NEWPORT – The woods are wet, still dripping from an overnight rain, but the deer don’t seem to mind. Seven of them – six does and a small, spike-horn male – cluster in a wooded thicket, peering at the strangers peering at them through an 8-foot high fence and a camera lens.

The deer seem to sense they are safe, as long as the humans remain outside the fence, and silently watch with ears perked. Once the people intrude inside the 60-acre enclosure, however, they flee – crashing through the woods in an instant. Despite nearly two hours of searching, they aren’t seen again.

These are red deer, native to Europe and Scotland, and they are Maine farm animals as surely as Holstein cows, sheep and chickens.

Mark and Joanne Luce of Newport raise red deer on 150 acres near Sebasticook Lake. The property known as Hindsite Red Deer Hunt Preserve was once a dairy farm. They farm with two goals in mind: meat and sport.

Opening their farm to hunters not only keeps their family farm operating, it also brings out-of-state money to the region.

The Luces’ animals are farmed in two ways: Culls are processed and sold as venison, while others become trophies for hunters from all over the United States during three-day hunting excursions. There are 10 licensed deer hunting parks in Maine, and the experience at any of them can cost between $700 and $10,000, depending on the size of the deer and the hunt park’s amenities.

Mark Luce maintains that hunting the farm-raised deer is an agricultural management tool, one of the ways the deer farming industry will survive in Maine. When deer and elk farms gained popularity about a decade ago, many former dairy farms were converted for deer.

“But it is really easy to grow a herd,” Luce said. “It’s not so easy to market venison.”

Add into the mix the chronic wasting disease, or CWD, scare that has closed Maine’s borders to the export of live breeding deer, and it’s not hard to predict a distressed industry. CWD was found in wild deer in Michigan in 2002, the first time scientists saw the disease jump from domestic deer herds. Until it can be determined how that happened, many states have closed their borders.

That meant at least 20 percent of Maine’s red deer, a herd of thousands, was trapped in Maine.

“Many of the older breeding males are too old to fit in the meat market,” Kenneth Andries, a livestock specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said Wednesday. “So where does that animal go? Where does the stag that could command $5,000 to $10,000 as a breeding buck go? It’s now worth less than $200.”

Andries said that when the marketability and the value of the animal is looked at, “the hunting value is the highest. If we want to remain an agriculture state, we need to help these people pay their bills.”

Maine has an estimated red deer population of 5,000 on 90 licensed farms – more deer farms than the rest of New England combined, Mary Ellen Johnston of the Maine Department of Agriculture said this week.

Meanwhile, wealthy out-of-staters hungry for a hunting experience and anxious to fill their freezers with high quality meat and their walls with trophy mounts are lining up for the experience of hunting at Maine’s deer farms.

On the hoof, an average-size red deer is worth $600 as meat. When the hunting experience is added, the cost starts at $700 and rises. A breeder is worth more than a meat animal, while a hunting animal is worth more than either one.

Hunting preserves have opponents. There have been three attempts – and failures – in the state Legislature to ban the businesses. Opponents say that shooting in a preserve is unethical, like shooting fish in a bucket.

Not so, Luce said. The size of his preserve is large enough to offer a natural environment, not a fenced pen.

“Is it more ethical to load a terrified animal in a trailer, haul it off to the slaughterhouse where it becomes even more terrified and it knows what is going to happen?” Luce asked.

“Hunting is the most ethical way to harvest deer,” he emphasized.

Jon Olson of the Maine Farm Bureau said hunting the red deer has always been considered a valid method of keeping a farm viable. “We consider this a value-added component,” he said Wednesday.The Newport deer farm was established in 1997, but this year marks only the second season for the preserve, which hosted nearly two dozen sharpshooters last year. Each brought home a trophy stag.

Just a few feet outside the Luces’ back door are the vast pastures where the deer are raised. “We started with five and now have 70 with 25 births expected this year,” Luce said.

Luce said he keeps a close eye on the breeding process, and if he feels a doe – also called a hind – or a stag is not performing well, the animal is moved to the 60-acre fenced hunting preserve.

He keeps between 15 and 20 animals in the preserve at a time, with stags easily growing to 500 pounds or more.

Inside the preserve, the fence quickly disappears and the woods are deep and thick. The soft ground is punched with deer tracks, and hunks of fur and trees peeled of their bark are evidence the deer are around, even if unseen.

Box blinds and tree stands are set strategically throughout the preserve. One is even outfitted with a padded swivel chair and heat for those hunters from warmer climates.

Preserve hunting is allowed year round. However, the Luces stick with September to February.

One of last season’s hunters, Ray Christian of Kansas, a construction company owner, has been hunting for 20 years. He called his experience “the hunt of a lifetime.”

“The thick timber of Maine makes it a very challenging hunt,” he said recently. “You never feel you are on a preserve.”

Christian took down a 398 pound, 12-point stag. He also helped Maine’s economy.

While in Maine, the hunter booked lodging at nearby Christie’s Campgrounds. He had his deer processed, frozen and wrapped at Brousseau’s Family Meats in Detroit. His trophy is being handled at Call of the Wild Taxidermy in Cornville.

“This is not just about purchasing a hunt,” Luce said. “This is about experiencing Maine and all it has to offer, while spreading the money around.”

The Hindsite hunts are scheduled for three days, but Luce said often hunters are successful early and then spend the rest of their Maine trip at Bar Harbor, Katahdin or Greenville.

“They drop some serious money while here,” he said.