MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Hunters heading into Vermont woods this fall can expect to find more deer with big antlers than have been seen in years, maybe ever.
This is the third season since the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife implemented restrictions on the deer that hunters could take, giving young male deer more time to grow before they could be taken.
Couple that with two consecutive mild winters and officials are hoping for a banner hunting season, although biologists haven’t made any predictions.
“It’s exciting. We’re not used to this in Vermont,” said Fish and Wildlife spokesman John Hall.
The first of Vermont’s four deer hunting seasons opens on Saturday. The October archery season runs through Oct. 28. The 16-day rifle season starts Nov. 10. The second archery season, which coincides with muzzle loading season runs from Dec. 1-9.
“I do a lot of traveling with my job,” said Thomas Jones, of Northfield, a fish biologist for Fish and Wildlife, but who spoke as a private citizen and not as a member of the department. “I’ve definitely noticed a big difference in the numbers of deer this year. I am happy to say that’s with both sexes.”
That rise in the deer herd has translated so that during the archery season, hunters in all but a few of the state’s wildlife management units, archers will be able to take deer of either sex.
During the rifle season, hunters are only allowed to take deer that have at least two points on one of their antlers. That regulation was first implemented in 1995, partly at the request of hunters who were despairing of the number of male deer they were finding in the woods.
It was a big change. “We have had the same antler restrictions for close to 100 years,” said Hall.
There are similar restrictions in other states, including New Hampshire.
Under the New Hampshire restrictions, “spike” deer are not legal at any time in that area, unless both antlers are less than three inches in length, in which case they are legally considered antlerless deer. New Hampshire also has shortened the archery and firearms season in the area by seven days.
In Vermont the restrictions appear to be paying off.
“The test on this is going to be the number of bucks in the harvest. Will the deer we saved in the harvests (in the preceding two years) show up as three-year olds?” said state Wildlife Biologist Forrest Hammond, who works out of the Springfield office.
Jones said that while he’s been seeing a lot of make deer with larger antlers, few of them would be classified as trophy bucks.
But Hammond said that the deer that survive until they’re 3 will also learn a wariness that could make them harder to find, giving them time to live longer, and grow even bigger.
“Certainly we seem to be seeing more branch antlered bucks,” Hammond said. “People are pretty excited about it.”
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