Staff Writer
The whitetail deer of Aroostook County may find themselves getting by with a little help from their friends this winter: member of the Aroostook County Conservation Association (ACCA) met on Jan. 21 in Presque Isle to discuss options in assisting the whitetail, which included feeding the deer and increased efforts toward predation control. Former State Deer Biologist Gerry Lavigne attended the meeting as a guest speaker, and provided much information and discussion for over 60 ACCA members that were in attendance.
The intention of the ACCA is to do whatever it takes to help build the whitetail population in Aroostook County, be it predation control, habitat restoration, or supplemental feeding.
“We’ve asked for the professional guidance from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists, and we’re hoping to hear from them,” said ACCA President, Jerry McLaughlin.
“I was hoping to come up here tonight and here more about this group forming a coalition to increase the killing of coyotes, not so much as a group resorting to feeding the deer in the winter time,” said Lavigne.
“Feeding the deer does more harm than good,” he added, “ I know that the deer population last winter was devastated, and a lot of the deer starved up here in Aroostook County. Feeding deer does not address the chronic problem that deer have up here, which is that they’re just not surviving predation losses in the deer yards,” Lavigne stated.
As the meeting progressed, an emphasis of discussion was placed on short-term solutions to get the deer through this winter.
Though habitat restoration was discussed at the meeting — one member even suggested that the ACCA purchase land required to maintain their own deer yard —controlling the coyote population and providing supplemental feeding throughout the course of this winter seem on the forefront of the ACCA agenda.
“A major factor in getting the Aroostook County deer population to recover is improving the survival rate of deer that are one week old to six months old,” said Lavigne.
Based off of the discussion at the meeting, helping the whitetail make it through spring will most likely involve a very stringent feeding program and an increased effort to control the coyotes.
“Coyotes have a huge ability to reproduce and they respond very well when their numbers get lower by producing larger litters,” said Lee Kantar, Maine deer and moose biologist. “That’s always been the difficulty that people face when they want to reduce coyote numbers to do something like protect deer; it’s an extremely difficult thing to do because of the reproductive potential in coyotes,” he added.
Though some might see killing coyotes as a cruel means of predation control, a reduced population may be better for the coyotes.
“We’re not out to eradicate the coyote,” McLaughlin said, “we want to get the coyote population under control to help the whitetail during the winter months. Their population has gotten to the point where some of them are so infested with mange that they have very little hair left, and that’s a cruel death,” he added.
Members of the ACCA voted to allow their directors to make a decision, one way or another, regarding the feeding of deer based off of the incredibly strict feeding guidelines that aren’t fool proof.
Unless feeding the deer is done absolutely correctly, something that requires a tremendous amount of time, research, money, and energy, it can hurt or even kill the deer.
“We discourage people from feeding the deer,” said Kantar. “We have information available about feeding the deer at http://www.state.me.us/ifw/wildlife/species/deer/feeding_deer.htm, which gives people a better understand of why we discourage it.”
The directors of the ACCA will be meeting later this week to discuss feeding options and predation control. Though a date for the next meeting has yet to be set, anyone interested in joining the ACCA can contact McLaughlin at 896-3140.
