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Early Muzzy season...could it be.....

D

Darron

Junior Member
273
0
Dayton, Ohio
Beentown said:
Gotta love this response:

“The last thing we want to do is get hunters comfortable with seeing 25 deer every time they go hunting because we’ve got to get the population down,” said Tonkovich. “If you look at the harvest numbers over the past few years I still think the deer heard is tending upward. I’d eventually like to see the deer herd 25 percent lower then what it is now.”

What a joke...
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I heard a rumor that someone spoke to an odnr official and they said they want the deer pop to be where when you go hunting for a week you only see a couple deer. I have not seen this in writing (e-mail), but that is what I was told.

If it gets down to where I am only seeing deer every 3rd or 4th outing I'm done. I'll take up another hobby.
 
Beentown

Beentown

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
15,740
154
Sunbury, OH
Darron said:
I heard a rumor that someone spoke to an odnr official and they said they want the deer pop to be where when you go hunting for a week you only see a couple deer. I have not seen this in writing (e-mail), but that is what I was told.

If it gets down to where I am only seeing deer every 3rd or 4th outing I'm done. I'll take up another hobby.
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Alot of people are there with sightings right now. I am lucky to even see deer every other sit. Have only had them in my wheel house twice. One wasn't a shooter yet...close. One more year. The other my loop broke on pulling back.

Effort+cost+time needs to equal more sightings for most.
 
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bowhunter1023

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
49,528
288
Appalachia
Darron said:
If it gets down to where I am only seeing deer every 3rd or 4th outing I'm done. I'll take up another hobby.
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Same here dude. Lots of other animals need killing around these parts and the moment I realize my deer hunting has been officially fucked by the powers that be at the ODNR, I'll hang it up...

How pathetic is it that the governing body for the sport we all love and for which we the hunters are the constituents, could ultimately give a shit about the enjoyment of the resources by the masses? It is disgusting on so many levels and infinitely frustrating to boot. Four years ago, I laughed at the "Chicken Littles" on OS who screamed the sky was falling. Today, I'm as chicken as they come and it's raining shit from Columbus...
 
bowhunter1023

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
49,528
288
Appalachia
From 2005-2009 I averaged 105 hours on stand and saw and average of 1.5 deer per hour sat, with 2007 being the best year with 175 hours on stand and nearly 300 deer sightings. From 2010 to date, I'm down to under .70 deer seen per hour on stand (a number that is dropping rapidly) and haven't seen more than 80 deer total. (That takes in to consideration the times I was guiding and not hunting.) I also keep rough track of the deer sighting from the hunters who come down every year. Those numbers are 1/3 what they were in the first two years. While we continue to kill less and less deer, the sightings and encounters drop at an astounding rate. Regardless of what I have done management and habitat wise on our farm since 2005, things are getting dire. I was only skunked a dozen times from 2005-2010. I've been skunked more than a dozen times this year alone. All the while, I am hunting ground I've been on for 5-6 years and I'm 11 years in to my bowhunting career, 20 years of hunting total. Conventional wisdom says I should be seeing more deer and more shooters, but that is a dream at this point...

And here is what makes it all sting so bad: It will all get worse before it ever gets better. The darkest days are ahead fellas. We'll be PA before you know it...
 
Jackalope

Jackalope

Dignitary Member
Staff member
39,183
274
Beentown said:
Alot of people are there with sightings right now. I am lucky to even see deer every other sit. Have only had them in my wheel house twice. One wasn't a shooter yet...close. One more year. The other my loop broke on pulling back.

Effort+cost+time needs to equal more sightings for most.
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It's been that was for 2 years om many properties that I know of in VC.. Stands where we once saw 6-15 deer a day you're lucky to see 1 in 3 days of hunting... Wireless cams that have been on the same feeder for a decade were all of a sudden taking half the pics of years past.
 
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Jackalope

Jackalope

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Staff member
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Sorry guys but I can't help but it funny that 4 years ago Brock and I started screaming about this very subject... We were chastised, ridiculed and basically laughed off the forum....... 3 years ago a few more joined the chorus, last season even more.. And now we haven't even got to gun season and the overwhelming majority is raising hell....... We said it than, and we'll say it again today.... If you aren't seeing a massive reduction in your area.... just wait... You will.

The powers that be are hell bent on reducing Ohio's deer population to all Zone A counties with 6 deer limits and a "label" of zone C....
 
Milo

Milo

Tatonka guide.
8,189
171
Does anyone know who many hunters actually tag more than one deer a season? I am digging like crazy but cant come up with it REX gave me a link to it a couple years ago. and i was really surprised. it was like 5-7 percent of all deer hunters take 3 or more deer per season....more people only took 1 deer a year by a substantial margin... i will keep looking.
 
