolf, remember that should they also attempt to declare the eastern wolf an endangered species, all hunting and trapping of coyotes in the WGL and 29 other Eastern U.S. states will cease immediately. With that kind of protection, none of us can imagine what our ecosystems will look like with the spread of this and other diseases. This can’t be allowed to happen. We’ve never had to deal with this kind of political blackmail ever. Why would we willing create an atmosphere that can breed deadly diseases? We are not a Third World country.

The public hearing in Augusta, Maine is nothing more than a despicable political charade in order to hold the hunting and trapping world hostage to further the agenda of the environmentalists. They want their wolves and they intend to get them at any price. Are you willing to pay with your life or that of your family members so other can have their wolves? There is absolutely no science here and what is presented is intellectual garbage. Don’t buy into it.

*Update:* Almost immediately upon posting this article, I received and email containing the copy of an address that Dr. Valerius Geist made to the Boone and Crockett Club about hydatid disease. You can read that letter by following this link. Dr. Valerius Geist is a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and a world renowned authority on wildlife ecology and animal behavior.

Tom Remington

First up?

“The state’s head deer biologist on Wednesday said that hunters and wildlife watchers shouldn’t be overly concerned by the reduction, however.”

For whatever the reasons an overnight 46% reduction in antlerless deer permits should be concerning for everybody. When was the last time MDIFW decided to reduce numbers that much, excluding the decision to end all “Any-Deer” Permits in northern, eastern and parts of western Maine?

Lee Kantar, MDIFW’s head deer biologist says that people are getting “mixed up” with what’s going on in northern, eastern and western Maine and southern Maine. I’m not “mixed up” but I’m overly concerned and I’ll explain why.

When you read comments like: “This [reduction in permits] is just looking at what’s occurred in past winters and getting some new information with our survey work and staying on top of the game…….”, is what “overly” concerns me. MDIFW boasts of how their doe management program is the answer to deer management. We have been told that the allotment of “Any-Deer” permits in the southern part of the state, where severe winters don’t take such a toll on the deer herd and predators aren’t much of a problem, takes care of population management goals very nicely, thank you. We have been led to believe MIDFW was “staying on top of the game”.

What makes me “overly” concerned is that after one winter of flying over 2 Wildlife Management Districts and a rush to chop permits by 46%. This should be overly concerning to everyone because it tells me estimated deer populations, by modeling, in the southern part of the state aren’t anywhere near what MIDFW thought they were. Making a 46% adjustment isn’t “staying on top of the game”. If that’s the case, what else isn’t quite what MIDFW thinks it is?

What else makes me “overly concerned”? How about this:

“If you look at the buck and doe harvest [between 1999 and 2010] there’s no change. The modeling that we do showed that back in 1999 it looked like there were about 20 deer per square mile there.”

After the aerial surveys, Kantar discovered that the population density was likely less than 15 deer per square mile.

The population density is likely less than 15 deer/sq. mile? So, if it’s less than 15, is it 14.5 or is it 2? This reminds me of the Joe Perham fishing story he often told. Two men went fishing and one guy caught a fish. Upon returning home, someone asked if they had any luck. The guy who caught the fish said he caught one that was 9 inches long. The other guy says, “You never tell anyone how long your fish was. You tell them, you wouldn’t think it was bigger than 15 inches.”

Mr. Kantar asks people to be patient and tells us that what is being done is being done by design. While I realize we can’t afford to do fly-overs to count deer herds each year, it is troubling to find out the modeling and estimating isn’t living up to the reputation we have all been told over the past several years. This should make us overly concerned and it should give us pause to ask what else isn’t living up to the reputation we are being told? – bears? lynx? coyotes? bobcats? moose? winter severity? habitat?

The upside to this is that if 2 fly-overs has actually resulted in the discovery that even our southern deer herd needs help, then I will recant my opposition to spending $100,000 to do the aerial surveillance. We shall see.

