The first early deer hunting season for the Vineyard got off to a strong start and could point to a robust harvest for the rest of the year, officials said.
The state granted Dukes and Nantucket counties 10 extra days of hunting that ran from Sept. 21 to Oct. 1 to help cut back the Islands large deer populations. During that time, hunters harvested a total of 119 deer on the Vineyard and Elizabeth Islands.
“This really exceeded our expectations,” said Martin Feehan, a deer biologist with MassWildlife.
This past winter state officials also extended the hunting season into February. Combining the early season and the winter extension, there were a total of 522 deer harvested between the Islands this year.
“Clearly both the winter season and now the early harvest are playing very significant roles in being able to increase the harvest,” Mr. Feehan said.
Archery season on the Vineyard started on Monday, and Mr. Feehan said that things are looking up for the year.
“It’s hard to make direct predictions, but I think we are going to see a pretty strong season,” he said.
Mr. Feehan noted other factors will come into play in 2026. This year is an oak mast year, meaning oak trees are producing an abundance of acorns all at once. That could result in deer moving around less.
“Once they find a food source, they can stay there for quite some time because there are so many acorns available,” Mr. Feehan, who has come down to the Vineyard several times to talk about the deer hunt, said. “It’s not a major factor on the Islands, but it certainly plays a role.”
The beginning of archery season also comes as the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society works to set up a new mobile deer processing facility at the Ag Hall grounds in West Tisbury.
The facility consists of a trailer, mobile meat processing units and a mobile office building, all of which arrived last week.
The Agricultural Society and Tick Free MV proposed the new processing facility to increase processing capacity in hopes it will encourage more hunting.
Mr. Feehan said the early hunting season numbers and the new processing facility are encouraging developments.
“We are so excited for the processing facility arriving on Island, and being able to help start processing deer here hopefully in late October or early November,” he said.
This is great but how quickly is the deep population reproducing? Are we even putting a dent in the numbers and if so, a significant dent? I would advocate a bounty of $1000 per deer. Hopefully that would reduce the herd in a meaningful way, hunters (and more would participate) would pick up some nice cash and the island’s food bank would receive plenty of needed meat. It may not entirely solve the problem but I’m betting it would help.