RUMFORD — After learning this week that Maine’s preliminary 2009 deer harvest numbers are 14 percent lower than the 2008 harvest numbers, members of the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee will begin work next week to turn that around, Sen. Bruce Bryant of Dixfield said Wednesday evening.

For 2009, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists projected a statewide harvest of approximately 19,289 deer based on an analysis of mortality and reproductive rates. However, deer biologist Lee Kantar said last week that the tally was 18,045 deer.

“To put this into perspective, we must consider that the 2008 and 2009 winters represent the most severe back-to-back winters since 1971-72,” Kantar said. Long winters with deep snows have a tremendous impact on the overwinter survival of deer, he said.

Additionally, Kantar said that both expected regional declines in deer abundance and adverse hunting conditions — two weeks of poor hunting conditions during the firearms season — played a role in the fall 2009 harvest decline.

“As you know, doe permits were reduced significantly,” Bryant said. “When you reduce your doe tags, then you’re going to reduce your harvest.”

Kantar said the reductions in any-deer permits for 2009 were necessary to allow the deer herd to begin to recover.

“That was the plan,” Bryant said, “because they wanted to reduce the deer taken because of the severe winters over the last three years. In a bad winter, you can lose up to 40 percent of your herd, and I’m not talking about all the other problems that the deer have,” Bryant said.

He said Maine needs more than a few low-snow winters like this winter to help restore herd populations. “And we’ve got a lot more work to do on securing more (deer) yards,” he said. “In the northern part of Maine, it’s been bad for a while, and the loss of deer wintering habitat is a part of that, and bad winters just knocked the herd down and it just takes a while to come back,” Bryant said. “Of course, if the deer aren’t there, people have a hard time coming up to camp.”

Bryant said the committee will try to create more deer wintering yards and habitat, and better predation control of bears and coyotes. “Spring bear do quite a lot of damage on the fawns, but we did decide not to try to increase the harvest on bear in the northern area because they’re already hurting for hunters going up there for the deer and we didn’t want to cause a problem with them for the bear,” he said.

Next week, a deer biologist will update the committee on the situation.

George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine agreed Wednesday evening with some of what Bryant was saying.

“From 2007, we’re down 37.5 percent, or roughly 10,000 in two years. Extraordinary,” Smith said of Maine’s deer harvest numbers. He said there are a lot of reasons for the decline, but mainly attributed it to a lack of wintering area, predation by bears and coyotes, and two bad winters.

One problem, he said, is the state protects deer cover — the conifers deer have to live under in the winter because the snow isn’t as deep there — but the state didn’t protect anything for deer to eat near that cover.

“So, they starved,” he said. “Gerry Lavigne says we’ve lost 75 percent of our deer wintering areas in the last 30 years,” Smith said of the former Maine deer biologist. “Oh, it’s been pretty rough.”

The state went from zoning deer wintering areas to cooperative management agreements and neither worked, Smith said, so now the state is back to a different version of the voluntary cooperative agreements.

“We don’t know if it will work, but the problem is that deer are gone in the North Woods for generations and the outdoor industry is really suffering and we’re looking at what we can do to help,” he said.

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