At its Sept. 17 meeting, the Conservation Commission unanimously approved rules governing deer hunting on five parcels of conservation land. The commission also approved signs to be posted at those areas to alert the public that hunters might be in the woods.
ConCom gave its approval even though the rules were not in final form because the Deer Management Subcommittee (DMS) had not incorporated the changes ConCom had requested at a previous meeting. DMS Chair Bob Douglas assured the commission he would add the changes.
With digital location devices, hunters can see the boundaries of the property where they have permission to hunt and can tell if they are the required distance from a road or dwelling.
According to the draft rules, only bow hunting is allowed, and only from an elevated stand. Hunters must check in with the police dispatcher when they arrive, saying which property they are on, and check out again when they leave. Among other requirements, hunters must carry an electronic mapping device so they can stay within the designated conservation area and keep their tree stands 500 feet from a house, 150 feet from a road, and 75 feet from a trail. Stands must be removed by Feb. 1, 2021, or DMS will confiscate them.
The five conservation areas where hunting is allowed are the Daman/Stephenson, Poitras/Willard, Barrett, Perini, and Rodriguez lands. Walkers and other residents will see signs near those lands saying hunting is allowed from dawn to dusk. There is no hunting on Sundays. The signs also tell residents to keep their dogs leashed on those lands until hunting season ends Dec. 31.
The Conservation Commission also approved sending letters to notify Harvard residents who live near the boundaries of areas that have been opened to hunting.
The deer subcommittee previously announced it would issue only 30 permits for hunting on the newly opened conservation lands. ConCom associate member Eve Wittenberg asked how many Harvard residents had qualified for one of the permits, and Douglas said eight had done so.
DMS member Jason Cole said the subcommittee had decided to allow only 10 hunters on the Daman/Stephenson land for the first two weeks of the season there. That land lies east of Interstate 495 in state Zone 10, where hunting can begin Oct. 5. The rest of Harvard is in Zone 9, where the season doesn’t start until Oct. 19. Cole said Harvard hunters would get preference for those first two weeks on Daman/Stephenson. After Harvard residents, he said, DMS would give next preference to those with antlerless deer permits (often called doe tags) from the state.
ConCom’s stated purpose for allowing hunters on conservation land is to prevent overbrowsing of the forest by controlling the deer population. And population control depends on taking does, not just bucks, as members of both ConCom and DMS have acknowledged. It is unclear, though, how many of the hunters who will be using conservation land have doe tags.
ConCom member Wendy Sission suggested that hunters with doe tags be given top priority for the limited slots available for Zone 10 hunting, but no one else took up her suggestion. Wittenberg asked about the number of doe tags among the 30 hunters who were approved, but she did not get an answer. Douglas later wrote in an email to the Press, “We are encouraging our hunters to buy more tags and take does if they have the opportunity.” Only about a quarter of the doe tags for Zones 9 and 10 have been issued so far this fall, according to the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife website.
