MOUNT DESERT, Maine — Maine House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, presented a bill to the Legislature’s Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife on April 3, that would make it legal to hunt deer on Mount Desert Island.
Faulkingham represents the towns of Franklin, Gouldsboro, Hancock, Sorrento, Sullivan, Winter Harbor, and Steuben.
The bill, LD 1438, is just a single sentence directing the commissioner of the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to adopt “rules opening Mount Desert Island to deer hunting.”
There have long been differing opinions regarding the deer population on Mount Desert Island with some considering the abundance a nuisance or danger and some enjoying the relative ease of seeing deer, from fawns to heavily antlered “trophy” bucks.
Deer haven’t been legally hunted on the island since the 1930s except when it has been declared a “nuisance” deer situation.
As recently as this past December, the Southwest Harbor Select Board was considering what it could do—if anything—to help decrease the amount of accidents involving deer as well as potentially decrease the amount of property damage deer might cause as well as Lyme disease cases on MDI.
At its December 10 meeting, the board members discussed a potential deer ordinance related to people feeding deer in Southwest Harbor and how the problem is a bit bigger than the one town.
In a 2020 report to the 129th Maine legislature, wildlife biologist Nathan R. Bieber wrote that “Maine’s deer feeding culture appears to be more extensive than what’s seen in other Northeastern states, perhaps owing to relatively severe winters.”
Deer also have had an impact on other species. Bar Harbor was the first place in Maine where a deer tick was found. That was in the 1980s. There can be up to 100 ticks on a single deer at any given time. Deer ticks are successful in broadleaf forest, of which MDI has large tracts because of the fire of 1947.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, 1,510 probable and confirmed cases of Lyme disease were reported to Maine CDC, a 34 percent increase from the year before. Cases had decreased significantly in 2020. Hancock County had a higher infection rate than most of the rest of the state in 2021.
Back in 2013 when 1,376 cases were reported, a task force studied how Lyme disease had increased on Mount Desert Island by a factor of four since 2006.
Crashes involving vehicles and deer had doubled compared to numbers in the early 2000s and 1990s.
At the time, the task force chairman Robert Kelley reported that 20 percent of all crashes on MDI involved deer. Those events aren’t contained to any town or Acadia National Park.
Discussions about potentially thinning down the herd brought standing room only crowds to the Bar Harbor Town Council Chambers.
Recently, deer-vehicle crashes don’t seem to be increasing much on Mount Desert Island, according to state data, other than Tremont, where there were 15 crashes with deer last year; the town had seven the year before and six in 2013.