Understanding Maine’s “Any-Deer Permit” System For Deer Management
September 12, 2008
I’m certainly no expert on Maine’s whitetail deer management program but I have spent a considerable amount of time reading, studying and researching how it is done. Maine’s whitetail deer management program, and in particular the utilization of Any-Deer Permits for population control, is recognized across the country as being perhaps the very best.
There are those who will not agree with me and that’s to be expected but I like to believe that when the experts at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife predict deer harvests for an upcoming hunting season, based on their own scientific calculations, and consistently nail those predictions, they must be doing something right.
I just finished reading Travis Barrett’s article in today’s Kennebec Journal. Toward the end of his piece, Barrett wrote about a potential problem that might be occurring because Any-Deer Permit holders weren’t filling their tags and therefore it was messing with MDIFW’s deer population management goals. I have no intention of being critical of Barrett’s piece. I just want to clarify something I found confusing. Read on.
“It was very, very harsh and severe winter,” said Keel Kemper, a local wildlife biologist stationed in Sidney. “In many ways, deer science is rocket science — and we’ve accounted for the winter mortality.”
That mortality rate may be another example of nature’s sometimes complex — albeit cruel — checks-and-balances system.
Fewer doe permits have been issued this season, but in recent years, Kemper reported, most doe tags went unfilled. Many hunters who apply for doe permits carry them as “fall-back” plans — hunting bucks for most of the season and saving the doe permit for the final days of the season when they have no luck.“We know that statewide, we’re probably not meeting our doe quota,” Kemper said. “We haven’t been achieving that for quite some time. We’re consistently about 20 percent short of the number.”
I found this to be a bit unclear and potentially misleading, if not incorrect, especially when you consider what the same biologist said at the end of the article.
“Do your part for wildlife management and shoot your doe,” Kemper said.
I reread the article and still came away wondering if other readers were getting the same impression, that anytime a hunter who chooses not to fill his “Any-Deer” tag is messing up Maine’s whitetail deer management plan and should somehow feel guilty because of it?
I said earlier that in the hours I’ve spent studying deer management plans and in particular Maine’s, I had to believe that the formula the state uses to arrive at a number of Any-Deer permits to issue and in what Wildlife Management Districts, they had to keep track of and have a handle on how many annually don’t fill an Any-Deer tag.
I fired off an email to Lee Kantar, head deer biologist for the MDIFW. He quickly responded for which I am grateful.
Each year we look at achieved versus desired doe permits. We adjust each year based on over or under achievement. Last year 2007, we were essentially dead on statewide. The year before we were 4% above statewide target and in 2006 8% below. There is a lot of variability among all WMDs in any given year and the percentages can be misleading. In other words, last year in WMD 9 we harvested 114% over desired goal, but what that means is we harvested 45 adult does when we wanted to harvest 21. In WMD 6 we underachieved by 22%, that means we wanted to harvest 76 adult does, but only harvested 59. The achieved doe success is important from a WMD perspective but also important regionally. It is important to note that in the big WMDs like WMD 17 and 23 were doe harvest quotas reach around 1,000 are achievement of these numbers was off by less than 5%-that’s pretty darn good.
The annual adjustments are critical to successfully managing doe harvests each year, and in WMDs that are at target or above objective like in south and central Maine, this is a crucial part of our management system and one that works.
In short, yes Maine has a good handle on a calculation for what they believe will be the number of those who will not choose to fill an Any-Deer tag or doesn’t have any luck to do so. With that knowledge, adjustments are made in the issuance of permits.
I feel quite confident that should something substantial enough upset the science of calculating the allotment of Any-Deer permits by WMDs, Kantar would be on top of it and necessary adjustment made to protect Maine’s deer herd.
Just as an aside on this story so readers won’t think I’ve totally lost my mind. There are exceptions to everything and Maine hunters know that WMDs in Northern and Eastern Maine are sparse when it comes to finding whitetail deer. As a result most, if not all, of those areas will receive no Any-Deer Permits in an effort to better assist in the refurbishment of the deer herd.
The deer populations in these areas were struggling anyway and with last year’s deadly winter, recruitment is very low and mortality very high.
Tom Remington
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