Updated 11:30 am, Wednesday
On Tuesday morning, 16 hunters dressed in blaze orange gathered at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport to take on the job of eliminating a small herd of deer within the confines of the airport perimeter fence that pose a hazard to aviation. As a consequence, the airport was closed to flights from 10 am to 4 pm.
Acting airport manager Deb Potter said the hunters managed to remove two deer. “A very rough estimate based on the reports I have received indicate that there may still be approximately four to five deer left that we will still be working on removing from the premises,” Ms. Potter said in an email to The Times Wednesday.
The job of finding and shooting deer on the approximately 660 acres property was made more difficult by the acres of thick brush in a corner of the property the hunters had to navigate. Deer are very adept at evading hunters, and use thick vegetation to their advantage.
Ms. Potter said she did not know how the deer came to be within the perimeter fence. It is possible that they either jumped the fence or are descendants of the few deer that remained after a similar effort to remove deer occurred years ago, she said.
The Tuesday hunt was unannounced to the general public. Tuesday morning, hunters approached by The Times directed all questions to Ms. Potter, who provided few details, and expressed concern about the public’s sensibilities with respect to any photographs of the harvest.
“It’s for wildlife mitigation,” she said as she walked to a meeting. “There’s multiple plans that go on simultaneously for that, and this is one of the issues we need to resolve.”
“It’s hunting season,” Ms. Potter said. “They’re all authorized hunters, and we’re doing this in accordance with the hunting laws in Massachusetts.”
Asked about that day’s scheduled Cape Air flights, Ms. Potter, in an email to The Times that afternoon, said the airport issued a notice to aviation authorities (NOTAM). “The NOTAM closes the Airport to all aircraft,” Ms. Potter said. “We had coordinated the closure with Cape Air ahead of time and selected this window to have the least impact on their operations. In the event of an emergency, such as a Medflight requirement, we would terminate the other event early.”
This is the second week of the Massachusetts deer shotgun season. While the sound of shotguns echoing in the State Forest is not unusual, the source of these shots, the airport, was. There was no information about the hunt or the airport closure posted on the airport website. Airport officials issued no press release in advance of the Tuesday hunt.
Myron Garfinkle of West Tisbury, airport commission chairman, told The Times in a telephone conversation late Tuesday that the failure to notify the wider community through a press release to local newspapers was “an oversight.”
The hunt is an effort by airport officials to correct one of the deficiencies cited by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following an annual inspection in May.
These include completion of a 10-year master plan, building a new aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) building, updating a wildlife hazard-management plan, and repainting lines on the runway tarmac.
One of the FAA’s main concerns, wildlife management, had to do with deer found within the perimeter fence. While there had not been any sightings of deer on the runways or taxiways, their presence within the fence opened up the possibility of that occurrence, airport commissioner Robert Rosenbaum said following a meeting in August. He said the FAA has a zero-tolerance policy toward deer within the perimeter because of the potential for a serious accident.
The airport has since updated its wildlife management plan and updated its training of airport employees.
