Deer hunting season opens on Saturday and thousands will head for the woods

Vermont's 16-day regular deer hunting season opens on Saturday, Nov. 11, and ends on Sunday, Nov. 26. Nick Fortin, deer and moose project leader for Vermont Fish & Wildlife, said the rifle hunting season will draw some 70,000 hunters into the woods around the state.

"People will start noticing hunters out in the woods, even if you're not a hunter," he said.

With that in mind, it's a good idea to start wearing blaze orange when you're in the woods. Fortin is quick to stress, however, that there has never been − to his knowledge − an incident in Vermont where a hunter shot a non-hunter. In his eight years on the job, Fortin said there have been three or four instances of hunters accidentally shooting themselves or a hunting partner, typically when unloading a gun.

"Foolish things, shooting themselves in the foot," he said.

One buck only for the upcoming deer hunting season

A hunter is limited to one legal buck during the season, if they did not already take one during the archery deer season, which began on Oct. 1 and ends on Friday, Nov. 10. There is an additional archery deer season from Nov. 27-Dec. 15. There is also a deer muzzleloader season from Dec. 2-10.

Fortin explained that while hunters are limited to one buck during the regular rifle hunting season, they can take up to four deer total if they hunt during the other seasons as well. Each deer requires a separate license. All of the regulations are available on the Fish & Wildlife website.

"We tend to see our more avid deer hunters during bow and muzzleloader seasons," Fortin said. "The casual, weekend warriors mostly hunt this upcoming season."

The most favorable weather for hunters would be cold and snow, Fortin said, because brown deer stand out against the white background, and leave tracks in the snow hunters can follow.

Heavy concentrations of deer in the Champlain Valley on private land

There are an estimated 140,000 deer in Vermont, with heavy concentrations in the Champlain Valley, where the living is easy and most of the land is private. Fortin acknowledges that as a result it can be challenging to find a place to hunt in the valley, as much as he would like hunters to keep the deer population there in check. Hunters must have permission from landowners to hunt on their land.

"Most deer are taken on private land," Fortin said. "There are good tracts of public land, but you're competing with more hunters for that limited space. Those (areas) tend to have fewer deer."

If it's bigger deer you're after, Fortin said you'll need to visit the more remote corners of the state.

"The Green Mountains and the bigger blocks of woods in the Northeast Kingdom tend to produce large deer, but they're few and far between because it's not great habitat," Fortin said. "The winters are longer and it's a tougher life for deer. It's also easier for them to avoid hunters, so they tend to get bigger and older."

Taking does is legal, but most hunters avoid it

One of the biggest challenges Fortin faces managing the state's deer population is convincing hunters to overcome their reluctance to shoot antlerless deer, i.e. does and fawns − to the detriment of bucks.

"There are fewer bucks," Fortin said. "It's what most hunters want to shoot. A lot of hunters don't have an interest in antlerless (deer). Because of that, we're very restrictive on the number of bucks (a hunter can shoot)."

Most hunters, including himself, avoid shooting fawns, Fortin said. And there's a longstanding aversion to shooting does, especially among older hunters, because they produce fawns. But in today's environment, where overpopulation of deer is the concern, those unwritten rules no longer apply, according to Fortin.

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"The vast majority of hunters will tell you they hunt primarily for meat and will shoot the first legal buck that stands in front of them, even if they have tiny antlers," Fortin said. "One of my biggest issues is convincing people to shoot antlerless (deer). We want them to take more. It's a big cultural thing, an engrained mentality that's difficult to get people beyond. I do understand."

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Deer hunting season starts on Saturday, Nov. 11, in Vermont