Claybrook Mountain Lodge, owned by Pat and Greg Drummond, has attracted deer hunters to the Bigelow Preserve region since the mid-1970s. Reliable income from hunters helped the couple send their three daughters to college. But the Drummonds have not added an antlered deer to the buckboard since 2008.
Renowned Cobb’s Pierce Pond Camps, 30 miles north of Claybrook Lodge, is closed to deer hunters for the second straight November. Declining deer populations and deer hunters are negatively impacting the Drummonds, other Maine sporting lodge owners and Maine’s rural economy. Hunters are traveling to other states with healthier deer populations.
To address the issue of declining deer populations, in 2011 the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife published “Maine’s Game Plan For Deer.” The impressive booklet identifies factors impacting deer populations in eastern, western and northern Maine. Diminishing number and quality of deer wintering areas are the primary reasons for the decline in deer in much of Maine. Protecting deer wintering areas, 95 percent of which is on private land, is the top priority to rebuilding Maine’s deer herd. To survive Maine’s harsh winters, deer require mature conifer forest cover. Documenting deer wintering areas on the ground is the easy part. Protecting the areas is an entirely different activity altogether.
Regulatory zoning for deer wintering areas between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s inflamed tension and mistrust between forestland owners and IF&W. State regulation of economically valuable spruce-fir habitat on private property resulted in two lawsuits before the Maine Supreme Court. In the mid-1990s, to ease the two-decade old battle over deer management on private property, IF&W decided to develop voluntary landowner cooperative agreements in lieu of regulating deer wintering areas. It was a puzzling decision given that 40 years earlier landowner agreements had failed to protect deer.
Cooperative agreements are failing again today. Private forest landowner economics then and now trump deer wintering area management considerations. “Plum Creek has not sustainably cut timber in each deer yard on their property north of Claybrook Lodge and near Cobb’s Pierce Pond Camps,” according to Drummond, a registered Maine Guide.
Gov. Paul LePage and IF&W Commissioner Chandler Woodcock tout the success of a few deer wintering area voluntary landowner cooperative agreements – those in which timber harvest and deer management have been mutually achieved. However, the majority of forest landowners refuse to enter into cooperative agreements or stubbornly disregard nonbinding cooperative agreements. Orion Timberlands recently ignored IF&W’s request to not cut 300 acres of cedar within a 1,600-acre deer wintering area cooperative agreement. According to IF&W, harvest goals could have been met by cutting trees on company lands adjacent to one of Aroostook County’s most important deer yards.
The Forest Products Council has fallen far short on its pledge to promote member participation in cooperative agreements. According to Mark Stadler, former director of the wildlife division at IF&W, “The Forest Products Council committed to help IF&W enroll forest landowners in cooperative deer yard management, yet landowner response has been lukewarm at best, and many balk at participation.”
Since deer-yard regulation was mothballed in the mid-1990s, the number and quality of deer yards have steadily declined. Maine had faith that landowners would work cooperatively to manage private lands for wood and deer production. That good faith has not paid off for deer, hunters or those whose livelihoods depends on healthy deer populations.
To date, large portions of Maine still lack adequate wintering habitat to sustain traditional deer population levels. Deer wintering habitat comprised 12 percent of total deer habitat in northern, western and eastern Maine from the 1950s to the early 1970s. That number has dropped to 4 percent in 2011.
An increase in deer numbers will depend on increasing the amount and quality of deer winter habitats. The tension that exists between private-property rights and the state’s responsibility to conserve and manage a publicly-owned deer resource continues.
If Maine is serious about rebuilding deer populations, as is the stated goal of “Maine’s Game Plan For Deer,” it must move beyond the issue of private property rights and protect the largest, most critically important deer wintering areas through fee title purchase and conservation easements.
LePage claims to be a proponent of restoring the state’s deer herd. The governor should back up his words by supporting the Land For Maine’s Future program, which is a bond item on next month’s state ballot. So far, he has been unwilling to do so, even though this program consistently receives wide support by voters across the state. Instead, the governor and Woodcock are guilty of deflecting attention from a failing cooperative agreement program by promoting a one-year, $100,000 coyote bounty program. Coyote control is analogous to placing an elastic bandage on a compound fracture.
If you think coyotes are the primary reason northern Maine has fewer deer, please consider this: Minnesota and Michigan deer herds are much healthier than Maine’s. Minnesota and Michigan winters are as difficult as Maine’s. Deer in both of those states must avoid being eaten by not only coyotes but also wolves.
So the logical question is: What are Minnesota and Michigan doing differently to maintain healthy deer populations? The answer: Both states prioritize protecting deer wintering areas through land purchases, conservation easements and promoting timber harvests that also take into consideration the needs of deer.
A coyote bounty is a knee-jerk reaction that will not succeed in bolstering Maine’s deer herd. Black bears account for 20 percent to 60 percent of Maine’s fawn mortality. What’s next, a legislative bounty on bears?
Ron Joseph, of Camden, is a retired Maine biologist.
This guy is my hero!!!!! I have been saying this for years and suffering the ignorant responses about coyotes. I saw Great Northern aerial maps for years back in the late eighties and watched then as the process was staring. Now Plum Creek, a real estate company with a consortium of stockholders interested in pure profit, cuts everything for cash flow. Bravo to Ron Joseph.
It’s not really surprising that the Governor would promote the less effective coyote bounty program over a deer yard management program that impacts large corporations. Both should be implemented to restore a larger deer population in the North. The fact that Mr. Woodcock would also tow this line is disappointing. Deer hunters bring a seasonal monetary boost to an area with limited other economic opportunities.
