White-tailed deer numbers strong in N.B. as hunting season gets underway
Deer populations rebound after a dramatic drop a decade ago
Going into the first weekend of deer season, New Brunswick hunters can take comfort in knowing their quarry numbers are healthy.
After a dramatic drop in the province's deer population around 2015, numbers have rebounded, said Graham Forbes, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of New Brunswick.
He said the population is now considered healthy, and there's "no great concern" that the annual hunting season is impacting numbers.
Rather than hunting, the biggest threat to the deer population is winter.
"And at least over longer time periods, the severe winter seems to really impact how well the population does. So in the last couple years, populations have been doing well, mainly because the winters have been mild, particularly in the centre and the south of the province."
Forbes said the province really does have a north-south divide when it comes to deer and that, too, is weather-related with the north being colder and snowier.
"If you have a very late spring, so it's a long winter, they start running out of their fat reserves that they've relied on all winter," Forbes explained.
"And if they run out of their fat reserves, they start to starve. And typically that's the young animals, the ones that were born the year before. They're not as large, they're not as able to get through the winter conditions. So typically we have a large die-off in a long winter, and it might take out a high percentage of the fawns that were born the previous summer."
Unlike moose with their long legs, he said, white-tailed deer aren't built for deep snow, so when there's a lot of snow, mortality rates are high. And since northern New Brunswick historically sees a lot more snow, deer don't fare as well as in the south.
In fact, for many years, three of the province's northern-most wildlife management zones have been closed to deer hunting.
Those zones are closed once again this season, which opened on Monday and will run until Nov. 24.
According to the province's annual Big Game Harvest Report for 2023, hunters killed 9,158 deer last season, up only four per cent from the previous year, but 44 per cent above the 10-year average.
Zone 25, the Moncton-Shediac-Sackville area, saw the biggest increase in harvest last year at 190 per cent over the 10-year average.
The report also compares the province's 27 zones in terms of kills per square kilometre. The two places with the highest kill rates were Deer Island and Grand Manan. In general though, the mainland zones with the highest kills rates, were the ones furthest south.
Borders for wildlife management zones can be found online on the provincial government's website.
For the last decade, Zone 22, which covers much of Kings and Queens counties, has the highest number of deer harvested.
But Forbes cautions hunters against assuming these are the best places to hunt.
"You may not know hunter effort, you don't know how many hunters are in the area. So there's two factors playing against each other there," he said.
"But generally … the highest harvest levels would obviously show success. But again, you don't know how many hunters are in that area, so you might have just as much luck in another zone because you're one of fewer hunters."
While there are some population surveys undertaken, annual harvest numbers are one of the ways government officials track deer populations as part of their effort to manage the species, explained Forbes.
The government also tracks "non-hunting deer mortality," which shows a slow and steady increase since 1990, fuelled mostly by roadkill numbers. That upward trajectory did have a couple of notable blips, including a dramatic increase in deaths in 2008.
Forbes said white-tailed deer are found all the way to Central America but "weren't really" in New Brunswick until after the 1830s.
"They've done well, but there's limits to how far they can go, depending on how severe the winter is. Because when there's very deep snow, those short legs are only so good compared to moose, which are larger, longer legged, stronger."
Snow is also less of an issue for caribou, which are "not particularly large, but they have hooves that allowed them to dig through snow," Forbes said.
Urban deer
If deer have flourished in the south because of more favourable weather conditions, they've absolutely exploded in southern towns — perhaps nowhere more than in Saint Andrews.
Mayor Brad Henderson said a thorough count of the town's deer population several years ago revealed a rate of 22 deer per square kilometre.
He said the population "doesn't feel like it's any more or any less, so that's the number that I still use."
And because traditional hunting has restrictions around dwellings, it doesn't really work for municipalities as a means to control deer populations. So Saint Andrews began a nuisance deer program, where bow hunting is preferred because it allows deer to be taken closer to dwellings.
Despite the program, Henderson said, the town's deer population "has held steady." While it hasn't lessened the deer problem, he credits the in-town hunt with keeping numbers from getting any worse.
Henderson said most residents have given up on growing gardens, flowers or shrubs.
"Deer literally come on patios and will eat them right off your back deck," he said.
There are also the health implications of having potentially tick-carrying deer bedding down in backyards and playgrounds.
Henderson said several residents have reported contracting Lyme disease, which can be carried by black-legged ticks, which often found attached to, and feeding on, deer.
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