Photo Design by Richard Paradis

Tom Remington

What prompts this feeding, which isn’t just common to the The Forks – other towns in the state also feed deer – goes beyond having the opportunity to see wild deer. Today, that effort is very much rooted in saving deer. Maine’s deer herd has been in a skid for about 30 years, coming to a head after the bad winters of 2008 and 2009, to a point that in many places some biologists fear the herd has reached unsustainable levels; meaning it may never recover on its own.

So why not feed deer?

In this report, certain “experts” and members of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), pour on all the reasons why it’s bad to feed deer. Ready?

Lee Kantar, head deer biologist, MDIFW:

“It is a difficult circumstance because the north country has changed quite a bit. The best people can do is try to be advocates for the protection and conservation of wintering areas,”

It’s all about the habitat you know.

The reporter writes, what I’m sure she has been indoctrinated to say over the years:

feeding areas are prime places for spreading diseases………..

Deer also are sensitive to abrupt changes in diet and can die if fed the wrong thing………………

Kantar again via the reporter:

Even if fed the correct food, deer that are crowded together are prone to fighting one another, Kantar said, preventing the weaker deer, who need food the most, from receiving it. Also, feeding programs often draw deer across roads, increasing the likelihood they’ll be struck by cars.

Question! Deer in the woods don’t spar over food?

However, according to Berry, the number of deer kills by automobiles had dropped since they began feeding deer; from 60-80 to around 11 (they are tracked and registered locally).

Chuck Hulsey, a regional wildlife biologist based out of Strong:

“There’s certainly more deer hit than what a citizen sees and tallies.”

And Hulsey claims the negative aspects of feeding deer outweigh the positive, citing one pregnant doe run over the other day carrying triplets.

Hulsey adds:

Deer “were successful before people started to feed them. It’s just that the population level isn’t where people want it. But it doesn’t mean they’re a species in peril of disappearing. They live in a place that’s a challenge to live but there is natural food out there for them,”

Tell that to all the hunters who have covered many miles in Maine’s woods over the past few years and rarely, if ever, see deer. Must be they are poor hunters.

Kantar:

If a feeding site is too far away from a wintering area, Kantar said, deer will use up valuable energy and fat reserves to travel to it.

People also sometimes don’t realize how much it will cost to feed deer, Kantar said.

Well there you have most of the talking points from experts as to why people should not feed deer and one who even claims the negative aspects of feeding deer outweigh the positive.

The very person who emailed me the link to this article also asked me this question: “And why in hell are they spouting off about something like feeding a deer when they have lost 2/3rds of the state’s deer under their management over the past two decades.”

I think that is a very reasonable question to ask. Under their plan the deer herd has shrunk to perhaps all time lows. Where once the herd crested over 300,000, still shy of population objectives statewide, has now dipped to probably below 200,000. I’m guessing probably because the population guesstimates statewide the MDIFW has been using, according to data collected by recent aerial surveys, indicate their estimates may have been too high.

Certainly there are right ways and wrong ways to feed deer and people should learn the right way in order to eliminate or reduce those blasted “negative” effects of feeding. But really, it has become obvious that the MDIFW over the past several years has been incapable of even stopping or slowing down the decline of the deer herd. Now we are supposed to believe they know all about how feeding deer is harming the deer herd?

Hmmmmmmm! Aren’t there more important issues we should be focusing on to actually do something about this deer problem? Yip! Yip! Yaooooooooooooooooooooo! Oh, yeah. That’s right. It’s all about the loss of habitat ain’t it!

Tom Remington

Outraged because their investment over the years to fund the MDIFW has resulted in a near 50% reduction in the allotment of “Any-Deer Permits”. This equates to a direct reduction in your opportunity to put venison in your freezer next fall. Outraged that it took almost 3 years for leaders at MDIFW to actually try to do something about reducing deer harvest in order to boost the deer herd. Outraged that your success rate to bag a deer has fallen into the cellar.

There is something good, in that the new MDIFW Commissioner, Chandler Woodcock, made the unpopular decision to cut permits. (Unpopular mostly to those who might suffer from a loss of license revenue.)

I still do not like the language related in this press release about the reasons Maine has no deer.

