Outdoors

Bow hunting lottery scheduled for Monday night

A lottery will be held on Monday for Riverhead’s annual bow hunting program on town-owned land, which begins Monday, Oct. 6.

Running through the end of November, the program permits bowhunters to use land at the town-owned Enterprise Park at Calverton, 32 acres on Sound Avenue in Calverton, and this year opens up 28 acres off Youngs Avenue in Calverton to town hunters.

The lottery for people to pick which days they’d like to hunt will be held at Riverhead Town Hall Monday, Sept. 22, at 6:30 p.m.

Hunters will be allowed two weeks of hunting this year after the program was tightened up last year to only permit a single week. Tom Gabrielsen, chair of the town’s wildlife management committee, said the deer herd had been thinned out on town land due to previous years of hunting, though allowing less hunting last year has filled out the herd.

Close to 80 hunters participated last year, he said, taking about 20 deer.