WHO KNEW That Hunters Can Help Restore Native Plants and Forest Health?

Many Hanover residents know what happens when too many deer inhabit our forests: they eat wildflowers like trillium and the seedlings and saplings of trees like sugar maple and oak,

preventing regeneration of these plants. Unfortunately, this makes openings for invasive plants like buckthorn, burning bush, barberry and honeysuckle.

Hunters have an essential role to play in deer management and forest stewardship. If your woods are showing signs of deer browse, allowing hunting may help reduce the damage. To reduce deer numbers, harvesting doe is much more effective than taking bucks. Firearm hunters harvest more deer than archery hunters, but there are only five days out of 26 this year when firearm hunters can take doe in Hanover. Archery hunters can take either sex.

Because of the documented high concentration of deer in Hanover, NH Fish and Game rules allow the town to distribute special permits that enable qualified hunters to harvest up to two antlerless deer. Earlier this summer, the town ran a lottery for 150 special permits, usable in designated areas where deer pressure is most severe--mainly near the central part of town. Landowners are encouraged to ‘host, don’t post’ their land. The 2022 hunting season begins on September 15.

Are the special permits working? In 2018, 10 trillium stations were set up to evaluate the results of hunting since the special permits were put in place. Why trillium? Deer love to eat members of the lily family, and trillium is one. Each station is on public land, and consists of a cage that prevents browse, and 2 plots where browse is permitted. Volunteers now monitor the stations over the summer to measure and count stalks. In 2018 very few plants bloomed and many were stunted. As expected, Trillium flowers are reappearing in the cages. Encouragingly, blossoms and taller plants have emerged in some control plots, signs that the hunting program is starting to have an impact.

For more information about the impacts of an over-abundant deer herd, check out Hanover’s deer webpages: hanovernh.org/deermanagementand forest health There are sections about the signs of excessive deer browse, landscaping with deer in mind, the connection between deer and deer ticks (and Lyme disease), deer biology and deer management issues, including how other states approach this challenge. If you would like to invite a hunter onto your land, please contact Alex Taft at Town Hall: Alex.Taft@hanovernh.org.