BAR HARBOR, Maine — Bar Harbor will hold a referendum vote this fall on whether to allow deer hunting in order to thin out the area’s deer population, even though other towns on Mount Desert Island are cool to the idea.
Concerns about Lyme disease and car-deer accidents on Mount Desert Island, where hunting for deer has been banned for decades, have prompted interest in Bar Harbor in reducing the size of the island’s deer herd.
A task force established last year has been looking into the feasibility of allowing some type of deer hunting in Bar Harbor, which ultimately would have to be approved by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and then the Legislature to move forward. To gauge interest, the town will hold a nonbinding referendum on the issue on Nov. 4.
Hunting of any kind is not allowed in Acadia National Park, which owns tens of thousands of acres on Mount Desert Island. If the plan is ultimately approved, deer hunting would be limited to parts of town outside the national park and the downtown district, and only on land where property owners allow it.
DIF&W officials have said they do not have estimates for, or methods to estimate, the size of the deer population on Mount Desert Island. They also have told Bar Harbor officials that having only one town on Mount Desert Island pursue a one-time depredation hunt, without participation from other island towns, “will not resolve the island’s problem.”
Paul Paradis, chairman of Bar Harbor’s elected Town Council, said Thursday that this is why the task force, with input from DIF&W, has come up with a long-term strategy that ultimately would have to be approved by the Legislature, which banned deer hunting on Mount Desert Island in the 1930s. The strategy, outlined in a seven-page report the task force submitted to the council in July, would allow a few weeks of firearms and archery hunting in two consecutive winters and then would allow only bow-hunting in successive years.
Other restrictions that go beyond existing deer hunting laws in other parts of the state also would apply, Paradis said. Only landowners and up to two specific designees chosen by the landowner would be allowed to hunt on any given property, and all hunting would have to be done from a concealed blind or an elevated stand. Additional restrictions could be identified and implemented before a final plan is approved.
Paradis said the intent of the plan is not to open up Mount Desert Island to deer hunting like the rest of the state, but to manage the island’s deer herd in a way that is acceptable to local residents. He said that if the plan is approved in Bar Harbor and proves to be effective, then maybe other Mount Desert Island towns would follow suit.
“It had to start somewhere,” Paradis said of a local deer management strategy. “This is a long-term plan.”