Beentown

Beentown

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
15,740
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Sunbury, OH
Milo said:
Does anyone know who many hunters actually tag more than one deer a season? I am digging like crazy but cant come up with it REX gave me a link to it a couple years ago. and i was really surprised. it was like 5-7 percent of all deer hunters take 3 or more deer per season....more people only took 1 deer a year by a substantial margin... i will keep looking.
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I was looking for it TOO. lol

I was also looking for number of hunters who bought deer tags back in 2007 compared to now.
 
hickslawns

hickslawns

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40,469
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Ohio
I'm not trying to belittle anyone's hunting capabilities. If I came off that way I apologize. However, hunters in this state have more than enough opportunities to harvest deer with the current deer seasons.
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Thank you. The way it came out, it could easily have been taken this way. It isn't easy living in a county with average harvests of 600-800 deer total. I pretty much guarantee you I get more time to hunt than most hunters around here (minus those unemployed, retired, or firefighters only working 9-11 days/month). We are done with our early antlerless tags once gun season is here. We do NOT get 200 days to fill them. We get around 60 days. Sometimes it takes luck, sometimes it is the right property, most of the time it takes some hard hunting just to tag a doe around here. As I stated, you are fortunate. Having hunted Hocking/Vinton counties in the early season, I thought I was in Heaven! There are deer everywhere. I saw more deer in one week than I had the last two seasons up here in NW Ohio. As I stated, I really am not here to impress you, nor does it break my heart if you don't like me. However, I don't know if you have a fair assessment of how tough it is in certain portions of the state. Sorry if I have pissed you off. This is not my intent.
 
D

Darron

Junior Member
273
0
Dayton, Ohio
hickslawns said:
Thank you. The way it came out, it could easily have been taken this way. It isn't easy living in a county with average harvests of 600-800 deer total. I pretty much guarantee you I get more time to hunt than most hunters around here (minus those unemployed, retired, or firefighters only working 9-11 days/month). We are done with our early antlerless tags once gun season is here. We do NOT get 200 days to fill them. We get around 60 days. Sometimes it takes luck, sometimes it is the right property, most of the time it takes some hard hunting just to tag a doe around here. As I stated, you are fortunate. Having hunted Hocking/Vinton counties in the early season, I thought I was in Heaven! There are deer everywhere. I saw more deer in one week than I had the last two seasons up here in NW Ohio. As I stated, I really am not here to impress you, nor does it break my heart if you don't like me. However, I don't know if you have a fair assessment of how tough it is in certain portions of the state. Sorry if I have pissed you off. This is not my intent.
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Better to be pissed off than pissed on......

Although I do spend most of my hunting hours in SE Ohio, I also hunt in Greene county, which is very similar to NW Ohio. Lots of ag fields and wood lots. I've only hunted in GC once this year so far, yet my buddy has spent the past 2.5 weeks living on this 90 acre farm we can hunt (4-5 other guys can hunt it which is why I don't hunt it that much). No big buck sightings, but he is consistently seeing 4-6 deer most sits. I don't see that most days where I hunt in SE Ohio. The last time I hunted I thought I had an above average hunt when I saw 4 or 5 deer. That evening I saw 3 deer. If I see more than 3deer per sit I think of that as an above average hunt. I use to think seeing only a couple deer per sit was pitiful. Now I will take it everytime.

The days of seeing 10+ deer a day I believe are over for a while, at least where I hunt. And we by no means go over board with anterless harvest. Hell last year we didn't even take a doe. Not to sound arrogant, but if I had to go out on a limb my neighbor across the street from me and myself are the only people I know that put in food plots, supplemental feeding stations, etc around us. No one else that I know of does any habitat improvements to their property. With corn sky high, many of my neighbors stopped feeding them as well.
 
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hoot gibson

The Crew
982
91
licking county,
345,000 bow hunters are expected to participate in the statewide deer-archery hunting season.

Bow hunters harvested a total of 85,012 deer during last year's four-month Ohio archery season

i guess that means every 4th hunter killed a deer?
 
Milo

Milo

Tatonka guide.
8,189
171
hoot gibson said:
345,000 bow hunters are expected to participate in the statewide deer-archery hunting season.

Bow hunters harvested a total of 85,012 deer during last year's four-month Ohio archery season

i guess that means every 4th hunter killed a deer?
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yep!!
 
Gern186

Gern186

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
10,457
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NW Ohio Tundra
I never had a doe in bow range in my county the entire first 5 weeks of bow season this year....I went to a different location in Ohio, more south and central and saw more does than I ever thought possible. I think there are pockets of good populations and areas of sparse populations. From what I'm reading here is that we are all in agreement that there is no need for an early muzzleloader season. If you can't seem to fill any tags then you need to try and find multiple hunting locations in different areas of the state or county you live in. To sit here and complain that there aren't enough deer because the state isn't providing them for you is in my opinion making excuses. If your hunting area isn't producing the number of deer you want to see, then go hunt elsewhere......create habitat and food sources.....buy land and manage it for yourself. There are a lot of things the average guy can do to increase his chances no matter what the ODNR decides to do. If you are serious enough about hunting then you will do what it takes to make yourself successful.
 
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