Eric Waleryszak was 14 years old when he took down his first deer. It was before 7 a.m. on Oct. 13, 1962, when he spotted the doe in the woods of Norwich, Vt. From a distance of 30 feet, he pulled his bow taut and launched a single arrow that lodged in the animal’s side, and with that, the young teen had bagged himself a 100-pound whitetail deer.

Since then, Waleryszak has killed a total of 26 deer, most of them with a bow and arrow. His most recent kill came in Kensington on the icy-cold morning of Nov. 22, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, when he got a small spike horn buck with a shotgun. With the 50 pounds of meat the animal yielded, Waleryszak made steaks, chops, roasts, tenderloin and venison stew, which he shared with his family.

As much as he loves venison, Waleryszak’s enthusiasm for hunting stems even more from his love of nature. The activity gets him outside for hours at a time, allowing him to observe wildlife theatrics that most people never witness. 

“I don’t have to get something every year, and a lot of years I don’t,” he said.

Through Nov. 30, hunters in New Hampshire had killed a total of 9,825 deer this year, including a combined 2,145 in Rockingham and Strafford counties, according to N.H. Fish and Game. In most of the state, the season for hunting deer with firearms ran from Nov. 12 to Dec. 7. The season for archery deer hunting is about two months longer, running from Sept. 15 to Dec. 15, while muzzleloader season was a mere 10 days, from Nov. 1 to 11. 

The deer harvest so far is down from last year’s near record numbers. By Nov. 30, 2007, hunters had killed 11,118 deer. But this year’s numbers are pretty close to the three years prior to 2007, and Fish and Game officials are pleased with the harvest this season. Since 2000, the average harvest through Nov. 30 is 9,768 across the state, 1,562 in Rockingham County and 644 in Strafford County.

There were an estimated 85,000 whitetail deer in New Hampshire before this year’s hunt started. According to Waleryszak, who lives in Exeter, deer have been plentiful this fall. He often walks his two cairn terriers in the woods and he has seen an abundance of wildlife. “It’s almost like every time we went out we would jump a deer,” he said.

During his hunting expeditions, Waleryszak is often perched on a tree stand for several hours at a time, waiting in prolonged silence for a deer to stroll into his range. But deer are not the only animals that frolic in New England’s woods. Waleryszak has seen bull moose reposing on the forest floor, a bobcat prowling through the brush, fishers chasing squirrels, red-tailed hawks swooping through the trees and owls within arm’s reach. Not to mention foxes, raccoons, skunks, mice and porcupines (one of his dogs got a face full of quills during an encounter with the latter critter).

Recently, Waleryszak watched as a goshawk dived after a squirrel and hit a swamp at full speed, sending up an enormous splash. Also a nature photographer, he once came across a group of newborn fawns and took more than 90 close-range photographs. Skills he has learned through hunting, such as locating wildlife and staying still for long periods of time, have helped him develop as a photographer. “You’re kind of hunting with a camera,” he said.

An avid cook, Waleryszak prepares venison stew with a lengthy list of ingredients, including grape jelly. He steams the meat with peppers, onions and mushrooms or makes traditional Chinese dishes with venison instead of beef. He respectfully acknowledges that some nature lovers are repulsed by the thought of shooting an animal, but hunting food is much more efficient and environmentally friendly than buying packaged meat at a grocery store. “People are too far removed from where their food comes from,” he said.

Hunting also helps keep deer populations in check and reduces unwelcome interactions with humans. According to Kent Gustafson, deer project leader for N.H. Fish and Game, there are typically between 1,000 and 1,200 motor vehicle collisions with deer each year. A deer slammed into the side of Waleryszak’s car while he was driving on a back road in Exeter in September. He was not hurt and the deer darted into the woods, but the car was badly damaged and the animal probably died from its injuries.

Fish and Game officials also point out that if deer populations in a particular area get out of control, they can consume huge amounts of plant life, altering the landscape and spurring a chain of ecological effects that impact deer and other species.

Fish and Game uses strict management policies and hunting regulations to help control deer populations. The state is divided into 17 wildlife management units, or WMUs, with slightly different hunting rules in each one. In 2006, Fish and Game laid out a 10-year big game plan with specific goals and objectives for wildlife management. 

“Many diverse constituents came together to help us formulate population goals for each unit,” said Mark Ellingwood, wildlife programs administrator for N.H. Fish and Game.

The state is aiming to expand its whitetail deer population to about 98,000 over the next five to 10 years, an increase of 15 percent over current numbers. Fish and Game officials hope to increase deer populations in 13 of the 17 WMUs and sustain current levels in three of the four others.

Southeastern New Hampshire is the only geographic area of the state where Fish and Game is seeking to reduce deer numbers by liberalizing certain hunting policies. The southeastern portion of the state, stretching roughly from Nashua to Portsmouth, is the most densely populated part of New Hampshire for humans. The winters are comparatively mild here, which enables deer populations to thrive.

“That’s really the one spot where the deer numbers are in excess of the objective we have down there,” Gustafson said. He said coastal New Hampshire is “probably the one spot where we have the most likely possibility of conflicts between deer and people.”

Methods for managing deer populations can include lengthening or shortening the hunting season or limiting the number of permissible kills of female deer. “Females are the reproductive component of the herd and by managing females we’re managing herd productivity,” Ellingwood said.

Unlike Maine and Vermont, hunters in New Hampshire are currently allowed to shoot deer of either sex. But the rules can be adjusted from year to year if deer numbers veer from the state’s objectives. Officials measure winter severity based on snow depth and temperature to project seasonal losses in deer populations and plan accordingly. The goal is to strike a balance between a number of human and deer interests, including animal health, quality of habitat, urban traffic, agricultural land needs and recreational viewing opportunities.

