Hunting Varmints In Maine Al Raychard
I grew up in rural Maine during
a time when it was nothing unusual for young boys to walk down the road carrying 22 rifles without worrying about neighbors telephoning the local sheriff. During summer school breaks and weekends in the fall, or when the spirit moved us and free time allowed, friends and I would hunt woodchucks, squirrels, fox, rabbits, and practically anything we could find in the fields and woods near our homes because, well, that’s what boys in our neck of the woods did back then. It was a time before computers, Nintendo, and with only three channels on television, all black and white, we spent little time in front of the tube, except on Saturday mornings when The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Roy Rogers, and other western shows kept us in the house a few hours. Being outdoors, carrying guns, and hunting were as natural as breathing, and I look back on those days with fondness and appreciation. Fondness because those were some of the happiest days of my life, appreciation because they instilled within me a love of hunting that still burns today. Although big game, especially
whitetail deer and black bear, are now on my list of seasonal targets, varmint hunting still takes up a lot of my time. It is interesting, though. Despite the fact Maine is home to an array of varmints, offers liberal hunting seasons and bag limits, very few regulations governing varmint hunting and plenty of places where they can be hunted, varmint hunt- ing has never been extremely popular except among a select few. Historically, Maine has always
been a small game and big game hunt- ing state, with deer and black bear topping the big game list, in that order, and ruffed grouse and snowshoe rab- bit heading the small game group. An estimated 200,000 resident and non- resident hunters pursue whitetails each year and those hunters contribute $200 million to the state’s economy annually. Far fewer hunt bear, but with the larg- est population in the Lower 48 and a lengthy season that allows baiting, the
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use of hounds, and the trapping of bears, it is deer and bear that keep dozens of rustic, backwoods hunting camps, and one of the largest number of registered hunting guides per capita in the United States, in business. As for small game, a 10-year study conducted by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) showed the interest in hunting rabbit was exceeded only by interest in hunting deer and grouse. The point of all this is simple.
Down through the years anything that jeopardizes the availability and abun- dance of these popular game species has been vilifi ed by hunters, which is why Maine traditionally has had such lengthy hunting seasons and liberal bag limits on varmints such as coyote, fox and bobcat. Maine also has a rich farming and agricultural legacy, and to protect crops and livestock the same lib- eral seasons and limits have been histori- cally bestowed on crow, raccoon, skunk, and other critters. Historically, because interest in varmint hunting has never been extremely high, three things have happened. Varmint populations across the board have increased, especially that of the larger predator species, and because they have had an impact on the popular game species, interest in bring- ing varmint populations under control has reached unprecedented heights. As a consequence, hunting varmints is experiencing a rise in popularity never seen before among both resident and visiting hunters. A good case in point is the coyote.
According to a report conducted by the MDIFW in 1995, coyotes accounted for nearly 30 percent of the deer mortality in Maine. By the numbers that equates to the number of deer that hunters killed during the fall hunting season. That same report stated 50 to 80 percent of a coyote’s diet may consist of deer during a typical Maine winter. In the less popu- lated and remote regions of the state, the north, western and eastern regions, both adult deer and fawns could actually make up 90 percent of a coyote’s diet. The report also said some of the highest deer mortality occurs in late May and
early June, the fawning season. By 2009, the numbers of coyotes
in Maine had increased to the point the deer population could not produce enough young to keep up with coyote predation. Add in the number of deer killed
by bear, a growing concern, and bob- cats, small as the number may be, and the numbers killed by natural causes, especially during the winter months, Maine’s deer population was in trouble. This really came to light recently.
The winter of 2008 was one of the worst on record, with long periods of cold and record-breaking snow packs. According to the MDIFW, deer were yarded up more than 140 days compared to the nor- mal 84 days, and mortality among fawns and adult does was alarmingly high. That fall, in order to start rebuilding the deer population, no Any Deer Permits (the permits required to legally harvest a doe) were issued for the fi rst time in 18 of the state’s 29 wildlife management districts. Despite that fact, Maine hunt- ers harvested a dismal 21,062 deer, 27 percent less than 2007 and lowest since 1986 when the Any Deer Permit system started. The winter of 2009 was a repeat of 2008 and Maine’s deer numbers, already low, declined even more. That fall the deer harvest dropped again to just over 18,000, a 14 percent drop from 2008. Hunters were somewhat delighted when it was learned the deer harvest increased 11 percent in 2010 to slightly more than 20,000, but those numbers come nowhere near the more than 28,000 deer harvested in 2005 or the nearly 30,000 harvested in 2006. While the back-to-back winters
of 2008 and 2009 were the most severe since the early 1970s and without ques- tion took a heavy toll on Maine deer, hard winters are nothing new to Maine deer. They live very close to the extreme northernmost limits of their range and records show they have experienced times of low numbers before and came back strong. Hard winters and living conditions are a factor, but the coyote is a new part of the puzzle. Today, coyotes, by all measures, are increasing
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