Officials expect New Canaan this fall and winter to top the 50 deer hunters who checked in last season with local police for placement on private properties in town to kill the animals with bow and arrow.
Though the hunters don’t need to register with the town, many contact the Animal Control ahead of the Sept. 15 to Dec. 31 bow hunting season, because officers there know which private property owners are seeking to reduce the number of deer on their land.
Like much of the state, Animal Control Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt said, New Canaan has seen an increase in the number of archers that come here to hunt deer.
“And the reason for that is that over the past nine years, since all the towns started being educated about Lyme Disease, deer-motor vehicle accidents and the defoliation of the understory, people have become more and more aware of the problems caused by the overabundance of deer, and if we do not handle the deer management problem, they will continue to be overrun.”
Following a unanimous vote by the town’s Deer Committee at its Sept. 10 meeting, New Canaan asked the second taxing district of Norwalk to renew an annual agreement that allows deer hunting on a 48-acre parcel near Lukes Wood and Michigan Roads.
Last year, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection reports, 90 deer were reported killed by bow-and-arrow in New Canaan, and one by shotgun. Shotgun hunters are only allowed to shoot on parcels in New Canaan of 10 or more contiguous acres, Rose said, and the New Canaan Land Trust doesn’t allow hunting on its properties. By Town Charter, no hunting of bird or animal—in fact, the relevant section prohibits hunting, killing, trapping, wounding, frightening or capturing—is allowed at town parks.
Kleinschmitt said the overwhelming majority of hunters that she connects with private property owners end up going back to the same places the next year.
Deer Committee Chairman Richard Rose, a member of the group for three years, said the deer hunters are often from New York state, Vermont and New Jersey, and they’re looking for a place to practice their sport.
“A lot of guys want to get out in the woods and their problem is that they don’t have any place to go,” Rose said. “I have had people even knock on my door and ask whether they could hunt on my place where there’s a lot of land around here.”
The hunters have been effective. According to Kleinschmitt, citing data from DEEP Biologist Howard Kilpatrick, Fairfield County’s 68 deer per square mile on average is down to about 40 now. (Kilpatrick was not available for comment.)
Rose described bow hunters, as a group, as a highly ethical lot that don’t shoot at does if they see fawns and become very upset if, after striking a deer with an arrow, the animal bounds away injured.
“They are very dedicated to [searching for those deer], they are not just gunfighters who will catch them in the heel and say, ‘Too bad for him.’ Quite the contrary,” Rose said.
Sadly, just hours into the very first day of the deer hunting season in New Canaan, a bow hunter on a Bennington Place property wounded badly but did not kill a deer that suffered badly before police put the animal down. Police got that call at 9:07 a.m. on Sept. 15, where a deer had been run through by an arrow that, prior to exiting, tore into a part of its backbone, Kleinschmitt said. The hunter later told police that he thought that he had struck the animal in its liver.
Asked to what he attributes the rise in the number of deer hunters who come to New Canaan for the season, Rose said the overwhelming reason appears to be that the animals eat vegetation including in carefully cultivated gardens.
“That is a major concern for people and they get upset over the whole thing,” Rose said. “Many are aware of Lyme Disease, it’s true. But the concern is far more, ‘Dammit, the deer have taken out all the lilies’ and this, that and the other, and they are made very mad about it.”