Michael A. Sawyers
In 1927, hunters killed five deer during Maryland’s first regulated deer hunt. Nowadays, they kill about 100,000.
It’s no wonder the Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Service needs a 10-year plan to manage that species.
After a lot of delays, the “White-tailed Deer Plan 2009-2018” is in print, at least in draft form. I just printed the 83-page document and did a look-through. Don’t expect fine tuned things such as regulations telling you how many deer you can bag, when you can kill them and what you can dispatch them with. Those kinds of things come up every two years during regulation hearings, the next of which will be in March.
I will share with you here some of the things that jumped out at me. If there isn’t enough space to cover them all, we’ll go at it again next week. Go to www.dnr.state.md.us to find the plan and information about how to comment.
The state’s first 10-year plan covered deer management from 1998 to 2007. Statewide, the deer population increased from about 246,000 deer in 1998 to 295,000 in 2002, but then dropped off to 229,000 in 2008.
When looking only at Region A, which is Garrett and Allegany counties, the numbers are more dramatic.
In 1998, the two-county population was 40,000. By 2002, the estimated number of deer had skyrocketed to 77,000, but then declined precipitously to 30,000 in 2004. In recent years, the Region A population has fluctuated between 30,000 and 50,000.
The biologists say they manage Region A more restrictively than Region B (the remainder of the state) because hunting pressure is greater west of Sideling Hill Creek and the deer habitat is worse. In Region B, the liberal bag limits allow for the taking of two bucks and 10 does in each of the bow, muzzleloader and firearms seasons. Word has it that Sears in Frederick ran out of freezers during a couple deer seasons.
The state folks say they rely on scientifically and statistically sound computer models to estimate deer populations.
This is interesting.
During the 2007 season, there were 67,000 licensed resident and nonresident deer hunters in Maryland. Of those, 58,000 hunted with modern firearms, 37,000 hunted with muzzleloaders and 31,000 used bows, including 7,000 crossbows.
The sale of resident hunting licenses peaked in 1968 at 183,000. About 85,000 were sold in 2007. About 37,000 nonresident licenses were purchased that year.
The 10-year-deer plan is a wealth of information about Maryland’s big game species. I would recommend that every Maryland deer hunter either read it online or print it out for leisurely reading, such as in a treestand or ground blind on a slow day.
Other than cozy up to an Allegany County bar stool, order a cold one and shoot the bull about shooting deer with the local imbibers, I don’t know what more the state agency could have done to learn about our deer.
They used surveys galore, computer models, check-in data and a lot of other resources to paint a detailed picture of whitetails from the Atlantic Ocean to Squire Fike Road, which, in a westerly direction, is as far away from Maryland as you can get and still be in it.
Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com or (301) 784-2523.
