Maine Hunters Are Mad And Justly So……..For Many Reasons

Better communication can resolve a lot of problems in our world. In the converse, lack of such can cause things to spin drastically out of control. Maine hunters, particularly deer hunters, are quite angry and I believe they are justified in at least some of their anger. All they are getting are excuses.

It is no secret the past winters of 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 were tough on the Maine whitetail deer herds. I think I read someplace recently that these two winters, back to back, ranked 3rd and 9th worse in the state’s history, but they obviously weren’t the worst.

The causes for the lack of deer in Maine are complex and hunters don’t feel they are being given the courtesy of a better explanation other than winters are tough, habitat is shrinking, excuses ad nauseum. While both bad winters and shrinking habitat are as true as true can be, hunters feel more could be done to protect the deer herds and should have been done before now. This order of frustration has been building over the past two deer hunting seasons in particular, culminating this year with one of the most dismal of seasons that old timers can recall.

Lee Kantar, head deer and moose biologist at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, predicted this passing deer season would be bleak. He was right.

But that still isn’t cutting it for the hunters.

I have written in previous articles about things I think at least might be considered as ways of helping to recover a whitetail deer herd. I won’t take up space in this post to go through them again. Click here for the latest article on this issue and links to previous posts.

Let me hit briefly on the excuses being thrown out to Maine hunters about what happened to their deer herd or would I be more accurate to say the MDIFW’s deer herd, as ownership seems a bit fuzzy?

1). Severe winters
2). Loss of Habitat and Winter yarding areas
3). Predation

It should be made clear that in my opinion, I think the biggest reason hunters are mad is because they are not getting their questions answered satisfactorily and in some cases are not being treated in the manner they should be. Let’s face it, MDIFW has an uphill battle to maintain a good relationship with the public. It’s way beyond that when it comes to dealing with the license-paying hunters. They demand action for the dollars they’ve invested. But lest we forget who pays the bills? And therein lies perhaps the biggest rub.

It is my feeling, and I am far from alone, that the hunters, who have forked over the money for years for game management are being taken advantage of or at least they are perceiving it that way. This comes out in several ways but let me touch on a couple very quickly.

You don’t have to be a college educated researcher to understand that MDIFW spends way too much time addressing non-game issues, i.e. search and rescue, non-game wildlife, catering to wildlife viewers, who don’t give a dime to the cause, and spending far too much time in litigation with animal rights groups. Some of that comes from taking up a position of weakness from the MDIFW but that’s another day.

When license-paying hunters see this, combined with the reality they’ve spent a lot of money and can’t even imagine a deer in the woods, they want answers not excuses.

What this is all boiling down to is a simple matter of communication. Stop with the excuses nobody wants to hear anymore. Address the hunters as real people. They may not be all college educated but they are nobody’s fool either. Some greenhorn, wet-behind-the-ears biologists has years to go before he’ll grasp as much knowledge as some of these seasoned, crusty old Mainers.

What matters is us license buyers give fish and game people a job and too often it is forgotten. These hunters deserve more than they are getting and I’m not talking about bigger deer herds. They want officials in Augusta to tell them, we believe what you are seeing in the woods is real. They want a biologist to admit that mistakes have been made. Instead of a wildlife official telling the hunters if they don’t like the coyote situation, that’s your problem. Go do something about it. Perhaps MDIFW would be well served to assume a little ownership too. Maybe for once they could just admit that there are too many coyotes, especially now that our deer herds are in trouble. They could better support efforts to focus predator reduction around winter deer yards instead of echoing the same hollow rhetoric that predator management won’t work. If a handful of deer can be saved this way, the resulting effort is far more positive than sitting in Augusta waiting for the weather to change but more importantly, it gives hunters back their sense of inclusion and ownership. Is that all bad?

One of the biggest complaints I hear from hunters when states absorb their fish and game interests into bigger government bureaucracies, like natural resources or conservation departments, is their loss of being a part of the wildlife management process. Communication disappears and nobody in the BIG government listens.

Travis Barrett, a public relations representative for MDIFW, has his own blog now. In a post dated 12/8/09 Barrett attempts to address hunters about their concerns over an overgrown population of coyotes and what MDIFW is going to do about it. His answer, while truthful, certainly didn’t use a very good approach if he really thought it would appease the angry hunters. I think he actually thought it more of a joke. His answer was, “Coyotes can be controlled by you.”

Maine has a year-round, open hunting season on coyotes during daylight hours (1/2 hour before sunrise to 1/2 hour after sunset). It also has a more than 6-month night hunting season on coyotes.

For just $4 for the permit, you can kill as many coyotes as you wish. Day after day after day after day…

There is also an extended opportunity to trap coyotes, again with no bag limits.

Notice there is no ownership of this problem by MDIFW. Nope! The thrust of the answer is, quit your complaining. If you don’t like there being too many coyotes, go kill some. While hunters need to do exactly as Barrett is suggesting, this is poor public relations.

George Smith, Executive Director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, in his blog dated, December 3, 2009, he shares with us his notes and observations from the latest meeting of the Deer Task Force. If you haven’t read it all the way through yet, you should. The tone of the meeting that I derived from Smith’s blog certainly wasn’t encouraging as it pertained to Maine’s northern deer herd. In fairness though, there was a lot of good discussion about positive initiatives, etc.

I went away from reading this information feeling quite frankly as though MDIFW has no interest in putting any effort or resources into recovering the Northern Maine deer herd.

Stadler said lack of wintering area, including fragmentation of habitat, is the primary biological fact and “the forests of northern Maine are no longer biologically capable of supporting deer.” The driving factor is the poor winter cover.

We have coyotes in central and southern Maine, but winter cover is better in those areas so we have more deer, reported Stadler.

