SOUTHWEST HARBOR – Camouflage caps and flannel shirts rustled in the bleachers of Pemetic Elementary School Tuesday night as a crowd of about 50 people listened to experts who presented information on how to manage Mount Desert Island’s deer herd, and whether there is an overpopulation problem.

“Slowly, one by one, towns and islands are all looking at the management of the deer herd,” moderator Skip Wilson of Southwest Harbor said.

The question of whether or not to bring back some kind of deer hunt in Mount Desert, Tremont and Southwest Harbor likely would be posed at the towns’ annual meetings if interest in the matter continues to be high, officials said.

Hunting has been abolished in the four towns that make up MDI since about 1905, according to Bruce Connery of Acadia National Park.

“My guess is that the wealthy landowners wanted to have a sort of refuge kind of place where they didn’t have to worry about those activities on the island,” he said of early anti-hunting efforts.

Herd populations have fluctuated in the park over the last century, rising after the 1947 wildfire because of the good forage available and dropping after a 1960s population reduction program, car-deer accidents and the migration of coyotes to the island in the early 1980s, he said.

“Between the normal mortality factors of coyotes and cars, that population seems to be suppressed,” he said. “The deer largely moved out of the park onto private property along the coastline.”

The towns of Mount Desert, Tremont and Southwest Harbor all have formed deer committees this year to examine whether or not residents support bringing back some kind of managed hunt in order to decrease possible transmission of tick-borne Lyme disease, deer-car accidents and damage to gardens and landscaping. Bar Harbor has not yet formed any such committee.

“Try to raise a garden,” Patrick Smallidge, Mount Desert selectman, said. “I try, and it doesn’t go very far.”

Tom Schaeffer, the regional wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, described the efforts several towns have made to create a special deer herd reduction program.

“If towns feel there is a deer problem and they want to move forward with this, it is something that can be done,” he said.

A straw poll showed that meeting attendees overwhelmingly support the reintroduction of some kind of deer hunt in the three participating island towns.

Terry Savage of Town Hill participated in the first deer management hunt in the Cranberry Isles.

“The deer down there were literally in very, very poor shape,” he said. “They were literally starving to death.”

After the institution of short- and long-term deer management plans, it’s a different story now, he said.

“You actually have to hunt for them,” Savage said. “There’s feed galore and the deer are in wonderful shape.”