3-deer bag limit back in the books
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BY Dennis Jensen Staff Writer - Published: August 24, 2008
WATERBURY — Hunters now have the opportunity to draw 22,050 antlerless deer permits and can shoot three deer this fall under new rules approved by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Board.
The board approved the two controversial measures by an 8-4 vote and with little comment on the third and final vote last week.
The approval comes on the heels of a 7-6 vote to approve the measure during the board's second vote in July.
Some deer hunters, particularly in Bennington County, raised objections about the dramatic increase in antlerless tags, from 11,050 in 2007 to more than 22,000 this year.
In Bennington County, the permit number jumped from 500 in 2007 to 3,200 this year. Some deer hunters maintain that the deer herd numbers in Bennington County do not justify that kind of hunting pressure.
But the Fish & Wildlife Department, led by Commissioner Wayne Laroche, said the increase in the deer herd justified the dramatic increases in antlerless permits around the state.
The main focus of issuing the permits is to decrease the number of does in the population. Permits can only be used during the Dec. 6-14 muzzle loader season.
The three-deer limit was returned after it was decreased to two deer in 2005. Biologists say the current population can easily take the increase.
Laroche said that after all the biological data is in from the four deer seasons in 2008, his department will evaluate all of the factors that went into this new deer plan — the results of this fall's deer seasons, the estimated deer population and the severity of the coming winter.
"We're doing what we need to do to control the deer herd and avoid those boom and bust populations because of those hard winters," he said.
Vermont has seen its deer herd see-saw over the past decade. Deer hunters tagged more than 10,000 bucks during the firearms deer season alone in 2000. In 2004, only 5,589 bucks were shot during the 16-day season.
After the deer-killing winters of 2001 and 2003, Vermont's deer hunters were up in arms over a lack of deer and what many viewed as the failed policies of Fish & Wildlife.
The department introduced the spikehorn ban in 2005, then saw the buck kill gradually climb thanks, in part, to gentler winters.
The only comments from board members about the final vote came during the roundtable discussion at the end of the meeting.
Wayne Barrows, the Windsor County representative, voted in favor of the new regulations but said he did so "begrudgingly."
Barrows said that Fish & Wildlife failed to discuss its three-deer decision during the public deer hearings held around the state last winter even though it knew that proposal was going to be presented to the board. He said he would have preferred that the board had been up front with the public.
"The department didn't ask the public about the three-deer limit," he said.
Robert Shannon, the Lamoille representative, said the department has set "a high bar" in its antlerless deer plan.
If those goals are not met, in terms of how this affects the deer herd, the department will surely hear about it from the hunting public.
Those goals, Shannon said, "are going to be extremely difficult to meet."
According to the department statistics, only about 20 percent of hunters who hold antlerless permits actually take deer. About 80 percent of those deer are does.
Fish & Wildlife biologists expect that about 4,300 deer will be taken with the 22,050 permits, issued by a random drawing.
But even if all of the permits were to be distributed — which the department does not expect to happen — it still would not be a number high enough to control a growing Vermont deer herd, according to Shawn Haskell, the department's deer team leader.
"The overpopulated deer herd is going to get more overpopulated, regardless of how many permits we proposed," he said in June. "We won't fill those tags. We don't have the hunters to take them."
Meanwhile, Keith Armstrong, the Bennington Country representative, is back on the 14-member board after reconsidering his resignation at the July 12 meeting.
Armstrong, who voted against the deer plan, said he decided to remain on the board after hearing from many supporters, including elected officials and hunters.
"I did get a lot of support so I decided to change my mind and stay on," he said.
Contact Dennis Jensen at dennis.jensen@rutlandherald.com
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