The reality seems to be that we will not rebuild the deer herd in the north in the short term.

Representatives of MDIFW made it a point that they have no resources available anyway; another excuse hunters want answers for.

George does bring up something he addressed the group with.

I offered the group these thoughts. Deer hunters are angry, casting blame widely, demanding fast action on all problems. Nonresident deer hunters have abandoned Maine causing severe economic loss in the outdoor industry and damaging DIF&W. It’s not good enough to say we’ll come back in a year and see what’s happened. We need real accountability and commitments now. Sportsmen also want to know what they can do and we need to provide that information.

Hunters don’t want to hear that MDIFW has no resources to do this. This is what they pay their money for and now there are no resources. Why? Because in my opinion, too many resources are being used on non-game issues. Lawsuits and the screaming, demanding wildlife viewers get the attention because MDIFW doesn’t want to deal with more lawsuits. Resources are drained and diverted away from game management.

We hear repeatedly that MDIFW has to consider all the “social” ramifications of its wildlife management decisions. It is true we can’t ignore the general public about such issues but when hunters see their investment being hijacked because of “social” issues, its going to make them angry.

While much of the information discussed at the Deer Task Force meeting that George Smith has shared with us all, is probably factual, how it is being dealt with is not doing anything to keep the hunter happy. When MDIFW loses sight of who pays their salaries, perhaps it’s time for major changes. Maybe Maine needs new leadership from the governor on down.

The question also becomes, why has it come to the point of staring down the barrel that Northern Maine’s whitetail deer population is gone? Did it have to come to such a drastic crossroad? We cannot control the weather but let’s be honest. Maine has always had stretches of bad weather and we’ve hung on.

Kantar points out that in the bad snow years of the late 60s and early 70s, the Northern Maine herd survived better then because there was more wintering habitat. Nobody will argue that fact, but still the question remains, did MDIFW plan for bad winters AND the loss of habitat other than talk about it? The fact is those winter deer yards didn’t just disappear last week. We all should have been more proactive, more aggressively dealing with the issue. The truth is we weren’t and now we are paying for it.

Here’s another factor that I’m sure will anger some and begin driving a wedge between hunters and outfitters; something that can’t happen. According to Smith’s accounting, it was asked if MDIFW planned on doing anything about reducing the bear population in areas where deer herds are suffering to help alleviate the predation; a suggestion I have had for some time.

Jim Tobin asked why we aren’t expanding bear hunting opportunities or bag limits. The answer is that the bear hunting outfitters oppose an increase in the bear harvest, and fear anything that opens up bear hunting to another referendum. Stadler said DIF&W was simply following the recommendations of the Predation Task Force.

We’re all in this together, aren’t we? I have no issue with outfitters trying to make a living and I certainly understand their concerns about being fearful of lawsuits and referendums but doesn’t anyone else see the anger that will arise when regular “Joe”, who’s mad as hell because the deer are gone, discovers the outfitters are making the decisions as to what is best for the protection and rebuilding of a seriously depleted deer herd? Now hunters will question the make up of the Predator Task Force. Perhaps Baldacci needs to form another “task force”. And doesn’t Stadler’s response sound more like a cop out?

These are only some of the issues that hunters see and are angry about. They are not getting any satisfactory answers. An employee of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, it would seem, would be seriously concerned about keeping a job. Are they not biting the hand that feeds them?

George Smith is right. Out-of-state hunters will not come to Maine and hunt, at least not for a long time. That’s big revenue loss. Without it, someone has to go at MDIFW.

But what could be worse than losing all that license revenue from out-of-state hunters? Simple. Losing resident hunters as well. They will get fed up with spending money each year to go walk around the woods looking at coyote tracks and recalling the days when there used to be a lot of deer around. Maine hunters are very supportive of fish and game interests and are willing to cough up more money when they are convinced the money is well spent. Trust me. They are not convinced!

Maine should be very happy they have Gerry Lavigne. He understands the problems and he sees Maine hunters are not going to get any help from MDIFW. They don’t see coyote predation as a problem. Travis Barrett was right. Hunters need to take this matter into their own hands and go kill coyotes. This is no joke! They need to kill as many as they can. They are like rodents and need to be kept in smaller numbers. They carry and spread disease and in numbers too great, they destroy other parts of our ecosystems.

Lavigne is taking positive steps to do something about predation. He spells it out here and here. My advice to you is to stop looking at MDIFW for help. They have their agendas and it isn’t necessarily the same as yours. If you think coyotes are killing all the deer in your favorite hunting grounds, it’s time to do something about it.

I wrote back last May what has now become the obvious. I said that the reality was that MDIFW did not have the resources to manage whitetail deer in Northern Maine. I’ve explained what I think is the reason, so what are we going to do about it? Should we let Baldacci create a bigger governmental kibosh by combining several agencies or are we going to demand that our investment into game management be better looked after?

I will repeat myself. Managing deer in Maine is a serious and complex undertaking. I am willing to believe that what the majority of Maine’s wildlife officials are telling us is true, even though I know many readers will not concur. Winters can be severe and will be again. Habitat has been reduced and efforts are underway to find a cure. I think MDIFW discounts the negative effects of large predators on our deer. I don’t. But the two biggest issues I have right now are these.

1). What got us to the point we are at now?, and
2). MDIFW needs to do a far better job in public relations than they are.

They need to stop putting down the hunters and ridiculing them for sharing their frustrations and on-the-ground observations. The also need to spend less of our time and money on non-game issues and get back to the business of managing game.

Maine cannot afford to lose its deer herd and it will never survive without the average “Joe” buying his license every year. Make all the excuses in the world as to what happened to the deer herd but there is no real excuse for poor communications and lousy public relations.

Tom Remington

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