Public hearing draws no oral comment as Tremont’s proposal for a limited deer hunt moves through the state review process.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar

Jul 22, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

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AUGUSTA—There was no oral public comment this Tuesday at a Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IFW) public hearing about a proposal to allow a limited deer hunting season in Tremont after 100 years of no deer hunting on Mount Desert Island.

If approved by the state, the hunt would begin in November 2026 and run for three seasons. Any deer killed in the town would not count toward the hunter’s state bag limit.

The IFW will accept written comments until July 30.

The department gave a brief overview of the proposal, which would allow some deer hunting in the Town of Tremont. Mount Desert Island is currently closed to all deer hunting, but the state Commissioner can open a town to deer hunting if the town agrees, Nathan Bieber, Maine state deer biologist, explained.

Tremont did agree at a May 2026 vote, approving a limited deer hunt in its town with a vote of 314-227.

In Spring 2025, the town began to explore ways to deal with deer issues.

Deer haven’t been hunted on the island since the 1930s except when it has been declared a “nuisance” deer situation. Southwest Harbor also discussed concerns about accidents with vehicles and deer, deer ticks, and deer eating vegetation in 2024.

Back in 2013, a Bar Harbor task force studied how Lyme disease had increased on Mount Desert Island by a factor of four since 2006. Similarly, there was a doubling of deer and vehicle accidents compared to numbers in the early 2000s and 1990s.

At the time, the task force chairman Robert Kelley reported that 20% of all accidents on MDI involved deer. Those events aren’t contained to any town or Acadia National Park. Back in 2013-2014, the task force studied data and hunting methods. The park bans hunting. The goal had been to create a phased hunting proposal to reduce the deer herd population to a density of 10-15 every square mile.

Discussions about potentially thinning down the herd brought standing room only crowds to the Bar Harbor Town Council Chambers.

Acadia National Park sits on approximately half of Bar Harbor’s land mass and extends well into other portions of Mount Desert Island. When deer tend to have negative pressures in one area, they move to another.

On April 3, 2025, Maine House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) presented a bill, LD 1438, that he was sponsoring to the Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife that would make it legal to hunt deer on Mount Desert Island.

On May 7 at an IFW Committee meeting, the committee unanimously voted that the bill ought not to pass (ONTP), which “killed the bill in committee.”

Since that decision was made, the Tremont Select Board had been refining plans to hold a special deer hunt in Tremont as a way to attempt to reduce the number of deer-involved car crashes, destruction of private property through deer grazing, and instances of Lyme disease in humans.

According to Nathan Webb, wildlife division director of IFW, the present ban on deer hunting was implemented by the 85th Maine Legislature and reference to a closed season on deer on Mount Desert Island (MDI) first appeared in 1931.

All other animals that can be legally hunted in Maine can also currently be hunted on MDI.

The Tremont plan includes the following:

• All hunting will be archery and shotgun only.
• Hunting can only take placed from a fixed position, ground blind or elevated stand.
• Landowners must provide stand locations.
• Only property owners and Tremont residents may hunt.
• Only anterless deer may be taken. An anterless deer is defined by the state as any deer having antlers less than three inches in length as measured from the skull.
• Hunters will be required to register with the town office to prove residency or land ownership and will be given a permission slip which must be shown when tagging a deer at the mandated tagging station.
• The tagging station location will be either Gott’s Store in Southwest Harbor or Hansen’s Outpost in Tremont, location to be decided.
• The special hunt will take place during the month of November beginning with the 2026 hunting season and will last for a total three years.
• All other applicable state hunting rules and guidelines must be followed including shooting distance from dwellings.

There were no public comments at the IFW meeting this week. The only member of the public attending was the Bar Harbor Story.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

COMMENT DEADLINE: July 30, 2026

CONTACT PERSON FOR THIS FILING:

Becky Orff

353 Water Street, 41 SHS, Augusta, ME 04333

207-287-5202

207-287-6395

Maine Relay 711

Becky.orff@maine.gov

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