“For the last few years, particularly after the harsh winters of 2008 and 2009, people have expressed concerns about the reduction in deer populations statewide, with some regions of the state experiencing more of a decrease than others,”

Is it that it’s just so easy to spew forth those words of blame about severe winters? How difficult is it to list the main reasons? And would the commissioner actually include predators? What’s also troubling is to send out a press release that reads that “people have expressed concerns”. Are you kidding me? This is way beyond concern. Tell it like it is. It lets everyone know you do know what’s going on………don’t you? Hunters are angry. They’ve been screaming for a reduction in antlerless deer permits for years and begging to bring back snaring and do something about overgrown populations of bears and coyotes. I think this is beyond being concerned.

The other issue I would like to address involves the wasted money MDIFW laid out for aerial deer counts. The appropriated amount of $100,000 spread out over 2 years came at a bad time. That’s why it was a waste in my opinion. I think every hunter who stepped a foot into the woods in the past 3 years knows there aren’t any deer and they strongly believe that MDIFW’s guesstimates of herd populations were much higher than reality. As has been the case for many years, MDIFW refused to listen to those in the field and so wouldn’t consider this a problem until they spent $100,000 to fly over 2 Wildlife Management Districts (WMD) to count deer. I laughed at what appears in this release about the counts.

The aerial surveys enabled wildlife biologists to gather empirical data on deer abundance in WMDs 17 and 25. When the results of the survey were analyzed with other data, it showed that WMDs 17 and 25 are below deer population objectives and that these areas in southern and central Maine need to be stabilized, as well as northern, eastern and western Maine.

Before we go praising the results of the flyovers, let’s examine what this really tells us. It tells us more than likely that all WMDs are below population objectives or at least that MDIFW doesn’t know what condition the deer herd is in all over Maine. Surprise!

Am I being hard on these people? You bet I am. It was at least five years ago when sportsmen in Northern Maine were beating down my email inbox asking me what could be done about a disappearing deer herd, and how can they get MDIFW to stop issuing “Any-Deer Permits” to help stop the downward spiral. And what about those dang predators?

It just seems that in Maine, and I’ve witnessed this in other states as well, action by fish and game experts comes far too late to be most effective and less expensive. It is nearly impossible to rebuild an extirpated deer herd than a reduced one.

Now the problems exacerbate. MDIFW has a revenue problem. With fewer deer, equating to lousy hunting, and now a reduction of some 22,500 hunting opportunities, what will happen to license sales?

While I can sit here and say, “it’s about time”, I can just as easily ask what took so long and why wasn’t something being done 30 years ago?

Here’s the MDIFW press release:

AUGUSTA – The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is proposing a reduction in antlerless deer permit allocation numbers for this fall’s hunting season as part of its ongoing efforts to manage deer herd numbers statewide.

Commissioner Chandler Woodcock is proposing 26,390 antlerless deer permits for the state’s 29 wildlife management areas this year, a reduction of 22,435 permits or 46 percent from 2010. The allocations are based on biological and harvest data, winter weather information, population density levels and other factors thoroughly researched and analyzed by department wildlife biologists.

Antlerless deer permits also are known as “any-deer” or “doe” permits. This year is the 26th year that an any-deer permit system is being used to regulate antlerless harvest during the firearm and muzzleloader season. Once the allocation numbers are finalized, the department will inform hunters when it is time to enter the any-deer permit lottery.

“For the last few years, particularly after the harsh winters of 2008 and 2009, people have expressed concerns about the reduction in deer populations statewide, with some regions of the state experiencing more of a decrease than others,” said Commissioner Woodcock. “We’ve listened, and in recent years, we’ve conducted additional studies, including aerial surveys, to determine the full depth of this situation. We need to help our deer herds grow. This year’s any-deer permit allocation is one step in that direction.”

The proposed allocation is not the final number and could be changed. Commissioner Woodcock’s recommendation has been discussed through two of three rulemaking steps before the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Advisory Council. Additional data still are being ascertained, including completion of this year’s winter severity index, in which biologists survey how deer fared during the winter, and will be presented to the council during its May meeting. It is not anticipated, however, that the permit number will swing dramatically.

