TRURO – Last year’s deer harvest in Colchester County was down from 2008 but the numbers were still enough to rank as the province’s second highest tally.
“We expected that,” said Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Tony Nette of the decreased numbers because of the high winter kill from the previous year.
“Through picking up road-killed deer we found a very high frequency of malnutrition, starvation, basically,” he said.
The high natural death rates from 2008 prompted “far fewer” anterless deer stamps to be issued last fall compared to the previous year, “so it’s not unexpected,” Nette said, of the lower harvest numbers.
In Colchester County, hunters last year bagged 740 bucks and 218 female deer. The gender of five others was undetermined, bringing the 2009 Colchester total to 963.
In 2008, a total of 1,454 deer were harvested in the county.
Across Nova Scotia last year, hunters took 7,199 bucks and 3,081 antlerless deer during the fall hunt, for a total of 10,280.
That is down from the 12,568 total harvest in 2008 but a slight increase over the 10,075 deer bagged in 2007.
Lunenburg County reported the
highest number of deer harvested last year, at 3,104.
In all, according to statistics released by the department, Nova Scotia’s woods and wetlands hosted more than 40,000 licensed hunters who helped in the province’s efforts to manage wildlife populations.
“Those who don’t hunt may not realize the important role hunters play in keeping our wildlife numbers in check,” said Natural Resources Minister John MacDonell. “Hunting helps manage some wildlife species before populations become problematic.”
Each spring, the department conducts a review to determine how the winter impacted the province’s overall deer herd. It sets its anterless deer hunting stamps based on those figures.
In other numbers, a total of 35 bears were also harvested in Colchester last fall.
Across the province, hunters reported a total harvest of 1,101 bears by 3,250 hunters - the highest numbers recorded since a separate bear licence was introduced in 1988.
And specific to Cape Breton, a total of 279 moose were bagged in 2009 by registered hunters.
hsullivan@trurodaily.com
