Shotgun Deer Hunting Season Opens With A Bang

If the first day of shotgun deer hunting season on Nantucket was any indication, it could be another record-breaking deer harvest on the island.

Hunters checked in 160 deer on Monday, the opening day of shotgun season, a total that represented a significant increase from the 99 deer taken on the first day of the 2023 season.

Those numbers were reported by Martin Feehan, the deer and moose biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, who was on-island Monday at the check-in station at the Surfside Wastewater Treatment Facility off South Shore Road. 

Between the youth, archery, shotgun, and primitive arms seasons last year, there were 879 deer harvested by hunters on Nantucket in 2023, a new record high. That represented a 7 percent increase over the 824 deer taken in 2022, the previous record.

"We are continuing to conduct SARS-CoV-2 sampling, and this year we are also taking lymph nodes for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) testing," Feehan told the Current. "New York had their first detection since 2005 in October at a captive deer facility in Columbia, New York. This brings CWD within 100 miles of our Northwestern border, triggering statewide CWD surveillance."