“As is the standard operating procedure, we summarize and analyze annual harvest data, multiple-year harvest trends, age and sex ratios, annual mortality influences, reproductive trends, hunter effort and sighting data, and population indices each year,” according to state deer biologist Lee Kantar. “Thus the question of population trajectory is informed by a large amount of data that provides the input to our stepwise permit allocation process.”

Last winter, the department conducted an aerial double count survey similar to what was pioneered in Quebec and adapted by New Brunswick’s deer management program. The aerial surveys enabled wildlife biologists to gather empirical data on deer abundance in WMDs 17 and 25. When the results of the survey were analyzed with other data, it showed that WMDs 17 and 25 are below deer population objectives and that these areas in southern and central Maine need to be stabilized, as well as northern, eastern and western Maine.

“The aerial survey results provided some much needed data in reference to our most critical question to be addressed, that is where does the current population by wildlife management districts stand in relation to our publicly derived WMD population objectives?” Kantar said.

For 2011, the department is recommending that 17 of the state’s 29 wildlife management districts as “bucks only.” Districts not experiencing a reduction in antlerless deer permits this year are WMDs 21 and 29.

In the last five years, Maine has experienced a sharp decrease in harvest, from 29,918 in 2006 to 20,063 in 2010.

The public is invited to comment on the proposed antlerless deer permit allocation. Deadline for comments is May 13. Comments may be addressed to MDIF&W Deputy Commissioner Andrea Erskine, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, 284 State St., SHS 41, Augusta, ME 04333 or email at andrea.erskine@maine.gov.

If the tidbits of information I am getting about this plan, to be announced by the governor and “outdoor partners”, is any real indication of what sportsmen and “outdoor partners” can expect, is much more of the same as Maine has seen in perhaps the past 40-plus years. I hope I am dreadfully wrong.

Last week George Smith, former Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine executive director and now outdoor activist and community organizer, told his followers of the highlights of the plan from Sandie Ritchie, MDIFW biologist who has been put in charge of implementing this deer plan. More on Ritchie’s plans in a moment.

The Maine “White-Tailed Deer Population Management System and Database” of July 2007, pretty much is an expose on what is wrong with Maine’s deer management plans. Will this new plan step outside the barriers of this “Management System and Database” to get at the real root of the problems? It’s very doubtful and here’s why.

Let’s start at the very beginning. The first paragraph of the “System” reads:

This document describes the system being used by Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) biologists to make recommendations for white-tailed deer population management. Included are the processes to translate available data into management decisions (Part I) and an evaluation of the techniques for estimating deer population attributes used in the decision process (Part II). Supporting information is provided in various appendices.

And that’s pretty much it. There are 186 pages to this report but other than learning about all the technical information of how the data is collected and why, how it is interpreted and used, this “system” achieves nothing more than gives biologists all the numbers to crunch in order that they can come up with the number of “Any-Deer” permits to issue for each of the Wildlife Management Districts (WMD). This they term deer management. Any notion to “translate available data into management decisions” rests completely on issuing permits.

Yes, it is a bit more complicated than this but what really makes it extremely complicated is when politics and social demands take precedence over biology. Injecting these two poisons into science renders the science tainted and unusable.

In defense of Lee Kantar, the head deer biologist and chief numbers cruncher, what he has to do to arrive at how many Any-Deer permits to issue, does require collecting an awful lot of data and processing it. All sportsmen can sit around and argue about the finer points of the data being collected. There are some data that are hard and should leave little room for argument; such as the information biologists collect at tagging stations. But there is also some real gray areas that stir the dander in all of us, leaving us to question whether it’s accurate, political, agenda-driven, social pressures or any or all of the above.

One of the critical parts of working the data in the “system” is a determined deer population. Nobody knows for sure what the population is. It’s really nothing more than educated guessing but can that education cause population estimates to fluctuate more than anyone at MDIFW wants to admit? Let’s say, for example, denying that predation kills more deer than is believed. Will that give wildlife managers false information and inflated population estimates? Will it also force management into areas far less effective to control populations of deer? How does all this translate into your hunting opportunities?

