NEWS
The Nantucket Land Bank’s new agricultural processing facility at 19 Boynton Lane is now operational and accepting whole deer donations for MassWildlife’s Hunters Share the Harvest program, through which hunters can donate venison to those in need.
The Boynton Lane property formerly home to A Taste of Nantucket is now a hub for island food-security agencies and venison processing.
October 6th marked the beginning of hunting season in Massachusetts. Licensed hunters play a pivotal role in deer management. Without any natural predators of deer on Nantucket, we rely heavily on hunting to control one of the densest deer populations in the state [...]
The Nantucket Land Bank’s new agricultural processing facility at 19 Boynton Lane is now operational and accepting whole deer donations for MassWildlife’s Hunters Share the Harvest program, through which hunters can donate venison to those in need.
The ACK Deer Management Project is seeking volunteers to help launch seven new working groups aimed at tackling Nantucket’s growing deer problem, from food insecurity to public safety. At a public meeting Thursday, organizers said they are moving from research into action, forming teams to handle everything from outreach to deer-carcass cleanup as part of […]
The ACK Deer Management Project, a small, year-old collection of concerned islanders looking to address the overpopulation of deer on Nantucket, wants to help hunters take 2,000 deer a year on Nantucket and donate a large chunk of the meat to food-insecure island residents. Currently, hunters are taking fewer than 900 deer a year, which […]
Nantucket’s deer herd is believed to be the most densely populated in the state at more than 85 per square mile. The state’s new “deer damage permit” program could become a powerful tool for large landowners confronting Nantucket’s deer problem, offering more options than the regular hunting seasons, MassWildlife biologist Martin Feehan told the Land Bank Tuesday.
The state has officially expanded the primitive firearms deer hunting season on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard by a full month in an effort to reduce the deer herds on the islands. The new primitive firearms (muzzleloaders or archery equipment) season lasts through January 31st. It’s the latest initiative to reduce the density of Nantucket’s enormous […]
That’s exactly what a new grassroots group, the ACK Deer Management Project, is attempting to accomplish, by encouraging the number of deer taken annually by island hunters to be nearly doubled, and the meat harvested, processed and distributed through island food-assistance programs.
In 1922, fishermen rescued an exhausted buck swimming in Nantucket Sound and set him free on the island. A few years later, a summer resident bought two does to keep that lone buck company. Few could have predicted the dramatic, unintended consequences of those well-meaning acts.
Locals are slowly getting back to normal as Labor Day marked the unofficial end to summer, but as they said goodbye to the influx of visitors, they’re still dealing with a growing population of of a different kind—deer.
Mike Leavitt was sitting around a dinner table with a group of his friends when the conversation turned to a topic that has vexed many Nantucketers: it’s hard to drive anywhere at night on the island without almost hitting a deer. Why, Leavitt and his friends wondered, hasn’t anyone done anything about the overabundance of […]
State wildlife officials have long said Nantucket has one of the largest concentrations of deer in Massachusetts. But could the population actually exceed 10,000 deer? That would be an incredibly large population for a small, isolated geographic area, and a steep increase from previous estimates. But Martin Feehan, the deer and moose biologist for the […]