All indications are this was a very good season for Maine deer hunters. And that assessment is not mere speculation or anecdotal observation. It’s actually based on some rough data.

We biologists love to play with numbers, particularly when it comes to things like population assessments. A biologist might say that a certain population, like Maine deer, has about X individuals. Short-sighted skeptics then counter, “How do they know? They can’t count every one.”

No, they can’t. Nor do they make any attempt to, or claim that they do. What they do is gather what information they can, then extrapolate. Let me give you an example that also points out what a great deer season we just experienced.

During the most recent heyday, around the late 1990s, Maine hunters annually registered between 500-600 deer in the Biggest Bucks of Maine (BBM) Club, which recognizes deer with a dressed weight of 200 pounds or more. In 1998, there were about 231,600 deer hunters in Maine. So, BBM bucks were harvested at a rate of one for every 386 hunters (we’ll round up to 400). That’s from a total harvest of 28,241 and a total buck harvest of 17,925. So roughly one out of every 50 deer killed (2 percent of total harvest) or one out of every 30 bucks (3 percent of buck harvest) is a potential BBM buck.

Now let’s jump ahead to 2016. Overall license sales have declined since the 90s to around 200,000. That’s a close enough estimate for our population and makes the math easier. We don’t have total harvest figures yet, and we won’t for a while, so we need a sample from which we can extrapolate. Fortunately I have one in the Maine Deer Hunters (MDH) Facebook page. It has over 21,000 members, but to make the math even easier we’ll round that off to 20,000 and say it represents 10 percent of Maine’s deer hunting population.

There are always certain assumptions that must be made when extrapolating and one is that our MDH sample is an accurate representation of the entire population. I feel pretty confident in making that assumption. MDH members represent a wide geographic and demographic cross-section, from Kittery to Calais, from trophy hunters to freezer fillers and from adults in their 90s to first-time hunters younger than 10.

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While these numbers are still preliminary, MDH members reported at least 150 deer with a dressed weight of over 200 pounds. Since they represent roughly 10 percent of the total hunting population, we can extrapolate the total statewide harvest of 200-plus pounders harvested this year to be around 1,500, or three times the average. It also means that one out of every 133 hunters harvested a deer weighing over 200 pounds this year – if the theory and assumptions are correct.

With any statistical analysis there is always a certain margin of error. In this case we need to consider things like the accuracy of measuring and recording. BBM only considers clean, dressed weight as recorded on a certified scale. That means all of the body cavity contents including stomach, intestines, liver, heart and lungs are removed. Some folks occasionally forget to remove the heart and lungs. Some just estimate: “Oh, he’ll definitely go over 200.” Others fudge: “The processor said if I had weighed it two days ago it would have been over 200.”

Some use their own scales instead of state-certified scales. Even with the latter there can be variables that skew the data. When they still had one, the scale at my local registration station was off by a good 25 pounds – in the hunter’s favor. That’s a heck of a margin of error. But a certain percentage of hunters who bag 200-pounders never enter them in the BBM Club, so it’s probably a wash.

There are limits to how far you can extrapolate. For example, if we were to assume that BBM bucks were harvested in the same proportions in 2016 as in 1998 (2 percent of overall harvest and 3 percent of buck harvest) we could extrapolate the 2016 deer kill to be about 75,000, including 45,000 bucks (wouldn’t that be nice?).

Obviously it won’t be close to that. But even if we divide by three to compensate for the uncharacteristically high rate of BBM bucks, we’re still looking at a harvest of around 25,000, which isn’t bad considering how low it’s been for the last decade or so. Bear in mind this is all very crude and unscientific, but it is kind of fun.

We should also look at why there is such a high proportion of big-bodied deer in this year’s harvest – which we’ll do at a later date.

Bob Humphrey is a freelance writer and registered Maine Guide who lives in Pownal. He can be reached at:

bhunt@maine.rr.com


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