Here are the deer hunting hotspots in Maine

By Julie Harris, Bangor Daily News Staff

Experienced Mainers have favorite places where they hunt for deer. But if you are new to hunting or Maine, finding places to hunt where you might be successful is a challenge.

This guide is for you. It doesn’t give away anyone’s favorite spots, but instead points out some of the areas with higher concentrations of deer. Bucks may be taken in all areas of the state with a regular or super pack hunting license, and antlerless permits are issued through a lottery system. 

Hunters come from all over New England and beyond, seeking the state’s whitetail deer. Maine’s deer herd has had its ups and downs, but it has been healthy in recent years — even at a record high in 2023 — and the numbers of deer taken out of certain parts of the state is on a steady climb.

Maine’s rifle season for deer opened on Nov. 1 for residents only. It opened for everyone on Nov. 1. Hunters have been able to kill deer already in archery season and on the two youth hunt days for kids.

On Nov. 1, hunters killed 4,547 deer, which makes it the second highest number in the last 14 years, Maine’s chief deer biologist Nathan Bieber said. The highest in that time frame was 4,666 in 2022 and third highest was 4,464 in 2020.

The biggest hotspot in the state is Wildlife Management District 17 in central Maine. It stretches from Madison and Solon to Bradford and Hudson going from west to east and from Sangerville and Dover-Foxcroft to Newport and most of Carmel, Hermon, and even Clinton from north to south.

Although a lot of Maine is woods, there are areas that are more diversified to include fields and marshes too, and those mixed sections are where you will find more deer, Bieber said.

It is not unusual that there are more people in those areas either, he said. People tend to create places where deer like to eat and live. That area has some active and former farmlands, which of course, have fields bordering woods, some of which have been logged.

“There is a lot of habitat and a lot of deer come out of WMD 17,” Bieber said. “Deer like the edges of fields and woods.”

There are also more hunters in WMD 17, which is why the numbers of deer killed tend to be higher, he said. There are actually more deer living in southern Maine areas.

But there are other hotspots.

Bieber recommends trying some of Maine’s islands, which tend to have high populations of deer and low numbers of people living there, plus few hunters. He acknowledged the difficult logistics of getting to and from the islands while hauling the gear you need, including a gun, but said it could be worth it. 

WMD 29, which encompasses many of the coastal and island areas, has been productive over the last few years. The state allocated 2,645 antlerless deer permits for this year in that district and most of them are still available. 

Some districts are cyclical with the weather. Harsher winters with lots of snow in WMDs 1 (Allagash) and 4 (mostly woods) in northwestern Maine are hard on deer in those areas, making it more difficult for them to move around, find food and escape predators.

WMD 6, between Caribou and Houlton, on the other hand, gets a lot of snow too, but the deer there recover more quickly, so there are more of them in that district, he said.

There is a state project underway to increase the number of deer wintering yards in Aroostook County, which will improve survival rates.

No antlerless permits are distributed for the northwestern corner of Maine, encompassing Wildlife Management Districts 1, 2, 4 and 5, which includes Allagash, most of the St. John Valley and central and western Aroostook County. The number of deer in those areas is not high enough to allow extra animals to be killed, Bieber said.

Hunters who want a tracking experience in their hunt should go north, where, although there are fewer deer than in southern Maine, the animals can be found in the region’s vast forestland, Bieber said.

Central and southern Maine have different stories from the northern regions.

“Deer are packed in like sardines,” Bieber said.

And so are people in some parts of the state with big deer populations. Bieber reminded hunters to get landowner permission first and to be aware of houses and other structures near where they are hunting.

Some of the regions where more deer tend to be killed are WMD 20, which is west of the Saco River including Sanford and surrounding towns, and WMD 21, which is east of the Saco River; WMD 22, which includes Gardiner, Sabattus and Wiscasset; and WMD 24, which includes Portland, Biddeford, and Scarborough.

Not all of the antlerless deer permits in the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s annual lottery were issued to license holders, so the state has allowed two chances for extra permits to be purchased thus far, and plans a third chance for Nov. 12. The WMDs that still have permits available are 21 through 25 and 29. 

Bieber encouraged hunters unfamiliar with a particular area to do some scouting on their own, talk with folks in local coffee shops and convenience stores and be sure to ask landowners’ permission before hunting.

A word of caution: high levels of the “forever chemicals” per-and-polyfluoroalkyl substances commonly referred to as PFAS were found in deer in Fairfield in WMD 16 and Unity, Thorndike, and Albion in WMD 23.