This year’s deer harvest in Vermont was the highest in almost two decades, thanks to recent mild winters, lots of snow in November and an abundance of muzzleloader permits.
Vermont hunters killed 18,845 deer during the youth, archery, rifle and muzzleloader seasons. The 6,066 deer taken during muzzleloader season was an all-time record.
Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Louis Porter said his department issued an extraordinarily high number of permits for antlerless deer to keep Vermont’s deer herd in check.
“It was an extraordinarily good harvest for modern times in Vermont,” Porter said. “That came as a little bit of a surprise to us.”
The first weekend of rifle season, which is usually a solid indicator of the season ahead, was slower than usual, Porter said. But steady snowfall in the ensuing weeks encouraged hunting and made for good visibility on the landscape.
Perhaps the most important factor was the sheer number of deer in the wild, Porter added. “The deer population in Vermont is largely set by the severity of our winters,” he said, and the recent mild winters are likely to become closer to the norm.
The deer population is typically thinned out by the winter kill, from cold and limited food, but climate change is making winters more hospitable, meaning more deer survive and create more deer.
“Long story short, I’d say that in an era of climate change, white-tailed deer are a species that does well in that scenario so we are changing management,” Porter said.
This year, that meant issuing more “antlerless” permits, allowing hunters to kill doe and “button bucks” with antlers shorter than one inch.
Using hunting for “population management” is part of the department’s strategy to prevent the deer herd from becoming too large and “over-browsing” the terrain, killing forest undergrowth and saplings that make for a healthy forest.
“The primary goal of Vermont’s deer management strategy is to keep the deer herd stable, healthy and in balance with available habitat,” the wildlife department said in a statement.
Seven Days reported last year that the threat of increasing deer populations has been exacerbated by the decline in Vermont’s hunting culture.
“We have way too many deer, and we know it,” Nick Fortin, deer project leader at the department, told the newspaper.
Wildlife officials also received more than 2,700 buck teeth after encouraging hunters to send in teeth to collect biological information on the deer herd.
