Seems like not too long ago several of us from TOO were at Ohio's open house events talking to the people from the DOW about Our deer population not being what they were reporting. That there werent that many deer, that we had been reducing the population, that we had killing too many deer in certain areas, etc. Many of those comments were met with dismissive replies, that followed a script-like response that would suggest our observations in the field were wrong. that we needed to continue on the path of killing even more deer. Yada, yada, yada.
Well, it seems that some things may have changed... at least according to this article in Sunday's Dispatch.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2012/12/09/deer-harvest-continues-recent-drops.html
By Dave Golowenski
For The Columbus Dispatch Sunday December 9, 2012 7:46 AM
Comments: 0
Because all deer hunting is local — that is, restricted to what wanders into an individual’s vision and field of fire — 400,000 hunters produce about that many opinions in terms of what went down during the state’s weeklong gun season that ended last Sunday.
One assessment that counts rather a lot is that of biologist Mike Tonkovich, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s point man for deer management. Here it is:
“I’m pretty pleased with the way the season turned out,” he said. “I thought we’d be (down) 5 percent to 10 percent from last year.”
The count was 86,964, a drop of about 3.7 percent from the 90,282 deer checked in 2011. The 2012 results, moreover, continued a decline from peak harvest years. In 2010, hunters checked more than 105,000 whitetails during deer gun week, meaning this year’s decline in harvest follows a 14 percent tumble.
Over a two-year span, then, the gun-week totals fell about 17.2 percent.
Last year’s weak showing likely resulted from a lot of standing corn late and some lousy weather, particularly on opening day of the gun season, Tonkovich said. Hunters took 23,600 on a rainy Monday in 2011. The count climbed considerably, to 29,297, on Nov. 26, the 2012 opener.
Given strong archery results thus far, the 2012-13 deer season might produce a harvest down only slightly from a year ago, when hunters reported killing about 219,700 whitetails.
“We’re about 1 percent down from last year from the opening day of the bow season through the last day of the (weeklong) gun season,” Tonkovich said. “If we have favorable (weather) conditions during the next two gun seasons, we are likely to end up around or slightly down from last year’s harvest.”
A two-day statewide gun season is set for Dec. 15-16, and the popular muzzleloader season will run four days, Jan. 5-8, 2013.
Still, last year’s count totaled about 41,600 fewer deer, a decline of about 15.9 percent, compared with the 261,000 taken during the 2009-10 season.
So, after years of liberal regulations designed to knock down numbers, are fewer deer roaming the Ohio landscape? Maybe so.
The number of deer hunters hasn’t dropped precipitously, although the sale of resident tags fell about 8 percent between 2000 and 2011. That drop to an extent has been offset by a 152 percent increase of nonresident tags during the same period.
“About one in nine or 10 of our deer hunters is now coming from out of state,” Tonkovich said. “ We went from about 15,000 nonresident licenses in 2000 to about 38,000 in 2011.”
While the number of resident vs. nonresident hunters is not quite a wash, the biggest factor in declining deer harvests appears to be fewer deer, a situation not welcome to every hunter but certainly OK with many of the state’s farmers and tree growers.
Both agricultural groups, their members having suffered losses caused by feeding deer, have called for herd shrinkage. The Ohio Farm Bureau several years ago publicly declared that deer numbers statewide should be around 250,000, around half the current estimated population.
The liberal granting of nuisance permits, which allow landowners to kill offending deer, has helped alleviate some of the local deer damage problems.
Tonkovich, moreover, suggested that the state’s deer regulations for 2013-14 could be in for their first major overhaul in a number of years. The aim, after years of liberal limits have brought deer numbers to what are considered target levels in many counties, would be to maintain the population.
“You might not see a Zone C anymore, just (zones) A and B,” he said.
Zone C, which covers much of southern, southeastern and eastern Ohio, has the most liberal bag limits. While bag limits could become stricter overall, deer numbers can be managed with the availability — or nonavailability — of antlerless permits, Tonkovich said.
Wonder what's next? :smiley_chinrub:
I understand that you no longer bow hunt, Lundy. I understand that you don't want to see your "opportunity" cut back. What is the solution? Surely you don't think that cutting out the "bonus" weekend is a bad idea if the DOW decides to ease up on harvest? If so, please explain, I'm all ears and would like to hear your thoughts. 