I have subscribed to the notion that what many of us have discovered about Maine’s deer management plan is that because of back-to-back severe winters, it punched holes in the plan. This is not necessarily true. What the two bad winters did is accelerate a festering problem that’s been in the works for 40-plus years.

MDIFW acknowledges:

Deer populations had been declining since the late 1960s in response to severe winters, loss of wintering habitat, increased predation, and inadequate regulation of deer harvests.

If MDIFW has known that deer populations have been dropping since the late 60s, what has been done about it? Well, they developed the Any-Deer Permit allocation system in 1986. Since then that’s been the bulk of deer management.

Read through the 1985-1999 Deer Management Plan and the 2000-2015 Deer Management Plan and you’ll clearly see that it is the intent of MDIFW to boost deer populations to levels that should make everyone happy. The problem has been, they have tried to do this all by adjusting up or down the number of Any-Deer Permits issued for each WMD. This is sometimes referred to as doe population management. This form of deer management has been a failure for Northern, Eastern and Western Maine and MDIFW admits it.

During the 1985-1999 planning period we were largely unsuccessful in our efforts to increase deer populations in eastern and northern Maine, except in some transitional WMDs (e.g., WMD 7, 12, and 13). In many eastern and northern WMDs initial reductions in doe harvest did seem to result in positive herd growth. But by the early 1990s and thereafter, most populations had declined or remained stable at unacceptably low densities. By the end of the planning period, only populations in WMDs 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13 had attained the 50% of MSP population objectives established in 1985 (Lavigne 1999). In many of Maine’s eastern and northern WMDs the very conservative doe harvest strategy we adopted between 1983 and 1999 seemed only to reduce the rate of decline in deer populations, instead of enabling herd growth to MSP.

And yet, MDIFW continues walking down the same street and falling into the same hole. Even though a semi-passive management plan of observation, data collection and issuing permits isn’t getting the job done, little else has been attempted and the “system” provides for no plans of action in the event of two severe winters in a row, or out of control bear and/or coyote populations, or a disease outbreak, etc. MDIFW has to learn that their Any-Deer Permit system is not everything they might think it is.

When you examine the “system” you will see that for most every conceivable instance of fluctuations in data collected the “processes to translate available data into management decisions” is a change in permits to be issued. As part of the decision making process MDIFW asks these questions: Is herd at target?; Is herd stable?; Have “normal” mortality recruitment patterns changed? They answer these questions by reviewing all of the collected data and then they have to make a department decision on how to react to these changes. As such, here is a list of options: Stabilize herd by issuing any-deer permits at stabilization ratio; Increase herd by reducing any-deer permits; Decrease herd by increasing any-deer permits; Calibrate any-deer permit allocations proportional to rate of change in population status, etc., etc., etc.

As we have discovered and is admitted by MDIFW, simply adjusting the number of permits isn’t achieving management goals in areas where it is desirable to increase deer numbers. So what is being done about it? The lack of any real action is what is angering the sportsmen.

MDIFW admits it has the authority to address predators:

MDIFW is also empowered to address excessive predation on deer by coyotes and depredation losses to dogs through its Animal Damage Control Program and wildlife depredation statutes.

What good is having that kind of authority if you are not willing to admit there’s a more serious problem and then implement it?

The “system” makes casual references to predators in recognition that they contribute to “all mortality” of deer, yet provides no action other than permit manipulation in “processes to translate available data into management decisions”.

So, why doesn’t Maine have an action plan. For 40-plus years deer numbers have been declining. For nearly 20 years license buyers for deer have dwindled 46,000. Is anyone savvy enough to recognize that something in addition to counting Any-Deer Permits needs to be done?

