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Up to Here in Deer: As Fewer Vermonters Hunt, the Growing Herd Is Becoming a Problem
Katie Jickling; 9/26/18
Sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves, illuminating the Hinesburg Town Forest in a soft green glow. The branches of the birch and maple trees stirred in the breeze. Only the occasional warble of a bird broke the stillness.
Chittenden County forester Ethan Tapper surveyed the scene with dismay. The woodland was "a little ecological disaster zone," he declared.
White-tailed deer had ravaged the area, Tapper said as he crouched to examine a cluster of three-inch-high ash saplings in a thicket of ferns. Hungry deer had munched them down to the ground repeatedly, he said. The acres of maple and ash seedlings all around him had been decimated.
As a result, no understory of trees is growing to replace the overstory of 80-year-old maples. The forest is open to an invasion of buckthorn, honeysuckle and other nuisance species. As climate change brings more severe windstorms and invasive bugs, the lack of diversity of native species means the forest will be less likely to rebound after damage, he said.
Anything that impedes a forest's ability to regenerate "is an existential threat," Tapper said. Today, in some parts of Vermont, the state's native white-tailed deer population is one of those threats.
A dramatic 40-year decline in the number of hunters and the spread of "no trespassing" signs barring them from land have allowed the Vermont herd to grow beyond desirable levels in about half the state. The mild winters linked to climate change have boosted the population as well, reducing the winter kill that kept deer numbers in check.
Deer population density
Roughly 150,000 deer roam Vermont's woodlands, but they are more concentrated in some areas. In places such as suburban Chittenden County, Grand Isle County and parts of southern Vermont, the combination of a moderate climate, fewer hunters and limited access to hunting grounds has allowed white-tails to thrive.
In those regions, the diagnosis is clear. "We have way too many deer, and we know it," said Nick Fortin, deer project leader at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
Vermont, NY and New Hampshire deer hunting statistics
Vermont's herd is not the biggest it's ever been; it spiked to a quarter million in the 1960s. But this time, it might be more difficult to reduce the population to keep it in balance with the natural habitat and human preference. Demographic and cultural shifts have left state officials with increasingly limited options to control the size of the deer herd.
Vermont, NY and New Hampshire deer hunting statistics
Vermont's herd is not the biggest it's ever been; it spiked to a quarter million in the 1960s. But this time, it might be more difficult to reduce the population to keep it in balance with the natural habitat and human preference. Demographic and cultural shifts have left state officials with increasingly limited options to control the size of the deer herd.
Vermont's bow-and-arrow deer season opens on October 6, and the 16-day rifle season will start on November 10. As hunters prepare to head for the woods, biologists and policy makers are experimenting with a laundry list of deer-management strategies — with mixed success.
In the most deer-dense areas, the stakes for Vermont's landscape are high. Said Fortin: "We need to reduce the deer populations sooner rather than later, or it's going to have long-term impacts."
'It's a Dying Sport'
Norwich offers a town-size view of what's been happening in Vermont. The Windsor County community has big clapboard houses along Main Street and rural dirt roads where well-to-do retirees rub elbows with professors from Dartmouth College in nearby New Hampshire.
And not surprisingly, the number of seasonal hunting licenses declined by 40 percent statewide since 1990, from 105,333 to 62,813 in 2017, according to state data.
Deer are not evenly distributed across Vermont, and neither was the 2017 deer harvest . Areas west of the Green Mountains accounted for nearly 40 percent of the total deer harvest in 2017, despite containing just 24 percent of the state’s deer habitat. In the diagrams above and left, each green dot represents a deer killed in the underlying town. The far right chart shows towns that experienced near-record total deer harvests in 2017. According to VDFW Deer Project Leader Nick Fortin, “the best deer habitat today is generally closer to where people live, while the big blocks of forest are fairly poor habitat.” Charts by Nick Fortin, VDFW
Vermont's aging population is partly to blame; fewer young hunters are picking up the sport. Only 10 percent of 20-year-olds bought licenses in 2015, compared to nearly 30 percent of those in their late forties, according to Fish & Wildlife.
Many Norwich families are relatively new to Vermont and come from more urban areas where hunting was not part of the culture, according to Lindsay Putnam, who works for Dartmouth College's Outdoor Programs Office and teaches environmental education at Marion Cross School in Norwich. She's also a hunter.
"There's just not a comfort level or familiarity with hunting," she said. "It's not part of their family culture, and they don't teach their kids how to hunt."
The result is a growing fissure in the town. Hunting has made Dakota Hanchett an outsider, the high school senior wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times in March.
Vermont father and son with Buck kill
Vermont father and son with Buck kill
Fewer kids are spending time outside at all, Putnam said, pointing to the 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, in which author Richard Louv noted a rise in what he called "nature-deficit disorder" among children.
