Meeting Minutes

ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING
May 21, 2024 @ 9:30am
353 Water Street, 4th floor conference room
Augusta, ME
(and virtually via Microsoft Teams)

 

Attending: Judy Camuso, Commissioner
Timothy Peabody, Deputy Commissioner
Nate Webb, Wildlife Division Director
Francis Brautigam, Fisheries & Hatcheries Division Director
Jen Vashon, Game Research and Mgmt Supervisor
Nathan Bieber, Deer Biologist
Bob Cordes, Special Projects Coordinator
Dan Scott, Colonel, Maine Warden Service
Becky Orff, Secretary/Recorder

COUNCIL MEMBERS
Shelby Rousseau (Vice-Chair)
Al Cowperthwaite
Eric Ward
Bob Duchesne - via Teams
Tony Liguori via Teams
Mike Gawtry via Teams
Ed Pineau via Teams

GUESTS
1 public member online

 

I. Call to Order

Shelby Rousseau, Vice-Chair, called the meeting to order.

I-A. Pledge of Allegiance

II. Moment of Silence

III. Introductions

Introductions were made.

IV. Acceptance of Minutes of Previous Meeting

A motion was made by Mr. Cowperthwaite to approve the minutes of the previous meeting and that was seconded by Mr. Ward.

Vote: unanimous in favor minutes approved.

 

IV-A. Election of Chair and Vice-Chair

This agenda item was postponed until the June meeting.

V. Rulemaking

A. Step 3

There were no items under Step 3.

B. Step 2

1. Depredation moose hunt areas

Mrs. Vashon stated there were no public comments received on the proposal. This was a minor change to expand beyond the 10 towns listed in the rule to the entire WMDs 3 and 6. This would create flexibility so hunters could go where the problem areas were.

There were no further questions or comments.

A motion was made by Mr. Cowperthwaite to move the proposal to Step 3 for final adoption and that was seconded by Mr. Ward.

Vote: unanimous in favor to move to Step 3.

A motion was made by Mr. Ward to accept the proposal as presented and that was seconded by Mr. Liguori.

Vote: unanimous in favor motion passed.

C. Step 1

1. Antlerless deer permit allocations

Mr. Bieber gave a PowerPoint presentation to the group (for a copy of the presentation please contact becky.orff@maine.gov).
Mr. Bieber stated he would be giving a broad overview of some of the goings on of deer for the past year. In 2023 there were 38,215 deer harvested. This was down from the 43,787 deer taken in 2022 which was an all-time record. There was a 12.7% decrease in total harvest with decreases pretty much statewide. Most notably in the core deer districts, WMDs 21-25 we had declines anywhere from 15-20%. Most of the decline was in antlerless harvest. 10,849 adult does were harvested of a desired 15,720. There were very poor conditions on critical hunting days which created an impact on the harvest. We also had a 2-day youth hunt but there were also poor conditions on both of those days. We also had very abundant mast crops in 2023. Similar to what we see for bear when they have high natural food we tend to see depressed harvest.

Mr. Bieber stated every year we tried to collect data from as many deer as we could. In 2023 we were able to examine 5,488 total deer. We collect 2,000 incisor teeth each year that we send to a lab out west. The teeth are sectioned and stained and looked at under a microscope to see what the exact age of the animal was. Results take a year to receive so are pending for the 2023 hunting season. Chronic wasting disease samples were also collected and sent to Colorado State diagnostics lab. All of the samples tested negative as they have since we began testing in the late 1990's. 263 nasal swabs were collected, and 46 blood samples were sent to a lab. Not all results had been received, but of 223 nasal swabs 13 tested positive for Covid antibodies. Ear tips were also sent to labs for testing, and of those 120 ear tips there were 2 positives for babesiosis and 6 positives for anaplasmosis.

Mr. Bieber stated we also collected hunter effort data in the fall. We did this to gauge whether or not hunters were spending the same amount of time in the field every year. That helped us to look at trends and determine whether or not a trend we were seeing in buck harvest might be driven by changes in how much hunter effort people were putting in the field. In 2023 hunters spent an average of 7.6 days hunting during the regular firearms season and 4.6 hours per day out hunting. That was pretty consistent with hunters spending 30-35 hours in the field per hunter.

