Maine will not be adding electronic tagging for deer.
A bill that would have introduced that option in 2027 failed in the Maine Legislature this month. The Senate overwhelmingly rejected LD 2217, while the House passed it by a margin of just six votes. The bill died when the two chambers could not agree.
Opponents raised concerns that electronic tagging would make it harder to gather critical biological data from harvested deer and easier for people to skip the required registration altogether. They were also worried about a loss of camaraderie at the state’s 200-plus registration stations, where hunters show off their prizes and locals come to see the numbers on the scale.
“We’re trying to get people off their computers and outdoors,” Sen. Stacey Guerin, a Republican from Glenburn, said. “The Maine experience is what I love to promote, and part of that Maine experience is the camaraderie at the tagging station. There’s a lot of pressure to modernize, but is this a place where we want to modernize, or do we want to hold to our Maine tradition?”
Supporters of the proposed bill said online registration would give hunters more choices, especially if they harvest a deer late in the day or far from a tagging station. Instead, they could have registered from a phone or computer. Hunters could have still decided to register deer in person, they said, but this change would have brought Maine in line with the rest of New England.
“We’re already doing this with turkeys,” Rep. Tiffany Roberts, a South Berwick Democrat, said. “It’s not new. It’s the technology. It’s what’s here. It’s what hunters are looking for.”
In 2024, the state reported that more than 42,000 deer were harvested.
The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife had advocated for several changes to an earlier proposal, and outgoing Commissioner Judy Camuso testified in support of the final bill in committee.
A department spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email about the bill Tuesday.
The amended bill would have removed the $5 fee to register large game online or in person. The change would also have applied to bear and moose, but hunters would have still been required to register those animals in person. Instead, the state would have increased the fees for big-game hunting licenses by $2 for residents and $4 for nonresidents.
A basic annual license now costs $26 for Maine adults and $115 for nonresidents, with higher costs for packages that include fishing or archery. Department officials said that price hike would have offset the revenue loss for large game registrations and paid for more field visits to gather biological data.