Deer team leader concerned about captive hunt expansion
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By Dennis Jensen Staff Writer - Published: January 27, 2008
The biggest challenge facing Vermont's new deer team leader isn't coyotes, over-stressed deer yards or cold, snowy winters. Shawn Haskell, who took over his post with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department late last year, said he believes that selling off Vermont's longtime heritage of open land for hunting is the greatest problem facing the deer team.
"The biggest challenge we have right now is heading off the privatization of our wildlife," he said. "It starts with captive hunt facilities."
The 33-year-old Haskell, a Maine native, said he is troubled by the prospects of people buying off large tracts of land, fencing them in and selling off the rights for the public to hunt for exorbitant fees.
"We've got some outside interest right now in thousands of acres of land where they'd like to put up high fences, fence in the deer and moose, and sell hunts," he said.
Currently, there are two canned hunt facilities in Vermont, where people pay a fee to shoot virtually tame animals for the antlers and meat.
Haskell said that, at sometime in the future, Vermont could very well become a place where hunters must pay a considerable fee to hunt deer and moose.
The graduate of the University of Maine at Orono, with a degree in wildlife management and a master's degree in wildlife sciences from Texas Tech, said his experiences in Texas opened his eyes to the problem of pay-as-you-go hunting.
"I've spent the past four years in Texas and I can tell you what it will lead to … neighbors making high profits off deer and moose … charging access into their own land," he said.
Haskell, an avid fisherman and hunter, spent five years in Alaska, hunting or fishing every weekend, he said.
"But in the four years I spent in Texas, I didn't hunt once, because I couldn't afford to," he said.
Research into the issue revealed that lease hunters in Texas paid $2,500 a year for access on private land, Haskell said.
"That's not even with fences," he said. "That's free-ranging land. Other operations, which may use fences or not, will sell a weekend for (hunting) a doe for $500. A buck might cost you $1,000."
At "high-end facilities," a hunter can expect to pay $10,000 for a 12- or 14-point buck, Haskell said.
"It's the way it makes hunting a rich man's sport," he said. "That's one of the reasons we (our ancestors) left Europe to begin with."
Haskell took over the position of deer team leader from John Buck, who ran the deer team for nearly two decades.
Haskell said that the Fish & Wildlife, along with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Board, has been working on a comprehensive plan to put a stop to any future "canned hunt" preserves, as well as preventing any prospects of private, fenced-in preserves which charge a fee for hunting deer or moose.
"We're fighting to prevent captive hunt facilities and not only for this reason," he said. "We find them distasteful, in general, and unethical."
The Fish & Wildlife Board had drawn up a proposal to deal with future canned hunt facilities and was near a third and final vote on the plan when a Legislative review committee sent the plan back to the board.
Jeremy Baker, the Rutland County representative on the Fish & Wildlife Board, said the matter is now again in the hands of the Vermont Legislature.
"They said we were overstepping our authority by banning canned hunt facilities," he said.
Since then, two board members were appointed to negotiate with representatives from the captive hunt facilities and have come up with a new proposal.CWD concerns
One of the biggest concerns about captive hunt facilities is the very real threat of spreading chronic wasting disease, which has deer biologists across the country in a near state of panic.
New York State had a case of CWD in its wild deer population several years ago. As a result, Vermont deer hunters who shoot a deer in New York must have their venison boned out before taking their meat back to Vermont.
"There are real disease issues that go with this," Haskell said. "8-foot fences do not keep whitetail deer out. When they get CWD in the pen, whitetail deer can jump the pen and spread the disease. We need real jurisdiction over these places in order to help in controlling these diseases."
Haskell, who works out of Fish & Wildlife's St. Johnsbury office, said he is up to his neck in work.
"We will have a team meeting later in the winter to see how this winter goes," he said. "We'll look at a bunch of data from last deer season."
Haskell said that he expects the Fish & Wildlife Department to recommend a return to a three-deer bag limit, which was in effect for years but downgraded to two deer by the Fish & Wildlife Board a few years back.
"We are considering a three-deer limit. There has been a fair amount of opinions against it but we're going to visit it closely, how to make it socially acceptable," he said.
Haskell said any change in the limit would be three deer, but not three bucks.
Meanwhile, Haskell said he supports the spikehorn ban currently in effect that prohibits shooting spikehorn bucks during all deer seasons, with the exception of the annual, two-day youth hunt.
A proposed bill in the State Legislature would, if approved, give the Fish & Wildlife Board another five years to continue the spikehorn ban, Haskell said. The current spikehorn ban will be sunsetted in 2009.
"The bill just says the board will have the authority to cancel it or change it," he said. "It doesn't mean that the spikehorn ban will necessarily go on or end. It just means that it'll be up to us to keep a good eye on it and access what the hunters think of it."
Haskell said that, in his opinion, the spikehorn ban has been a success.
"The harvest is up again. I think people are happy about that," he said.
The average weight of bucks brought into the 17 deer checking stations operating around the state during the opening weekend of the November firearms season increased from 125 pounds before the spikehorn ban to 138 pounds during last season.
That increase in weight can be attributed to the spikehorn ban, which allows yearling bucks with only two points for antlers to grow for another year.
Almost half of the bucks checked that opening weekend were 2-1/2 years old, about 22 percent were 3-1/2 years old and approximately 25 percent were yearlings, Haskell said.
Contact Dennis Jensen at dennis.jensen@rutlandherald.com
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