Deputy Commissioner Peabody asked how the hunter effort survey was conducted and if it included lifetime license holders.

Mr. Bieber stated it was an online survey that was sent to 10,000 registered deer hunters over the age of 18. He believed lifetime license holders were excluded from that survey. At the end of the survey we asked a few miscellaneous questions each year such as "at what age did you first hunt for deer?" and "how were you first introduced to deer hunting?" We also gathered information regarding mast crops within WMDs which showed a pretty strong correlation where you had high acorn productivity/low hunter success; low acorn productivity/high hunter success.

Commissioner Camuso asked how mast production affected movement of deer.

Mr. Bieber stated he thought a lot of it had to do with deer being less localized as they would be in a poor food year. Rather than being located in pockets where there's good foraging, the opportunities were spread out.

Mrs. Vashon asked if the increase in food plots also might be influencing that.

Mr. Bieber stated he wasn't sure how prevalent food plots were. He thought those were still rare exceptions that someone would have their own food plot to hunt over.

Mr. Biber discussed the deer collaring project that began in 2015 and ended in 2022. They captured and collared deer in four different WMDs, 1, 5, 6 and 17 to monitor survival and they collared 269 deer over the seven-year period. The idea was to look at their survival and they used a modeling technique where they were able to model their survival in 2-week intervals. Each 2-week period of time when the deer was alive what were the conditions the deer experienced during that period and did it survive or not. By looking at all those intervals for all the deer they could see what conditions best predicted whether or not a deer was going to survive. The best model looked at average temperatures and deer feeding/development of the area. They were able to use remote sense data on temperatures and staff insight and aerial imagery to estimate the influence of development feeding to estimate winter mortality.

Mr. Bieber discussed community science deer projects. We follow two community science deer projects, Maine Deer Spy and within that program was the Deer Spy Project and the Rut Watch Project. Rut watch was added in 2023 to collect direct observations of the breeding season behaviors. Peak birthing occurred the 2nd week of June.

Mr. Bieber discussed the youth hunt, 2023 was the first year of the 2-day youth hunt. We would be continuing that until 2027 when the Legislature requested a report back with final recommendations.
The NEDTC meeting that was held in Maine in 2023 was discussed. The Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) was discussed. These were programs that facilitate meeting site specific deer management or removal goals; helping individual properties meet deer management goals. Permits were issued specific to properties for antlerless deer. It was a very flexible program, there were about 25 states that had DMAP programs. The intent was to improve data collection and help with deer damage issues. Deer taken in these situations would be registered through the current database. Potential solutions to help landowners would be to have a point person to funnel information to people, develop a landing page for the DMAP program which would tie together all the resources we currently have for dealing with deer/human conflict situations and being able to issue permits to landowner to distribute to hunters to remove deer specifically from their property during the hunting season. This would be limited to crop producers having deer issues and losing money. Land access was sometimes an issue and we may be able to match landowners that were experiencing problems with hunters.

Mr. Bieber discussed the 2024 permit recommendations. Each year he met with each of the regions to discuss the districts and develop recommendations. All of the feedback was incorporated into the proposal. We were proposing to issue about 20,000 more permits than 2023. We were also able to designate which WMDs would allow hunting during the youth hunt or during the archery season to take an antlerless deer without a permit. We intended to allow that in all WMDs again for 2024. Subunit 25a was being removed. At the 5-year mark we reviewed the towns to see if they still met the criteria for designation as a deer management subunit and these towns no longer met the criteria. We had many excess permits in WMD 25 already that were not sold at the end of the lottery, the subunit was no longer serving its intended purpose.

There were no further questions or comments.

VI. Other Business

Commissioner Camuso stated individuals would be able to prepay for antlerless permits this season. In the southern WMDs where we generally had more permits than applicants, they would be able to pay in advance.

Colonel Scott discussed the annual Warden Service awards ceremony. This year's Colonel's Award went to Advisory Council member Al Cowperthwaite. Al was presented with his award.

VII. Councilor Reports

Councilors gave reports.

VIII. Public Comments & Questions

There were no public comments or questions.

IX. Agenda Items & Schedule Date for Next Meeting

The next meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at 9:30am at IFW, Augusta.

X. Adjournment

A motion was made by Mr. Cowperthwaite and that was seconded by Mr. Ward to adjourn the meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 10:45 a.m.