Down 16% from first 4 days from last year.
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/Hun...eerharvestcomparison/tabid/24154/Default.aspx
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/Hun...eerharvestcomparison/tabid/24154/Default.aspx
ODNR Deer Harvest comparison
- Thread starter LonewolfNopack
- Start date
Rutin
Senior Member
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Too late. The changes that would need to be made now for noticeable recovery are so drastic that you would never get them past the less capable minds. Even the changes that are required just to maintain current levels would be a shock to most. For example. Last year opportunity was removed in the form of cheap antlerless tags in zone C during regular gun week. This resulted in a 22% decrease in 15 dollar tag sales. As a result we saw a 7% drop in antlerless deer harvested during regular gun. Which is about right as the tags sold vs filled has always been about 33% for all seasons. 22% less tags sold. 7% less harvest. Now last year as a whole we broke even in harvest compared to the 2011-2012 season. This however doesn't mean that we're still not reducing the herd even though the harvest remained flat. 219k from say 500k is vastly different than 219k from 750k. Once the heard drops so far it takes less deer killed to make the population hold steady. And even less that that to make it rebound. say 219k is the magic number of harvest to hold the population steady. What's needed to make it grow and bounce back. 200? 180? The cuts in opportunity you would have to make to rebound the population would be so drastic that most less educated hunters would flip their gourd. You would literally have to make gun season or archery season buck only to reach that 180k kill mark to rebound the population in a couple years. As it stands now it will take a decade or more of less painful cuts to see deer like we did in the 2008 season. By less painful I mean they're still drastic but nothing like making gun or archery buck only. Things like cutting a month off archery season and eliminating muzzy would only save about 20k deer. Not the 40k that eliminating doe harvest in archery or gun would save, but it's a less painful option that would produce a slower recovery. The problem is that'll never happen. the DNR has long quit giving a crap deer hunting. As evident by the 14% decrease in buck harvests in just two seasons.
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You can't blame it on the weather. Weather has been beautiful. Can't blame it on the crops. Acorns are dropping and there are still plenty of crops available. Maybe the ODNR can blame it on Bush.
The bad part about this is come next weekend with the early muzzy hunt, all of the data can be thrown out the window anyway. It will give the false interpretation that we are killing more deer this year, but it will simply be because we have a new gun season in the middle of October that we didn't have last year.
rgecko23
*Supporting Member*
Rutin
Senior Member
Couldn't agree more Joe. There would have to be several long term policies put into place, ie: Non-Res drawing (Iowa style) with price increase, antler restriction (except for youth and elderly IMO), every county is a 2 deer county reguardless, NO early muzzy, one week gun, shorten bow season to allow more does to actually drop fawns. It would have to be a painful process but it'll never happen. Kinda like our Gov't ever making an ethical decision for the people as a whole, rather than for themselves. We are going to have to go through hard times and sacrifice before anything will ever get better.
Maybe. Maybe not. If the deer aren't there, they simply aren't there. I am personally not hunting the early MZ and neither is my local hunting buddy. I haven't seen as many hunters out this year. Not sure what others are seeing though. I realize those of us online are a small facet of the hunters out there, but there seems to be a growing portion of people (at least locally I have spoken with) who are backing off simply because they are not seeing the deer. Hopefully this trend continues state wide.
Yes some of us will cut back and shoot less deer. But there is a large segment of present day hunters that will keep shooting deer until the last one is gone. Just like the hunters of 100 yrs. ago did.
IMHO
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Precisely! And the only reason that we even have a DNR is to prevent that from happening. However our DNR is using it as a tool to their advantage. As I have said from the beginning it is completely illogical to expect hunters to be the conservationist no matter what lines they've sold us about being such. It is illogical because we don't possess the overall understanding of the big picture or controls to adequately do the job. If we did we wouldn't need limits, tags, seasons, and everything else that keeps us as a whole in check. Our money through state and federal oversight is used for conservation. As for us we're just killers. That's our role in this. It is for this reason we have entrusted a state DNR to manage our herd. However they've betrayed us and used ourselves against us, all while using the money we gave them for conservation instead to appease insurance companies. While some may slack off on killing it will not be enough to matter.
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I for one am not shooting any Highland county does. I'll let them hop the fence for the neighbors to start their annual onslaught of killing everything brown. I don't want that blood on my hands.
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Seth, I think I've become a full time squirrel hunter. I love being in the woods and taking a morning nap, but carrying all the crap one needs to hunt deer is a burden. At least when a squirrel wakes me from my nap, I can shoot it and not feel too bad.
Can't wait to talk with my buddy to see how many bucks he takes in after next weekends "doe" only ML hunt... Ballistic tipped arrows that will kill a lot of bucks the day after ML weekend I bet!!
Very troubling seeing these stats and knowing it ain't gonna get better in the foreseeable future.
Very troubling seeing these stats and knowing it ain't gonna get better in the foreseeable future.
I hear you Brock. It really brings you back to your roots, and I love it. I could have went deer hunting the past 3 days from dark to dark if I wanted to, I didn't go once. Just isn't in me. If I had intentions of killing a doe around here, it may be different, but I don't, and it really takes away from the excitement, and its just to early for me to get excited about bucks. With the cold front coming through on Sunday, I will be in the tree though.
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It will be a short lived false positive. You can only rob Peter to pay Paul for so long. Eventually the numbers will catch up and continue to reflect what we've all been seeing and saying.