Commissioners hear concerns about county’s deer herd
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — What can the matter be when it comes to The County’s deer herd? A lot, according to Aroostook County Conservation Association leaders, particularly the decline in habitat and out-of-control predation as it affects the county’s white tail.
President and Vice President of the ACCA Jerry McLaughlin and Paul Camping respectively addressed the Aroostook County Commissioners during their last meeting on March 16 in Caribou regarding their concerns about the deer population and to see what kind of support the county could offer their organization.
The ACCA was first formed in December of 2008 and has done a lot to help the local deer herd, by working with local landowners to grow food plots — over 30 planted to date — hosting speakers for discussions regarding ways to minimize degradation to deer wintering areas while harvesting timber and educational and promoting predation control amongst area sportsmen by lessening the coyote population.
But predation control may or may not be superfluous to the health of the white tail based on whom you ask. According to the presentation given by McLaughlin and Camping, the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deer biologist for the Aroostook region doesn’t believe the problem facing the white tail is predation.
“Their main attribution to the decline in the deer population is habitat,” McLaughlin explained, which is true: the spruce budworm epidemic of the early 1980s severely diminished deer wintering areas — a fact ACCA members don’t contest. And private landowners harvesting timber is further exacerbating the lack of viable deer wintering areas.
McLaughlin explained that the initial stressor facing the deer population was the spruce budworm epidemic but as time progressed; it’s been man — not the budworm — that’s really hindered the habitat.
“If you get out into the big woods, these deeryard areas are being wiped right out [by indiscriminate harvesting of timber],” he said. “So it was the spruce budworm, but now it’s the investment individuals who are buying big tracts of land, and when investment people buy the land, they’re looking for profit.”
Camping explained that while deeryards are well known, there’s nothing solid in place to protect the habitat.
“With Irving, we have a verbal agreement to maintain these deeryards, but if Irving sells a block of land than that agreement’s no good, and that’s what’s happening,” McLaughlin said.
While all can agree that the white tail’s habitat is lacking, there’s a strong division between biologists and sportsmen regarding whether coyote predation on the herd is out of control.
“Our biologist’s report said that the white tail [in Aroostook County] doesn’t have a predation problem,” said Camping. “Jerry just received a phone call today about that predation that ‘doesn’t exist.’”
Since the ACCA began, McLaughlin has been the go-to-guy people call when they see a deer that’s succumbed to coyote predation, and the calls have been constant.
“Just in the last three days, Westfield has found three dead deer killed in a deeryard by coyotes,” Camping told the commissioners, describing just how low the numbers are dwindling.
The size of the deer herd in Aroostook County is so shockingly low that Commissioner Norman Fournier asked twice for clarification on the figures he’d seen and statistics he’d been quoted.
“Are you saying that less than one percent of the total deer harvested [in Maine] in 2009 were harvested from Aroostook County?” he asked the ACCA representatives.
Many Aroostook residents would be shocked as well to find that of the 18,092 deer harvested in the state in 2009, only about 150 came from The County — the biggest county east of the Mississippi.
“The deer numbers are down in Aroostook County and there’s been a variety of factors — call it a perfect storm if you will — that started the population decline and the coyote have kept them down. And we’re getting to the point right now that when a doe comes into season, she can’t find a mate so she doesn’t bear young.”
Members of the ACCA have looked into many options of the policy-origin to help the deer herd; according to Camping, the ACCA “has suggested that the state do a couple of things, and there are many things that can be done.”
“You could close the season up here, you could shorten the season, you could delay the season and we suggested a point restriction of the antlers on taking bucks, [not being able to hunt a buck that didn’t have at least three points on one antler], that would allow the deer to get older and help develop a larger pool of male deer out there,” he added.
The buck-to-doe ration is also a concern of the ACCA. Currently, Aroostook sportsmen can only hunt bucks, which McLaughlin and Camping feel has led to a deer population highly skewed in favor of females. Enforcing a point-restriction on bucks either works or doesn’t depending on which state study is used — studies exist both in favor and against.
As the conversation wound down, Commissioner Chair Paul Adams told the gentlemen that their information had been very enlightening; the commissioners unanimously agreed to go forward in drafting a letter of support for the ACCA.
