LINCOLN PLANTATION (AP) – This tiny settlement in Maine on the New Hampshire border – population 46 – voted to raise $8,000 to feed the deer last winter, according to Muriel Potter, the town clerk, registrar, treasurer and tax collector.

That’s about $174 per person, but there’s near-unanimous support for the deer at the town meeting each year, she said.

“They may squabble over a couple of thousand dollars for a new culvert, but when it comes to feeding the deer, they just give the price they think it should be and all the hands go up – Yea,” she said. “We just have it in our heads that we want to feed the deer.”

The tradition began decades ago when loggers at camps noticed deer were eating the grain for their horses. The owner of a small diner and gas station in the village center, known as Wilsons Mills, began collecting donations in a glass jar on the counter and feeding the deer outside.

“It was quite a novelty for people all around to come in and watch them,” Potter said.

Donna Glover, who took part in the official feeding program for more than three decades before retiring two years ago, is skeptical of scientists who say feeding does more harm than good – at least in Wilsons Mills, which lies on the Magalloway River in a historic deer wintering area.

“We see the same deer year after year, so if we’re killing them, well, they’re not dead,” Glover said. “They’re going to be here anyway, because this is their yard and it has been forever and a day.”

The town began the official feeding program in the 1950s or 1960s, after timberland owners clear cut much of the forest to salvage trees damaged by a spruce budworm epidemic, Glover said. Residents are consistent and careful, buying special deer feed, spreading it at several locations and keeping feed sites away from roads, she said.

Another budworm epidemic in the 1970s, the ice storm of 1998 and a tornado-like storm that “flattened what was left standing” kept support for deer feeding strong, said Warren Bennett, who feeds about 70 deer on his land.

What if they stopped?

“They’ve logged the town so heavily, there’s really nothing left,” he said. “Things kept creating a hardship for the herd, and it’s kind of hard to stop feeding once it’s started.”

Even state game wardens believe that if the town stops feeding, half the deer herd would die in the first year, he said.

At least one wildlife biologist doesn’t quite agree, however.

Keel Kemper, an assistant regional wildlife biologist with the State Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, has questioned some deer feeding practices.

For one thing, he said deer can literally eat themselves to death at organized feeding stations.

It takes about two weeks for the digestive bacteria in a whitetail deer’s gut to adjust to a change in diet, Kemper said during an interview with the Sun Journal last year for a story on deer baiting.

Deer who suddenly find piles of cracked corn or other feed can gorge so much that their stomachs expand to the point of death.

Tempted to cross road

A related problem: The food sometimes lures deer from other deer yards, sometimes prompting the animals to cross highways, creating a risk both to deer and to drivers.

And, Kemper said, having deer concentrate in a particular area also is risky. It can lead to the transmission of illnesses such as brain worm and chronic wasting disease.

He suggest that people refrain from feeding whitetails.

“Deer will always find something to eat,” Kemper said, “even during the worst winters.”

Those that starve to death often have other problems that make them weak and unable to forage successfully, he said.

“For me it’s not a big choice, because I really don’t want to come to a point where I have to stand and watch deer starve to death around my house,” Bennett said.

Sun Journal staff writer Doug Fletcher contributed to this report.

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