BY JIMMY SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
The Northampton County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday, Oct. 27, to approve a resolution to request the state Department of Wildlife Resources to study longer deer seasons and incentives to shoot more female deer.
The vote came two weeks after supervisors defeated a motion that would have done the same — ask the state to study early and late antlerless-only deer seasons and an Earn-A-Buck system to control the large population of deer.
The study request does not include the issue of allowing rifles for deer hunting in the county. Northampton does not allow rifles in the recreational hunting of deer.
During an Oct. 13 meeting a nearly identical resolution presented by Supervisor Jon Dempster failed after it was opposed by Supervisors Oliver Bennett, Betsy Mapp, and Ernest Smith.
A procedural vote to revisit the decision made on Oct. 13 passed, 4-1, with Bennett voting against it. In two weeks’ time, Bennett voted against the state deer evaluation, voted against revisiting the issue of the state deer evaluation, and then voted for the state deer evaluation. He did not explain his contradictory votes.
Unlike ordinances or changes in regulation, resolutions like the request do not require public hearings, said county attorney Ellen Bowyer.
Still, Chairman Dixon Leatherbury of the board of supervisors allowed the public to speak at the meeting prior to the unanimous vote taking place.
“It’s getting to be quite an expensive issue for us,” said Bruce Richardson of the deer overpopulation problem. Richardson is a lower Northampton County farmer who serves as president of the Northampton County Farm Bureau.
He also said that damage claims for vehicle collisions with deer through Farm Bureau insurance are common and that many Eastern Shore auto body shops struggle to keep up with claims.
Helene Doughty, the agriculture and natural resources extension agent for Northampton County, said that well in excess of $1.3 million of soybean yield in the county is lost annually because of deer.
Multiple speakers sat through two and a half hours of the meeting to speak on the issue and thank the board for reconsidering.
They cited concerns over deer collisions with vehicles, crop destruction, and deer contributing to increases in tick population.
Spencer Murray, a longtime former member of the board of supervisors, expressed concerns over the effectiveness of the Earn-A-Buck system and the extending of deer season and whether or not hunters will follow the rules.
The DWR will study the upcoming deer season in the county and make a recommendation to the county accordingly. The county will examine the DWR’s recommendation, which should arrive around May 2027, before implementing or changing anything.
Another Northampton County farmer, Steve Sturgis, said that while the farmers do obtain kill permits to try to prevent deer from doing damage to crops, the deer reproduce more quickly than the farmers can manage, and they also tend to not revisit the same spots of a field every time.
“If every time you went to your favorite restaurant you got shot at, you’d go somewhere else, wouldn’t you?” he asked the board.
Sturgis said parts of his fields were so thoroughly eaten by deer that it was not even worth trying to harvest the crops grown there.