At the same time, Vermonters are slowly losing access to large undeveloped natural areas. Old farms and forestland are being subdivided into smaller and smaller plots, often with houses and lawns. Between 2004 and 2016, plots of land of fewer than 50 acres with homes on them increased by more than 20,000 parcels — nearly 9 percent, according to Jamey Fidel, forest and wildlife program director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council.
Urban centers, especially in Chittenden County, are sprawling into surrounding rural towns. Grand Isle does not have any privately owned undeveloped forests of more than 50 acres, Fidel said.
That leaves fewer places for kids to experience the natural world, the first stepin building interest in hunting, according to Putnam.
The reality — in Norwich and elsewhere — is that "people have a huge amount of land, and they go to the gym," she said.
As the number of hunters has dropped, Royce has also seen attitudes toward hunting shift around Norwich.
When he was a kid, Royce said, his family members would congregate with other hunters each evening at Dan & Whit's general store in town to show off their bucks and trade stories about the day's hunts. These days, he said, the family stays home and butchers their deer in Royce's yard.
People in town "don't like seeing blood," he said.
From Dirt Road to 'Gold Coast'
picture-KATIE JICKLING
High up on Bragg Hill Road above Norwich village, it is easy to see the cultural changes that have gone hand in hand with alterations to the physical landscape.
Small farms along the road began failing in the 1960s. Their owners sold and subdivided their land. Forest reclaimed some of the fields, and the new mix of open and wooded land brought more deer. Newcomers moved into the old farmhouses or built new ones. Bragg Hill became the town's "gold coast," as resident Antoinette Jacobson put it, home to doctors, professors and seasonal residents.
Between 1969 and 2016, the number of posted acres in Vermont more than doubled, from 106,000 to 262,000 acres, according to state data.
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The New Hunters (and Why We Need Them)
The Decline of Hunting
Chris Saunders (left) credits his father Dr. Andrew Saunders (right) with instilling in him a deep love of wildlife and the landscape. As an adult, Saunders hunts in part because he loves to bring home venison and other game meat. According to the 2017 White-Tailed Deer Harvest Report, compiled by Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, hunters harvested more than 15,984 deer during the four Vermont deer seasons in 2017(10% of the 150,000 deer herd), providing more than 3 million servings of local venison. Photo courtesy Chris Saunders
55,000 resident hunters in the state of Vermont and Heather Furman is an anomaly. Roughly one in four Vermont men hunt and for most, it’s a tradition passed down to them by their older male relatives. Only one in ten Vermont women hunt.
Heather Furman, 36, is one of those women..........
Furman was born in Ohio and first moved to Vermont over 20 years ago to work as a park ranger at Maidstone State Park in the northeastern part of the state. She’s now the Director of the Vermont Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, which stewards 55 natural areas around the state. Fifty-four are open to hunting
Furman is a former ultra marathoner who has competed in more than a dozen ultra races, including the Vermont 50, where she had a top ten finish in 2013.
She’s also a former rock climber who has climbed at the 5.11 grade and is the cofounder of the Climbing Resource Access Group of Vermont, CRAG-VT. She served as the group’s first president for six years, from 1999 to 2005.
Furman picked up deer hunting around the time when she retired from running ultra marathons. She had grown accustomed to spending long hours at a time in the woods as a trail runner and was compelled by the growing impact of deer on the landscapes she works with at the Nature Conservancy.
Bobcat hunting fawn
Bobcat hunting fawn
Hunting is an important tool for managing Vermont’s white-tailed deer populations, which, when overpopulated, can strip a forest of its undergrowth, leaving the deer malnourished and preventing native woodland plants from establishing themselves to regenerate the forest. This is increasingly common in parts of the state as the climate warms and deer populations are no longer kept in check naturally by predators and Vermont’s harsh winters.
As Furman says, she hunts because, “I like to do my part.”
She also finds hunting deeply rewarding. “I find that my awareness of what is around me and the diversity of experiences I have in the woods are so much greater than when I was trail running with the goal of covering ground and territory,” says Furman. “Now I’m content to spend a whole day exploring a quarter-mile of forest. I couldn’t say that five years ago when I was running back-to-back 25-mile training runs on my weekends.”
Black Bear with adult deer kill
Black Bear with adult deer kill
Overall, hunting is on the decline and Furman is part of a group of new hunters working with veterans of the sport to recruit newcomers. This spring the State of Vermont hopes to roll out a new hunting mentorship program, one of a host of programs it runs to address issues like access to land and retention rates.
Since 1990, the number of hunting licenses issued to Vermont residents has declined by nearly 50 percent. In 1991, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department issued about 92,000 licenses to residents. In 2017, the department issued just 54,836 resident licenses. That’s fewer than the department issued in 1945, when, at 315,000, the state’s population was roughly half of what it is today.
Vermont is not alone in this trend. Nationally, a report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that the number of hunters in the United States declined by 11 percent between 2011 and 2016.
