Deer numbers are up so far this hunting season

Mother Nature sure smiled on the Ohio deer gun hunters this week with much improved weather over last year.

Because of it, har­vest num­bers are way up. Hunters checked 29,297 white-tailed deer on Mon­day, Nov. 26, the open­ing day of Ohio’s deer-gun sea­son, accord­ing to the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife. Monday’s total rep­re­sents a 24.1 per­cent increase from 2011, when rain-soaked hunters har­vested 23,600 deer.

Coun­ties report­ing the high­est num­bers of deer checked in 2012: Coshoc­ton (1,199), Musk­ingum (1,102), Tus­carawas (1,091), Guernsey (858), Har­ri­son (845), Knox (830), Ashtab­ula (816), Lick­ing (805), Car­roll (776) and Wash­ing­ton (747). The top three coun­ties were unchanged from 2011.

The biggest com­plaint I am hear­ing from many deer hunters, includ­ing archery hunters, is that they just aren’t see­ing the deer like they used. How­ever, the har­vest num­bers as of Nov. 26, accord­ing to the ODNR web­site, says that for the first sixty days of the Ohio deer sea­son, 127,918 deer have been check in statewide which is up sixty-three per­cent from last year.

Local hunters will argue that the higher har­vest num­bers are because of the tremen­dous deer num­bers in the east­ern part of the state. But again, the har­vest num­bers say dif­fer­ently. Mor­row, Knox, Craw­ford and Rich­land coun­ties all have a sixty-two per­cent or higher har­vest com­pared to the first sixty days of last year’s season.

Granted, a big chunk of that gain is from much bet­ter weather that we expe­ri­enced this year’s open­ing day of gun sea­son com­pared to last year’s open­ing day soaker. How­ever, the improved weather doesn’t account for all of that gain in har­vest. The archery num­bers were up before the gun sea­son opened up and the youth gun week­end har­vest was up from the pre­vi­ous year as well.

I know I have spot­ted more qual­ity sized bucks dri­ving around at dusk and dawn the last three weeks than I can ever remem­ber. Bot­tom line is the deer are still here in very large num­bers, they may just be not where many guys have tra­di­tion­ally done well.

The deer-gun sea­son isn’t over as it will reopen for an addi­tional two days, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, Dec. 15–16, we still have the muz­zle loader sea­son, and the archery sea­son still has a cou­ple of months left as well.

Expect those har­vest num­bers to con­tinue to climb espe­cially if we have decent weather. No, it won’t be a record year, but it won’t be the doom and gloom that many seem to think it is either.

The white-tailed deer is the most pop­u­lar game ani­mal in Ohio, fre­quently pur­sued by gen­er­a­tions of hunters. Ohio ranks eighth nation­ally in annual hunting-related sales and 10th in the num­ber of jobs asso­ci­ated with hunting-related indus­tries. Hunt­ing has an $859 mil­lion eco­nomic impact in Ohio through the sale of equip­ment, fuel, food, lodg­ing and more.

Hunters are encour­aged to donate any extra veni­son to orga­ni­za­tions assist­ing Ohioans in need. ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Farm­ers and Hunters Feed­ing the Hun­gry (FHFH) to help pay for the pro­cess­ing of donated veni­son. Hunters who donate deer are not required to pay the pro­cess­ing cost as long as the deer are taken to a par­tic­i­pat­ing proces­sor. To see which coun­ties are involved in this pro­gram, go to fhfh.org.

• Hunters har­vested 1,338 wild turkeys dur­ing Ohio’s 2012 fall wild turkey sea­son, accord­ing to the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife. Ohio’s 2012 fall wild turkey hunt­ing sea­son was open Oct. 13-Nov. 25.

This year’s total is a 2.5 per­cent decline from 2011, when hunters bagged 1,372 wild turkeys. The 2010 har­vest total was 1,425.

The top 11 coun­ties for fall turkey har­vest were: Ashtab­ula (61), Coshoc­ton (56), Geauga and Tus­carawas (53 each), Knox (46), Cler­mont (42), Lick­ing (41), Guernsey (39), Holmes (38) as well as Adams and Rich­land (37 each). Ashtab­ula was also the top county in 2011, with 67 wild turkeys.

Prior to the start of this fall’s hunt­ing sea­son, Ohio’s wild turkey pop­u­la­tion was approx­i­mately 180,000. More than 17,000 hunters, not includ­ing pri­vate landown­ers hunt­ing on their own prop­erty, enjoyed Ohio’s fall wild turkey sea­son. Hunters could pur­sue a wild turkey of either sex in 48 coun­ties using a shot­gun, muz­zle­load­ing shot­gun, bow or crossbow.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.