State official says Maine has enough suitable habitat for a herd of 300,000 deer

HARRINGTON — Maine has enough suitable habitat to support a deer herd of 250,000 to 300,000, according to Richard Dressler of Bangor, leader of the Deer and Moose Project of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Dressler spoke Thursday during a meeting of sportsmen at Narraguagus High School.

During the mid-1980s, Maine had an estimated 190,000 deer, and the annual legal harvest was about 21,000 deer. During the 1989 hunting season, hunters killed about 30,000 deer, a total that is close to the state’s management goal, according to Dressler. He also said that the index of “hunter success” was 14 percent in 1989 and that the department’s management goals included a target of 15 percent as the index of hunter success.

Among the department’s tools for managing the state’s deer herd is the “any deer” permit system that was started in 1986. Under the system, hunters are allowed to kill does only by permit and only in certain areas. The department uses the any-deer permit system to protect female deer in areas where an increase in the size of the herd is desired and to reduce the population in areas that are considered to be overstocked with deer. Wildlife biologists say that the killing or protecting of does is the department’s most effective tool for manipulating the size of the deer herd.

Dressler said that the deer herd needed from 7 to 10 percent of its habitat as wintering area and that the department was concerned about the potential loss of wintering area because of timber-harvesting activities and development of the state’s unorganized territories.

Some sportsmen who attended the meeting challenged Dressler’s contention that Maine has surplus habitat that could be used by deer. Dressler said, “Southern Maine could carry more deer.”

Paul Birdsall, a farmer from Penobscot, suggested that the deer herd in his area had exceeded the carrying capacity of the available local habitat.

Birdsall said he also was speaking for other local farmers when he said that deer damage to agricultural crops had reached “that point where it has become a concern.” Birdsall said the deer “top his storage carrots.”

During the 1970s and early 1980s, local farmers had no problems caused by deer, according to Birdsall. With the department’s “bucks only” hunting season, the problem of deer damage was back, Birdsall said.

“I’m tired of putting up fences that don’t work,” Birdsall said. He asked Dressler to see if the department could come up with an effective means of keeping the deer away from the farm crops. When Dressler asked if Birdsall liked deer meat, Birdsall replied that he was a vegetarian.