Navy base looks to bow hunters to manage deer
Groton — To help manage its deer population, the Naval Submarine Base has allowed bow hunting on its grounds since the late 1990s.
The installation's first hunt of 2016 will take place on Oct. 22, with hunts happening weekly throughout the season. In recent hunting seasons, including this one, base officials have set the target at five deer.
Only bow hunting is allowed, and the hunts usually last four to five hours on Saturday mornings.
Tracey McKenzie, the installation's environmental specialist, estimates that there are about 25 deer on the base, and its habitat can support about 20 to 25 deer. The animals, which have been documented to jump as high as 20 feet, often get onto the base by jumping the fence, she said.
The hunts are kept small; usually about 20 hunters are assigned across 10 designated sites in the northeastern section of the base, where there is a roughly 200-acre forested area, including 20 acres of wetlands. The area is unpopulated.
The base randomly draws from a list of hunters who are registered with the state and who have access to the base. In addition to meeting state requirements, such as taking a hunting safety course, the base requires potential hunters to take a proficiency test during which they must hit three targets within a certain range on its paintball course.
Historically, hunters have taken the deer they've killed home and processed them for their own consumption, McKenzie said.
Only deer are allowed to be hunted on base, and managing the deer population is just one element of a broader natural resources management plan on the base. Officials examine a number of impacts in managing the deer population: whether the population is so big that it's starving itself or impacting vegetation, or whether it's posing a safety risk such as cars striking the deer.
The Department of Defense manages more than 25 million acres of land worldwide, more than 97 percent of which is located in the U.S. or in U.S. territories. Hunting is allowed at its installations across the country.
Base spokesman Chris Zendan pointed to Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, where the deer population has been so large at times that deer have come up to people and nuzzled them.
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