In Alaska, where they actually do wildlife studies, they implemented a ten year field experiment to see what was hammering the new born Moose population. The meatheads cried wolf and demanded aerial hunting, bounties, and year round carnage. The ten year study revealed that the grizzly bear was responsible for 80% of the Moose calf predation. Now the Griz is big bucks in Alaska so the wolf took the blame and off went the aerial hunters and Little Red Riding Hood continued her generational mythology. The coyote does not mean do do to deer populations. No deer yards, Plum Creek tolerances, bubba poaching all the time, and one family member tagging out for the whole family tree, are more apt reasons.
I have felt for many years that declining winter habitat is the reason for our depleted deer herd. When not a single doe permit can be issued north of Bradford something is definately wrong. When cedar was select cut for manufacturing only, deer habitate was not severly impacted. But when cedar swamps started to be nearly clear cut so thousands of cord could be ground for mulch and biomass fuel the stands of cedar have diappeared fast. In the snowiest of winters cedar swamps provided not only good cover, it also had less snow, and plenty of feed for large numbers of deer. In the coldest of days the swamps were always a few degrees warmer and usually had some accessable unfrozen water. If the government can strictly preserve wetlands so birds and bugs can thrive they should do something to preserve deer habitat. Northern Maine needs a good deer population a lot more than it needs alewives , sturgeon, and northern pike in the Penobscot Watershed.
Excellent post.
In many places now there are efforts to get rid of deer since 95% of the disease-spreading deer ticks come from ticks feeding on deer. The deer tick infects us not only with Lyme disease, which can cause crippling arthritis and brain damage, but also with babesiosis and anaplasmosis, both of which can be fatal. These diseases, which are increasing in incidence and spreading, are associated with deer abundance. Indeed, the wise residents of Monhegan Island ME and Mumford Cove Ct ended their Lyme epidemics by removing the deer. The tourism industry is very important in Maine with millions of visitors spending billions of dollars. Tourists prefer to vacation where they can safely enjoy the outdoors without contracting horrific diseases.
Deer tick problems are largely in Southern Maine where hunting access and oppportunities have been squeezed out by sprawl and municipal anti-hunting legislation. It’s a very different ecology in the North where deer yard promotion efforts are focused.
Several points to consider.
Areas classified as Quality winter habitat in Northern Maine do not have any deer. The same is true for NE Maine. Why is this not explained?
Quality winter habitat, as is true in nature, does not remain static. Unless some form of woods habitat management is implemented to maintain any area as “quality”, these areas will constantly shift.
Maine has many public lands with the QDH designation, but guess what, no deer. The states failure to maintain our public lands to the standard they wish private landowners to, is ignored by Mr Joseph, as well as his efforts to do so during his time at IFW, which were?
Minnessota and Michigan are experiencing a steady long term decline in deer populations, a fact curiously missing from this artical. In fact Michigan has implemented a predator/ habitat study to investigate the problem, something Maine has long seemed incapable of doing.
Care to guess the major predator? Thats right, the coyote.
We have lost an important source of revenue reaching well into the millions in some of the most rural and economicaly challenged areas of our state, due to the mindset of biologists such as Mr Joseph, who, although retired from the State, continues to place the blame on everyone but those paid by us to manage our wildlife. Sadly this trend countinues in todays department as well.
Whitetail management cannot be simplified into habitat designation, but must be addressed on many fronts, predation included.
Kurt; We pound the coyote with dogs, guns, and traps six days a week for 52 weeks a year. The main stay of “biology” at the IF&W supports this. WE feed bears three months a year and we trap, dog, and bait shoot them. The IF&W supports this. One biologist comes out and tells it like it is and you get riled as if the department has done you no favors. Our IF&W does not like studies because like in Alaska they would find that the coyote (wolf in Alaska) is not the boogie man. Habitat is the entity that has changed drastically in the last 25 years. You can fault IF&W for not bemoaning this but you can fault the so called sporting community for not faulting it either . Mr. Joseph is a gem and your pathetic gripe about Michigan is just that.
Minnesota’s est. deer population is 900,000 to 1 million in a state that is 86,939 sq. mi. giving it an average 10.2 to 11.5 deer per sq. mi.. Michigan’s est. deer population is 1.7 million in a state of 96,716 sq. mi. giving it an average of 17.57 deer per sq. mi.. Maine the best figure I could find was 255,000 wintering deer in a state of 35,385 sq. mi. giving us an average of 7.2 deer per sq. mi.. Neither Minnesota or Michigan gave when the estimate was taken.
Bear population in Maine is est. 25,000 to 35,000, Minnesota est. 20,000 and Michigan est. 9,000 to 11,000 with 80% to 90% living in U.P. Michigan. No state has an estimate on the coyote population. Minnesota has roughly 3,000 wolves and Michigan has roughly 700 wolves with a majority in U.P. Michigan. Also U.P. Michigans deer per sq. mi. is much lower than the rest of the state. Michigan has a bill in congress to begin a wolf hunt and Minnesota’s wolf season starts Nov. 3rd.
Maine can trap coyotes for 2 1/2 months, Minnesota has no closed coyote trapping season (meaning coyotes can be trapped year round), Michigan has a 5 1/2 month coyote trapping season. Also both Minnesota and Michigan can use snares/cable restaints for coyotes.
As of today I do not support the bond issue. We can’t afford to borrow more money and add to our debt. Also there is no sense in protecting wintering areas unless you have a good predator control plan. What could change my mind on the bond issue? The deal for the land is to good to pass up at this time.
Why is there no sense protecting wintering areas until we have a good predator control plan? Coyotes don’t stop killing deer if they’re not in a managed yard. It would seem both are necessary to increase deer populations in the North. With interest rates at all time lows and the economy slowly on the mend, now is the best time to bond this out.