So, what should we make of last week’s antlerless-deer-permit drawing,
strictly from a western Franklin/Hampshire perspective? Again, we
wound up with the short straw, and some natives are restless.
Once the bastion of Bay State deer hunting, western Franklin County
hilltowns like Whately, Conway, Ashfield, Shelburne, Buckland, Colrain
and Leyden are now among the toughest, most-restrictive places to hunt
whitetails; little pressure, few doe permits. The same goes for directly
south of there, in towns like Williamsburg, Goshen, Chesterfield and the
Hamptons, south and west. It’s no accident. The deer-management team has
been trying to “redirect” hunting pressure for more than a decade, and
their most effective tool is antlerless permits. By limiting permits in a targeted zone, hunting pressure decreases because meat hunters go where they can kill bucks or does. These days, the trouble zones are 4 and 2.
To be fair, many excellent, veteran hunters in the region are pleased with the
conservative policy in their woods. These folks, many of them landowners and big ones at that, are not inclined to shoot does anyway, preferring antlered bucks, so they’re perfectly content with the situation. Myself, I can live with the conservative approach as well, for the good of the herd, but will and have filled doe permits  when lucky enough to get one. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, though, a salient question endures. That is: Why no noticeable spike in our deer population, given the dramatic permit cutbacks this millennium? And then a related question: Why are the stewards of our western landscape not seeing more deer when cutting their hay or cordwood? Why do they insist there were more deer in Colrain and Conway years ago, when they were apple and dairy towns? Those are the questions I’d like answered. No rhetoric, please.
Yeah, I know, “patience, Jackass, patience.” Supposedly, we’ll soon reap
the benefits. But, really, how can a scribe keep repeating that “official doctrine” year after year when we haven’t seen any significant gains for a going on a decade. Apparently, the management team is not impressed with the results, either, as evidenced by the paltry number of antlerless permits doled out in Zones 2 and 4 in recent years. Again this year, those of us who hunt Franklin/Hampshire west of the Connecticut River are at the bottom of the list with 200 permits issued for Zone 2 (17 percent of applicants), 400 for Zone 4 North and 300 for Zone 4 South (both 21 percent). Meanwhile, along our western corridor, in Zones 1 and 3, a total of 3,000 permits were issued, 750 (63 percent) in Zone 1 and 2250 (92 percent) in Zone 3. Book-ending the two Zone 4s, t’other side the river, a total of 4,300 permits were issued between Zones 5 (1,450, 45 percent), 6 (450, 51 percent) and 7 (2,400, 81 percent). Numbers don’t lie. We are surrounded by Deer Management Zones where a majority of hunters who apply for doe permits get one. Here, it’s a long shot every year, which appears unlikely to change anytime soon.
Perhaps we will soon start seeing the desired results. Perhaps we won’t. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m not holding my breath; not even if the
biomass chain saws replace our old-growth forests with luscious
clear-cut regeneration.
I guess I was born suspicious. I hope my grandchildren are, too.