State management polices have already helped lift deer populations considerably over the last 20 to 30 years. While a typical deer harvest is now 10,000 or 11,000 annually, harvests back in the late 1970s and ’80s were barely over 3,000. Gustafson attributes the low numbers back then partly to a series of harsh winters, but also to an earlier lack of proper management policies, which allowed hunters to liberally kill deer of both sexes.

But car accidents involving deer have now become increasingly common with higher volumes of traffic and highway speeds. Drivers who hit deer are allowed to take the dead animal for food, as long as they get a permit from a local conservation officer. Unclaimed carcasses are usually donated to the N.H. Food Bank or other food pantries, where hunters also donate meat. Last year, hunters donated 3,288 pounds of deer, moose, bear, duck and other game meat to N.H. Food Bank through a program called Hunt for the Hungry, up from 1,126 pounds in 2006 and just 900 pounds in 2005.

Gustafson is closely monitoring several deer diseases that have afflicted other parts of the country, but none of them have made it into New Hampshire, so far. His biggest concern is an illness known as chronic wasting disease, a disorder that affects the brain, but that has not yet been seen east of upstate New York.

Still, New Hampshire does not have as many deer as some of its New England neighbors. “We don’t have particularly high densities of deer in New Hampshire by northeast standards,” Ellingwood said.

In Maine, 28,884 deer were harvested in 2007, including 2,431 in York County. Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife estimated the post-hunt deer population at 247,100, which means the pre-hunt population was around 276,000. (Of course, with an area of more than 35,000 square miles, almost 90 percent of which is forested, Maine is almost four times larger than New Hampshire.)

N.H. Fish and Game keeps an equally close watch over moose and bear populations. New Hampshire’s moose hunt is just nine days long, beginning the third Saturday of October. This year’s moose harvest yielded 333 kills, which Ellingwood said was slightly below normal but not out of the ordinary. The state’s estimated population is 6,000 moose.

The length of hunting season for black bear varies depending on the WMU, but it ended on Nov. 25 across the state. The early tally for the bear harvest this year was 433, down from 615 in 2007. According to bear project leader Andrew Timmons, last year’s bear harvest was the third highest on record.

“We were generally kind of pleased with the fact that it was down a little bit (this year), because we had some high years,” Timmons said.

Currently, New Hampshire’s black bear population is estimated at 4,900, which is very close to the state’s total population goal of around 5,000. Bear numbers are affected by the availability of food sources like berries, apples, acorns and beechnuts, the abundance of which are affected by rainfall, the timing of the year’s first killing frost and other factors. But a low bear harvest is not necessarily a sign of dwindling numbers.

“When there’s food in more remote parts of the woods, they don’t move as much, so hunters don’t intercept them as much. They don’t need to keep coming to the same food source,” Timmons said.

Like with deer, Fish and Game manages bear and moose populations through the length of the hunting season and other policies. There are around 10,500 licensed bear hunters in the state and between 50,000 and 60,000 licensed deer hunters. The state issued 515 moose permits this year.

New Hampshire’s wild turkey population has exploded over the last 20 years, with about 40,000 birds statewide. The state is aiming to liberalize hunting regulations in six of the state’s 17 WMUs and maintain existing levels at the other 11. New Hampshire hunters shot 4,098 turkeys in 2008, up from 3,651 in 2007—an 11 percent increase. 

Although he has hunted with rifles, muzzleloaders and shotguns, Waleryszak still prefers the challenging art of bow hunting. Arrows have a much shorter range than bullets, and Waleryszak typically only shoots at deer within 30 yards (although he once hit a doe with an arrow from 40 yards away). Bows are also more difficult to maneuver than guns, and holding them taut while waiting for a good shot requires strength and endurance.

Different hunters adopt different styles. Waleryszak usually hunts from a tree stand 18 to 20 feet off the ground. Hunting from that height gives him a better view of the terrain and makes it more difficult for deer to detect his scent. “They have very keen senses, and their eyesight’s the worst one,” he said.

Choosing a site for a tree stand is a talent Waleryszak has refined over the years. He knows which food sources deer prefer and he can pick out signs of a deer’s presence, including their tracks and places where they’ve marked territory by scraping bark from trees with their antlers. “I know what to look for and where to be,” he said.

Still, some deer manage to elude him. For years, he has spotted the same large buck in the woods he prowls, but the prudent animal he calls “the phantom” has never given him a clear shot, and he suspects it will die a peaceful death in the woods. 

Hunting was an early family activity for Waleryszak. His father taught him how to hunt at a young age and he ventured into the woods with uncles and cousins. They even made their own arrows. He took his first shot at a deer when he was 11, and although he missed, “that got me hooked,” he said.

Almost 50 years and 26 deer later, Waleryszak could tell hunting stories all day. He’s been forced to scour mountainsides in the dead of night in search of a felled deer. He’s found himself standing between two enormous sleeping moose. He’s bagged an eight-point buck that weighed 200 pounds. He records each kill with notes on the date and time of the shot, the animal’s size and gender, the distance from which he fired and other details.

Waleryszak still goes out almost every day during hunting season, either early in the morning or shortly before dusk. He is reluctant to reveal his favorite hunting places, but he has developed an intimate knowledge of the local woods. Sitting still, attuned to the slightest rustle or noise, he becomes acutely aware of his surroundings.

“That is a mystic experience. It really is,” he said.