Tons of corn, alfalfa and soybeans are swallowed up every year in Estrie, without farmers getting a penny. The guilty ? White-tailed deer, which grazes the fields. The solution ? Hunters invited to the lands of producers.
A quarter of the income of Rémi Guay, breeder and dairy producer, was lost each year because white-tailed deer grazed the fields of his farm in Barnston-Ouest, a small village not far from Magog. The Eastern Townships have been grappling with an overpopulation of white-tailed deer on its territory for more than a decade.
“It’s as if I had accepted that 20 of my cows walk on my farm continuously, year round [en mangeant] all the time, ”he explains, getting off his green tractor.
Rémi Guay bought his farm in 2015. “Being a start-up producer, I cannot afford to sow 25% more corn or 25% more wheat to achieve a yield,” he explains. . “It’s already hard to earn a living in agriculture,” laments the producer. He also grows fall grains, clover and alfalfa.
Traces of fresh deer’s hooves still marked the damp soil of his land, as Press last Thursday.
Four years after the implementation of a project that allows hunters to kill white-tailed deer on his land, Mr. Guay notices a decrease in the devastation caused by deer.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
François Pelletier, from Gestion Agrofaune Estrie
The idea came from the wildlife technician François Pelletier. Since 2018, his company, Gestion Agrofaune Estrie, has been offering a predation service. It organizes supervised hunting days on the land of interested agricultural producers. For two years, the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks has participated in the project.
Amateur hunters go to land where there are already caches and bait, installed by guides, also wildlife technicians, who participate in the project. Participants can then slaughter female deer, which is antlerless adults, on land that is usually inaccessible to them, as it is private land.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Hunting cache on the land of Rémi Guay
It is better to hunt females since there are more of them. “For a healthy population, there must be one male for two females. But we are not in there, we are almost one to ten in certain places, ”explains guide Étienne Bolduc, while accompanying a hunter on the land of Rémi Guay.
The latest data collected by the Department estimate the white-tailed deer population at 45,000 in Estrie. The density of animals can rise to more than 15 deer per square kilometer in the region, while it should be 5 individuals per square kilometer, specifies the Ministry.
” Self-serve buffet ”
Thursday morning, seven hunters listened attentively to François Pelletier’s instructions before starting four days of hunting on the various agricultural lands to which they are assigned. The hunting season ended on Sunday, November 21.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
François Pelletier explains how supervised hunting works to a group of hunters.
“It’s always an adventure,” says Patrick Kavanagh, alongside his wife, Joëlle Lacombe, and their son Michael. Mme Lacombe learned of the existence of the project on social networks.
More and more hunters are interested in the project, as are producers, underlines François Pelletier. Last year, 125 hunters participated in the project during the hunting season, on the lands of nine agricultural producers. This year, 170 hunters visited 15 properties.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Guillaume Dame, vice-president of the Union des producteurs agricoles de l’Estrie
The issue of deer overpopulation has concerned the region for years, indicates Guillaume Dame, vice-president of the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) of the Eastern Townships. “There is an all-you-can-eat buffet” for deer on farmland, whose producers deplore the over-browsing, underlines Mr. Dame.
Milder winters and urban sprawl are among the causes of deer overpopulation, explains the vice-president of the region’s UPA. ” We'[UPA], we believe in climate change. The better it goes, the more mild winters there will be. So we have to find tools, ”he says.
Guillaume Dame calls in particular for the hunting zone, which includes the municipalities of Magog and Coaticook, to be subdivided, in order to adapt the hunting regulations to the lands where the presence of deer is the most important. A hunter can currently harvest a maximum of two deer per year, to comply with the management plan developed by Quebec.
We don’t want white-tailed deer eradication. We just want better cohabitation with producers.
Guillaume Dame, vice-president of the Union des producteurs agricoles de l’Estrie
Frictions with local hunters
The implementation of the project was not unanimous among hunters in the Eastern Townships, who liked to hunt on land where there was a high density of deer.
“The hunters do not understand that they have experienced something abnormal,” says François Pelletier, of Gestion Agrofaune Estrie.
The wildlife technician said he had already had to call the police for misdeeds that had been committed on the hunting grounds. “The pilot project, it stirred at the beginning,” he says, saying that tensions have now decreased.