New Hampshire Town Takes Aim--Literally--at Deer Overpopulation

Richard Patten looks across his land on Moultonboro’s Long Island and catches a glimpse through the trees of two does foraging for shrubs on the forest floor.

The does’ heads pop up as a truck passes--out of curiosity, not fear--and after a moment they go back to their meal. The truck’s rumbling is enough to make most animals scamper into the wilderness, but for the burgeoning deer herd on the island, such contact with humans is routine, business as usual.

Patten throws up his hands in disgust.

“It’s more like a petting zoo,” says Patten, 74, who retired to the 2-square-mile island on Lake Winnipesaukee 12 years ago.

The state in August approved hiring a professional sharpshooter to thin the island’s growing deer herd by about 90 deer this winter. The move, embraced by Patten and other island residents, has drawn criticism from others who say killing the deer is cruel.

“Mr. Disney and his Bambi foolishness didn’t do us any good,” says Patten, who argues the deer have destroyed the island’s forest. “There’s always been animal-rights types, but it’s starting to get to a point where it’s them or us.”

This island in New Hampshire is not the only community trying to figure out how to deal with too many deer on too little land. It’s a problem faced across the country. Governmental efforts to protect deer over the last couple of decades have led to overpopulation in many areas.

Patten is chairman of the Long Island Deer Task Force, which has been trying to come up with a solution to the deer problem for years.

The island had 49 deer when the state outlawed all hunting there in 1970. By last year, the deer population was 120, about four times what the island can handle.

Steven Weber, deer project leader for the state Fish and Game Department, says the deer have eaten much of the island’s underbrush and are forced to scrounge for the little food that remains.

“All you have to do is go out on the island and rattle a potato-chip bag if you want a deer to come out,” Weber says. “Deer have eaten virtually everything palatable within their reach.”

Many are smaller than normal, and their reproductive rate, as well as the fawn survival rate, has gone down, Weber says. He says hiring a sharpshooter is the best solution.

“The potential of getting unanimous support for any action is nil. It’s a difficult situation for everybody,” Weber says. “For the welfare of the deer, for the ecology of the island, and the general satisfaction of residents of the island, we feel it is the appropriate action to take.”

Weber says the Humane Society agrees.

The deer on Long Island wander through the yards of the more than 500 homes there, scrounging for the rare unfenced shrubbery or flower garden. Tourists often drive to the island just to feed the deer--another source of irritation for residents.

But Lea Brigham, who has lived on the island for 10 years, says people should be able to share the island with the deer, even if that means feeding them.

“When I bought here, just like everybody else, we knew there were deer here,” says Brigham, 65. “My husband and I felt all along we should give something back to the deer, given we are disturbing their habitat.”

Brigham served with Patten on the Long Island Deer Task Force, but she says her suggestion that the deer be trapped and taken elsewhere fell on deaf ears.

“Killing them is ghetto mentality,” Brigham says. “It’s just cheaper and faster.”

Patten says the task force decided not to trap and move the animals because it would be expensive and the survival rate would be low. He added that a confirmed case of Lyme disease believed to have been contracted on the island would lead to legal problems if the animals were moved.

The state has hired sharpshooter Tony DeNicola, president of a nonprofit firm called White Buffalo Inc., in Hamden, Conn. Details have not all been worked out, but DeNicola, who has been involved in controlling animal populations elsewhere for nearly a year, has offered to do the job for free for the publicity.

The meat will help feed the homeless.

DeNicola, who has an advanced degree in wildlife ecology, knows that the idea of sharpshooting as a means of animal-control is a hard sell.

“You need to make contacts so they don’t perceive you as a redneck trying to extend the hunting season,” he says.

He plans to kill the deer at night, when they are most active. He will use a silencer to enable him to get several deer at once, without scaring them off.

Also, he says, “It’s very disturbing for people to hear gunshots at night.”

Brigham suspects the real reason Patten and others want to kill the deer is because they don’t like fencing in their gardens and other planting around their expensive homes.

“Boy, their sense of values are strange,” she says. “I think it’s a joy to have these animals walking through. It’s a treasure to look at. Why would you want to take this all away?”