On average, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife reports that roughly 15 percent of Vermonters hunt. In the Northeast Kingdom counties of Orleans and Essex, that number climbs to nearly 25 percent, close to what the statewide average was in 1974. Ninety percent of hunting carried out in Vermont is for white-tailed deer.
According to Scott Darling, Wildlife Management Program Manager for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, that decline presents a challenge. In Vermont, hunting licenses account for roughly one third of department revenues, which fund research, conservation efforts and regulation of more than 25,000 species of fauna and 2,000 native plants. Annual license sales peaked between 1965 and 1987 but have been on the decline since. “It’s the primary funding source for the Fish and Wildlife Department as well as the match for much of the federal dollars we receive,” said Darling in October.
Eastern Coyote with killed fawn
Eastern Coyote with killed fawn
As Project Coordinator for the Wildlife Management Program, Darling’s colleague Chris Saunders studies the human factors involved in wildlife management. Saunders hunts and fishes with his own sons. It’s a tradition he learned from his dad, who works as a naturalist. He grew up hunting and fishing and likes to eat wild meat for health reasons and for the connection it provides him with his land. “Wildlife is extremely important to me. I birdwatch rather avidly and am a gardener too, and I don’t see a big distinction between these activities. It’s about getting intimate with nature and understanding where we belong.”
On the whole, Vermont’s hunters are an aging population. Since 2000, the number of youth hunting licenses issued to Vermont residents has diminished by more than fifty percent, from about 10,000 in 2000 to just over 4,000 in 2017. “Research has shown that people who get into hunting at an older age are less likely to keep it up over the long term,” said Saunders in October.
Saunders says that decline is due in part to Vermont’s aging demographics statewide. “Hunters by and large come from rural areas,” says Saunders. “The fewer young people you have in rural areas, the fewer young people you’re going to have hunting.”
Saunders emphasized that hunting’s decline is also due to changing social circumstances. “It used to be that if you were a rural kid, you hunted and you fished. There are more things to do now. And we know from national studies that people have less time. They are working more,” says Saunders.
The New Hunters
For some young Vermonters, hunting is compelling because it presents a rare opportunity to unplug from today’s world of smartphones, to slow down and focus on being still. They seem to want some of the things people like Ed Gallo and Eric Nuse suggest we are all lacking: time to be still and present.
As with rock climbing, Furman says, hunting demands your full attention. “When you’re hunting, you have to find a balance between being quiet and relaxed and not doing anything but being alert to what is around you,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of quiet in my life these days. It’s a different way to be.”
For 31-year-old Kyle LaPointe, bow hunting is a quiet respite from a
Kyle LaPointe started out as a bow hunter and now hunts with a rifle as well. In 2017, the overall success rate for deer hunters in Vermont was 18 percent. Photo by Kyle LaPointe
fast-paced work life as a paramedic. He works long shifts to earn days off in a row, which he tries to spend outside with his kids. The rhythms of hunting suit his life as a dad better than his former passion: rock climbing.
Putting good meat in the freezer is a bonus. “I’m a foodie,” he explains. “A lot of people my age who are getting into it as adults care about conservation and where their food comes from.” That’s why he loves venison. “It’s the best meat you can get. It’s free-range, local, totally organic. I love being able to cook up intricate dishes for my whole family,” said LaPointe, who is working to recruit his wife to the sport.
LaPointe lives with his wife and three young kids on a small homestead in Townshend, Vt. He didn’t grow up in a hunting family but taught himself to bow hunt at 21, when he found himself living off the grid on a remote property in southern Vermont. He’s also a fly fisherman and cross-country skier. He primarily hunts deer on public land in Windham County.
“Archery is like the fly fishing of the hunting world.” says LaPointe. “It is very quiet. There is no bang or loud noise. You have to be very in tune with the wind and your every movement. Lots of little factors have to come into play to make a good shot.”
It also requires getting very, very close to a deer. “You have to get a lot closer to your prey in order to ethically harvest them. In Vermont, you’re talking 20 to 60 yards for a clean shot. With rifle hunting, depending on how accurate you are, you could be several hundred yards away or more.”
LaPointe is a member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and wishes the newly-planned mentorship program were available to him when he was learning. He killed his first deer by arrow in Vermont last year.
Like Gallo, LaPointe sees value in introducing kids to the outdoors through farming and hunting. He encourages his five-year-old daughter to practice listening and being still while they hunt grouse. “My wife and I raise and process pigs and chickens on our farm and my daughter has always been a part of that. For her, that’s where meat comes from. If she grows up and decides not to hunt and not to farm, that’s OK. At least she’ll understand that.”
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A NEW NEED FOR AN OLD TRADITION: HUNTERS HELP VERMONT’S FORESTS
by: Tom Slayton. Photo of hunters and deer courtesy of Vermont Fish & Wildlife.
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