Nino Chiappone said his Orrington farm has been under assault by deer for many, many years.
They seem to get into and destroy everything he grows at Kings Mountain, he said: the pumpkin patches, the apple orchard, the corn maze and even the 15 acres of Christmas trees. Things have gotten worse in the last five to 10 years.
This season, they took out an entire field of pumpkins. Every year, he spends more money on fencing and has a state depredation permit for nuisance animals, but it’s not enough.
For the first time, he now has six additional antlerless deer permits to distribute to hunters in an effort to ramp up the fight.
It’s part of a new state program that allows farmers to increase hunting on their land by giving them extra free permits to use or distribute — and that reflects the threat that increasing deer populations are posing to Maine’s agricultural economy. Farmers said they believe it’s an overdue step in the right direction, but it’s going to take more than that to make a dent in the destruction.
Chiappone hopes to see more hunting overall, calling the additional permits on his farm a “drop in the bucket” for what he sees as necessary for his area to get a handle on its deer.
“It’s not coming close to what we really need to be able to grow something without it being destroyed,” he said.
The new Deer Management Assistance Program through the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife offers the permits to commercial growers who are seeing significant crop damage from deer. It aims to thin out deer densities around these fields, according to state deer biologist Nathan Bieber.
Bieber also thought the department could be doing more to help commercial growers with deer management, he said. The program additionally plans to offer growers assistance with fencing costs and repellent options like motion-activated propane cannons.
Populations are generally increasing because of milder winters, especially in northern Maine, according to Bieber. This year, drought conditions likely led to even more crop damage from the animals.
Farms bordered by forest land are also appealing to deer because they offer open fields to forage on with trees nearby for cover.
In the western Washington County town of Harrington, wild blueberry and cranberry grower Courtney Hammond has also been dealing with increasing numbers that he said have cost his family’s operation, Lynch Hill Farms, tens of thousands of dollars.
“They’re everywhere,” he said. “They’re in town, they’re walking the streets.”
Farmers growing dry beans, strawberries, pumpkin and squash in his area have given up because of it, he said. The animals he sees also seem smaller, indicating less food to go around.
A few years ago, deer began eating cranberries from the family’s bogs, something Hammond said was never an issue when the bogs were built in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now, the animals easily put away four or five pounds of berries in a day.
“When you get 10 or 12 deer on a small bog, they can do a lot of damage in a hurry,” he said.
In early winter and spring, the animals also have started browsing his blueberry plants, wiping out two or three acres in several days. Wild blueberries only produce fruit every other year, which means it’s an extra impactful loss for the grower.
Lynch Hill Farms once had 300 acres in production, but the Hammonds have scaled back by about 100 with plans to go down 10-20 acres more because of larger challenges in the market, Hammond said.
He and other growers are particularly struggling with deer excrement, which gets suspended in blueberry plants and can be impossible to avoid while harvesting. His farm uses computerized camera-based equipment to process the berries and discard waste, but if the deer have been eating berries, the sorter can’t identify it.
That means he has to pay several additional people on the line as safeguards, and every time some is found, the equipment needs to be disinfected, costing time and productivity. It’s also a problem for his cranberries.
Hammond is particularly anxious that one day, a piece will make it through.
“If Grandma finds a piece of deer crap floating in her oatmeal, that’s going to be bad for the whole industry,” he said.
The farm has tried coyote and fox decoys along with propane cannons with limited success. Hammond also gets depredation permits for problem deer during the harvest season, with others for Canada geese, which he said are even worse.
This year, he was issued five DMAP permits through the new program and has also been encouraging people with doe permits to hunt on his family’s land.
With fields across eight towns and in unorganized territory, taking another five deer won’t make a significant change. But Hammond hopes continuing to encourage more hunting, especially for does, will help in the long run.
Bieber, the state biologist, said the program had a slow, quiet rollout this year because department resources are limited. In its first year, 75 permits were distributed to 11 farms Down East and in southern and central Maine.
If enough property owners express interest, he also wants to set up a database to connect interested landowners with potential hunters, he said.
In Orrington, there are plenty of people interested in hunting at Kings Mountain, Chiappone said. He believes more doe permits should have been issued in his zone in recent years, but is glad to see a change.
“They’re catching up and I’m glad they’re doing it,” he said.
