You’ve been nervously crossing your fingers and waiting for weeks, but today may be your lucky day: You’ll finally find out if you’re among the 84,745 lucky winners who will receive a Maine any-deer permit this year.
You can check the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s list here.
Hunters who receive a permit can legally shoot a non-antlered deer in a specific Wildlife Management District this year. This year’s total is an all-time high for allotted any-deer permits.
According to the DIF&W, “the department uses the any-deer permit system to manage the white-tailed deer population in the state. The ability to adjust the state’s deer populations derives from the ability to increase, or decrease, the number of breeding does on the landscape. White-tailed deer are at the northern edge of their range in Maine, and winter severity is a limiting factor concerning population growth. By controlling the harvest of female deer in the 29 regional wildlife management districts throughout the state, biologists can manage population trends.”
Here are the deer harvest totals for the past 11 years:
— 28,885 in 2007
— 21,062 in 2008
—18,092 in 2009
— 20,063 in 2010
— 18,839 in 2011
— 21,365 in 2012
— 24,217 in 2013
— 22,490 in 2014
— 20,325 in 2o15
— 23,512 in 2016
— 27,233 in 2017
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