Deer season conflicts, Sika deer and rude behavior

This week marks one of the most important seasons for hunters in Sussex County and throughout Delaware. It’s shotgun season for white-tail deer, and the recently arriving Sika deer.

Kenny Hopkins, one of my many field correspondents and a born and bred Sussex County farm boy, called this week.

“Dennis, you need to bring attention to deer hunting so people are more aware. Many people moving into Sussex from urban areas don’t understand that they can’t just walk into privately owned woods. Not only is it trespassing, it’s dangerous. One hunter told me this week he was in his deer stand when he began hearing unusual noises. Then he saw two people walking through the trees with their dogs. The worst of it is they were wearing brown coats. This is a woods that backs up to the Ridings community out on Beaver Dam Road.”

Kenny also reported worse. He said another hunter friend told him a person went into a woods he has been managing for deer and removed all of the deer corn he had spread and also ripped down his deer stand. The only thing the person didn’t disturb was the remote video camera the hunter had mounted on a tree to monitor activity at the site. Kenny said the camera recorded the intruder’s activity. “It’s just not right, and he will be arrested, but people need to be more aware so they don’t get themselves and others in trouble.”

This week’s shotgun season continues through Saturday, Nov. 22, and there will be another week-long season Jan. 17-24. But that’s just the shotgun season, which also allows hunting with black-powder muzzle loaders and larger-caliber pistols. From September through the end of January, Delaware also allows bowhunting, and there are other seasons for muzzle loaders as well.

For those who like to tramp through the woods, it’s important to remember a couple of things. Regardless of whether lands are posted with no trespassing signs, you can get in serious trouble if you go on other people’s property without their permission. Hunters are required to carry written permission with them when they are hunting on other people’s property. Those who want to enjoy the woods and forests even if they are not hunting would be wise to do the same.

While there are thousands of acres of public land in Sussex where hunting and other public access is permitted, those not hunting should steer clear of those areas during hunting season, or, at the very least, wear lots of bright orange clothing so their movement through the trees isn’t mistaken for a deer’s.

The other thing to remember is that Delaware doesn’t permit hunting on Sundays, so that’s a safe day to enjoy our public woods, and woods where you have permission to walk.

How about those Sika deer?

Most people are familiar with the healthy, native population of white-tail deer that add beauty and bounty to our countryside and parks. They are so plentiful, in fact, that the state allows them to be hunted over bait (like corn) and permits hunters to kill several deer each season. Delaware uses hunting as an important management tool to keep the population healthy. This year, several thousand deer will be harvested by hunters, and there will still be problems with the white-tails eating lots of farmers’ crops and homeowners’ ornamental flowers and shrubs.

Less familiar, though, are the newly arrived Sika deer that have just been reported in Sussex County in the last couple of years. They have, apparently, migrated across the peninsula from Maryland’s Dorchester County, where they thrive in that marshy, swampy and woodsy realm of the Eastern Shore. According to information on Delaware’s official hunting site, Sika deer are a species of Asian elk introduced on private land in Maryland back in 1916. Although distantly related to deer, the Sikas are much smaller, standing only about two-and-a-half-feet tall at the shoulder and weighing between 50 and 100 pounds. The antlers on the hinds, as male Sikas are called, are stubbier than white-tail antlers, and their coats can be much darker.

A couple Sikas have been spotted this year in the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge area, including at least one road kill. So keep your eyes out; you may see a new kind of deer making forays into Sussex. The state allows them to be hunted with white-tails, especially since they are a non-native species the state doesn’t want to encourage.

A final note: while the majority of Delaware hunters are well-versed in the long-standing traditions and responsibilities of this food-gathering sport, and are among our most passionate conservationists and environmentalists, it only take a few bad ones to give the others a bad name.

This week while I was driving to Stockley Center for a conference, on Peterkins Road southeast of Georgetown, the carcasses of two freshly killed deer caught my eye. They had been skinned, and their haunches and backstrap filets had been removed. Then they had been unceremoniously and ignorantly thrown off on the side of the road, next to a cut-over cornfield and within eyeshot of houses in a nearby development. They are clearly visible to every passing motorist.

The two does, of course, were not tagged. Criminals don’t register their deer. Buzzards will eventually pick the carcasses clean, but in the meantime, the deer will stand as testimony to the kind of behavior that the responsible hunting community of Sussex has to discourage in the strongest way possible. In a county developing as rapidly ours, with rural and developed cultures increasingly butting up against one another, irresponsible behavior like this can only jeopardize the future of the hunting freedom we’ve enjoyed for centuries.