Back to Sandy Ritchie’s deer plan as paraphrased by George Smith. Most of it provides nothing new but we can further scrutinize when the actual plan is available – assuming it will be made available to the general public. Ritchie says:

Deer population management. We’re talking about doe population management. We need to update our data and model, better understand interactions between deer, habitat, predation, and moose management impacts on deer, (emphasis added)

Talk is cheap. While many in the science world of wildlife management are grasping information contained in new studies that suggest considerable contrary information about the relationship between deer and predators, Maine appears asleep at the wheel. If the MDIFW is heavily infiltrated with neo-biologists indoctrinated into the fantasies of “natural regulation” and the “healthy ecosystems” when they contain predators, there is little hope of getting them to read any of these studies, let alone act on them.

Ritchie further states:

Predation – coyotes and bear. “This is the big one everyone’s talking about.” We haven’t had funding since early 2000s to put together a targeted and sustained predation control program. We’re looking for “General Funds.” We’re looking at bear population goals and asking, “How can hunting and trapping stabilize the bear population.” There is no interest in reducing bear populations. We’ve got to ratchet up our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incidental take permit application for trapping and push forward to get the permit. “The big thing about predation is it needs to be targeted, focused, and most importantly, sustained.” Snaring is prohibited by court consent decree. “Some of the tools are no longer available.”

Lack of funding is a very lame excuse. MDIFW is mandated to take care of all species. They’ve failed miserably on deer in portions of our state. The laundry list of excuses is tiring – habitat loss, bad winters, mild winters, development, global warming, poaching, predators. While this list of excuses grows the list of what’s being done about them hasn’t changed in 40-plus years. Who’s fault is that? Has it ever occurred to anyone at MDIFW that many years ago, focus and available funds needed to be retrained on deer?

It galls me to read, “There is no interest in reducing bear populations.” I think there’s a lot of interest in reducing bear populations. I also think there’s a lot of interest in reducing moose populations as well in areas where deer have reached unsustainable levels. Is our deer herd to become extinct due to the wishes of a few?

I also hear the excuses of fearing the environmentalists if Maine hunters begin killing more bears. What is it they can’t see. If environmentalists were really concerned about protecting wildlife why aren’t they leading the charge to stop the death and destruction of whitetail deer in portions of Maine?

And, I wish someone in Augusta would tell the people the entire truth about snare banning. Ritchie is correct in that by court consent decree, snaring in critical lynx habitat is prohibited. What they fail to relay to citizens is the continuation of the ruling. That is, the ban remains in place until such time as the MDIFW applies for and receives an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) explicitly for snaring. By consent decree, once Maine has that permit, the decree is voided but that still doesn’t necessarily provide for the snaring of coyotes. The Legislature, shortly after Judge Woodcock’s Consent Decree, outlawed snaring and made provisions for only the commissioner of MDIFW to deem when it was necessary to use snaring to kill coyotes and save deer. Will the new commissioner have the chutzpa to allow snaring after it obtains an ITP? Or will the Legislature have to repeal that ban?

Maine needs a plan with bite, that will not only address the current problems but one that will carry into the future. The current methods of collecting data and analyzing it, although expensive, seems to be as effective as any can get. It may be based on existing deer populations that not everyone agrees on but outside of that, minus the politics, agendas and social pressures, works quite well in my opinion. But it’s not enough and that’s where changes need to be made.

We all recognize the influences that affect deer management and population control. Instead of year after year sitting in an office looking over data and concluding that deer numbers are still dropping, there needs to be action plans that can be put into effect to help create positive growth or reduction. There needs to be an effective predator control program. One that’s ready to implement upon notice. If Ritchie is serious about better understanding the interactions between deer and predators, one of the first things MDIFW can do is stop making poor excuses why predator control doesn’t work. First we hear that predator control needs to be targeted and then in deer management plans the state refuses to recognize any predator plan as viable because it isn’t effective statewide.

Every aspect of deer management needs contingency plans. In many cases the issuing of Any-Deer Permits is effective. The days of doing nothing about declining deer numbers must end and end now. Will this happen? Are the political and social influences so deeply embedded into the structure of the Maine Government and the lives of Maine people that any needed changes, as tough as those decisions might be, can be implemented?

Please prove me wrong!

Tom Remington