Hunters set a record for deer harvests in Maine

Nov. 28—Hunters have established a new record for deer harvests in Maine, coming during a fall season in which the state's new antlerless permits allow hunters to kill both a buck and a doe.

This fall's preliminary total of 41,875 deer harvests tops the previous mark of 41,735 in 1959, according to the state's online database.

The 2022 regular firearm season ended Saturday at dusk, but the deer hunt continues through the muzzleloader season, which ends Dec. 10. Deer harvested over the next two weeks will continue to be reported on IFW's Big Game Harvest Dashboard.

Jim Emerson of Corinna is not surprised by the historic harvest. Emerson, who lives and hunts in the hunting district that has seen the state's biggest harvest — Wildlife Management District 17, just northeast of Augusta — saw deer everywhere this fall. He said his neighbors and friends did, as well.It doesn't seem that big of an increase from (nearly) 39,000 (harvests in 2021) to 41,000," Emerson said. "But a lot of people didn't shoot two deer. What are they going to do with them? I think a lot of people think that way. They were happy to get one, they didn't really try to get two."

This marks the second consecutive year of large deer harvests. Last year's harvest of 38,947 was the most since 1968, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Maine has an estimated statewide deer herd of 320,000. But the densities of deer vary widely from as few as one or two deer per square mile in northern Maine to as many as 40 deer per square mile in parts of southern and central Maine.

In an effort to thin the deer herd in the southern half of the state, IFW introduced a new antlerless deer permit this fall that has enabled hunters to harvest a doe and a buck with one deer tag, rather than requiring them to choose either a doe or a buck, as with the former any-deer permit. In addition, for the first time hunters were able to purchase deer permits that were left over after the deer-permit lottery, at a cost of $12.

David Trahan, the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, said the new deer permit has made the hunt in southern Maine more exciting, but Maine should be home to a healthy deer herd — and hunting opportunities — across the entire state.

"When you go north, east or west, the population is way down," Trahan said. "I'd love to see us get to 10 to 12 deer per square mile in northern Maine. I believe we can."

Sales of the new deer permit will go to the purchase of deer wintering habitat and the maintenance of those preserves. Trahan said he believes over time those land purchases around significant deer wintering yards will help grow the deer herd in northern Maine.

So far the highest deer harvests in 2022 have occurred in Wildlife Management District 17, which covers the area between Madison and Bangor and north to Dover-Foxcroft, with 5,209 harvests registered. WMD 23, which covers the area between Augusta and Belfast and north to Newport, has registered 4,698 deer harvests.

The hunting district that covers much of Cumberland County (Wildlife Management District 21) recorded more than 3,000 deer harvested, as did the hunting districts in the Midcoast (WMD 22 and 25) that run from Lewiston to Wiscasset and north to Hallowell and from Georgetown to Northport.

By comparison, the hunting districts north of Bangor all had between 100 and 500 deer harvested as of Monday.

Jeffery Beau of Windham, who bagged a buck in Denmark in Oxford County after just six days of hunting, also saw loads of deer. He won a deer permit in the lottery for Wildlife Management District 21, and said he might continue to hunt during the muzzleloader season.

"I didn't see many hunters. But I saw loads of deer," Beau said.

The state launched its any-deer permit system in 1986 to help better manage the deer herd. The permit allowed hunters to harvest a doe rather than a buck. Over the course of the next 35 years the number of any-deer permits given out in the annual lottery fluctuated wildly.

In recent years the number of any-deer permits allocated started to hit historic levels — with nearly 85,000 in 2018 and nearly 110,00 in 2020. It finally topped out at nearly 154,000 last fall. State biologists said it was an attempt to cull the deer herd in southern Maine, where an abundance of deer poses a public health risk because of the rise in cases of Lyme disease.

The archery and crossbow hunting seasons — which are held in different areas of the state between Sept. 10 and Dec. 10 — account for a small fraction of the deer harvested in Maine, said Maine Deer Biologist Nathan Bieber. The November firearm season makes up the bulk of the harvest, he said.