Deer issue splits MDI town Residents eye smaller herd, but oppose hunting in their backyards

MOUNT DESERT – Most local residents seem to agree that deer can be pests.

They chew up gardens and landscaping, often reducing the lower part of cedar trees, one of their favorite foods, to the plants’ brown, skeletal trunks.

When it comes to cars and trucks, the concern is not limited to what a roving deer might do to a moving vehicle’s physical appearance or to the owner’s investment. They are a hazard, some people insist, that could cause serious injury to an unlucky driver by darting out into the road without warning.

Of course, there’s always the threat of Lyme disease, which is spread by deer ticks.

Many people therefore also agree that local and state officials should look into the issue to see if something should be done.

But not everyone thinks something must be done. Certainly not everyone thinks that opening the island up to a deer hunt is such a good idea.

This was evident in a poll the town of Mount Desert took of its residents on Nov. 7. The results of that poll, just released this past week, indicate that of about 950 residents who voted, 535 think something should be done but nearly 700 are opposed to allowing a recreational hunt.

The reason the deer seem to be thriving on MDI is because for the past several decades deer hunting has not been allowed in the four towns that make up the island. Much of the island is occupied by the 35,000-acre Acadia National Park, and many of the island’s residents live in concentrated villages that dot the park’s periphery.

It is the island’s human population density that gives some residents pause when considering whether hunting should be allowed.

“I don’t want people hunting in my backyard,” Jennifer Gray said Sunday while tending the cash register at Pine Tree Market, the grocery store in the Mount Desert village of Northeast Harbor. “I don’t feel there’s much of a problem [with the deer]. I just think it’s a fact of life.”

Aaron Mitchell of Northeast Harbor said Sunday he’s in favor of hunting deer. He spent Saturday trying to bag one in Columbia Falls, he said, but came up empty.

There are too many of them all along the coast, according to Mitchell. He drives four days a week to his job with Bank of America in Belfast, he said, and without fail sees several each trip along the side of the road.

But he can see why some Mount Desert residents wouldn’t want a local hunt.

“You couldn’t hunt in this town anywhere,” Mitchell said, noting the lack of open space that’s not part of Acadia. “A .22 [caliber] bullet will go a mile. If someone shot a hole in my house, I’d be awfully mad.”

Like Mitchell, Northeast Harbor resident Steve Boucher believes something should be done but is not sure a local hunt is the answer.

“There’s definitely an overpopulation,” Boucher said, sitting in a booth Saturday at the Garage Deli on Main Street. “They’re seen everywhere, constantly, even during the day. There’s probably more deer than people on the island right now.”

For Helen King, manager of the deli, the possibility of scores of hunters coming to the island in search of making an easy kill is one reason to keep the practice banned.

“Yes, there is a need for some kind of control,” she said. “[But] this could be like the wild West.”

Neighboring towns on islands off MDI addressed the issue a few years ago by allowing deer hunts for the first time in decades. The deer populations plummeted as hunters came out and easily shot the malnourished and nearly tame creatures who didn’t know enough to run away.

Not all the locals were happy with the way the hunts occurred, however. Some complained that it was more of a slaughter than a hunt, with dozens of deer being gutted where they were shot and their carcasses left behind while hunters hauled the venison back to the mainland on the mail boat.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” King said.

For some, the deer are a problem because they are attracting coyotes. Maggie Hays, who splits her time between Mount Desert and Littleton, Colo., said that she worries about letting her dogs outside locally because of the canine predators.

“They’re rampant,” she said. “They’re not scared of anybody.”

Mike Modeen of Bar Harbor said Sunday that he just spent two weeks hunting deer in the St. John Valley and, like Mitchell, had no luck in getting a deer. If the towns allowed a limited hunt, in which island residents were chosen by a lottery system and used shotguns only, he said, it would help reduce the numbers of two species on MDI. And he would worry less about his children playing in the yard.

“You can see coyotes everywhere, all the time,” he said. “They come right up close to the house.”