Yeah Tonk can kiss my arse until he can explain to me in person how they've come up with their population numbers in a way better than a certain night at a campfire in Athens County.
You guys ain’t killin enough deer
- Thread starter Ohiosam
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This is why you won't see the ODNR be proactive about the spread of CWD. Anything to increase the body count, disease included.
Buckmaster
Senior Member
I got spoiled during those golden years. I enjoyed seeing 10-12 deer per sit...now I see 2 deer every other sit.
I keep hearing about these gold and Glory Days, but I didn't get to see them I didn't start hunting until 2008. I wonder if we'll ever see days like that again? Probably not
at1010
*Supporting Member*
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Assuming it is true about the variances of a population based on different areas within a county, I would love to know why we are not adapting our system to reflect a DMAP system. Wouldnt that allow a much more specific target of anterless deer - specific to the areas of a given county where the numbers seem to be highest?
We already know, per ODNR, that monitoring at the macro level is very difficult. Why are we still trying the same antiquated system today?
We already know, per ODNR, that monitoring at the macro level is very difficult. Why are we still trying the same antiquated system today?
I hold Tonk and his cohorts to a very low standard when it comes to deer management that way they can never disappoint me. I have news for you all, it's never going to change so long we as hunters keep tolerating it. Until we can assemble a LARGE, oganized and unified effort to protect the interests of deer hunters in Ohio, the DOW will continue to place others interests in front of our own. Complaining on here combined with no other action is not gonna cut it.
Also remember that Tonk has his BFF on the wildlife council now to back him up, which is a conflict of interest if ive ever seen one.
Also remember that Tonk has his BFF on the wildlife council now to back him up, which is a conflict of interest if ive ever seen one.
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this whole issue boils down to an individuals personal hunting experience. I don't have much sympathy for anyone whining about how they don't see enough deer, don't see as many as they used to, etc. if you want to see more deer, find or make a better place to hunt. I started deer hunting for real in 1981, but went deer hunting a few times starting in 1978. Anyone else here who has been hunting deer in Ohio seriously since the late 70's knows that deer hunting was pretty poor then compared to today. It got really good starting in the late 80's and early 90's, and has been excellent since the 90's. I spent the first 20 years of my deer hunting life on public land half of the time, and saw plenty of deer. for the last 20 years I've seen ten times more deer than I did for the first 20. Human populations have been rising forever in Ohio, huntable habitat disappearing from development and leasing, but still the deer hunting is better now than it has ever been for the state as a whole. I don't agree with everything the ODNR does, but I won't ever complain about the deer hunting that we have today as it is the best of my entire hunting life. given the circumstances, I don't see our deer hunting in Ohio ever being appreciably better than it is today for the state as a whole.
Dannmann, you don't recognize this point in time as the "glory days" of deer hunting because you don't know anything different. you started in the midst of the glory days and did not get to experience lousy deer hunting in Ohio.
Al, my example here is highland County. I live on the boarder of 2 other counties that are 1 deer limit counties. Clearly a buffer is needed between the difference. I have seen this kicked back in the past. They were going to change from counties to zones and it always got pushed back.
Living in that exact transition area most of my life, I can tell you that it still hasn't recovered from years of a 6 deer limit. It probably never will with the current deer management administration.
Buckmaster
Senior Member
I agree with Jamie. My deer hunting began in 1981 as well. I’ve lived the rise and fall of Ohio deer hunting as well. Today, it is a least controlled and consistent.
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Increasing opportunity is what kills more deer. Like having cheaper more attractive tags, a bonus gun season, or an early muzzleloader season, or legalizing rifles. Reducing oportunity is what causes them to hold steady or grow. Like closing doe harvest after gun season on public lands, removing the cheaper tags for certain areas etc. Hunters not realizing this and shooting everything they could the last time is what got our deer numbers so low. Now that they're rebounding the ODNR is back out singing the same old tune about how we're blessed that they're giving us more opportunity. What they fail to mention is it's to our own detriment. Expecting hunters to self-manage is like setting the speed limit at 120 mph and expecting people to self manage and go 70 MPH because that's what they feel is best for their area.
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I get where you're coming from, and we've covered hundreds of pages on it before. But its like saying that since the internet didn't exist in the 80s we should be ok with going back to dialup and getting rid of broadband. Because in the end something is better than nothing, and that something is better than it used to be. Why should we as hunters make sacrifices again to shore up the profits of big insurance. Did anyone's insurance go down after we reduced the deer population 30-40% by 2015 from 2007? Mine didnt.
As for hunters moving because they were unhappy where they were hunting, that's exactly what happened last time. That's the primary reason that public lang got flat decimated. As a predator that's what hunters do. In areas that had a lot of hunters and access, the deer population was decimated pretty quickly. Those hunters sought out new deer-rich areas to hunt. As a collective, they began to systematically reduce the numbers in those areas too. This is why in some areas the reduction was quickly evident, while others took 4-5 years to see an impact. The only saving grace for some areas was a lack of permission. If I had a nickel for the guys that made a similar argument in 08-10 and called us crazy because they were still seeing plenty of deer, but by 2013 they were crying foul just like everyone else, I could pay for this site for a year.
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Its recovered some the last 2 years, but nowhere near what it was 2008-2012. If you have good neighbors who have like minded goals then it isn't bad. When you have little asshole neighbors like I do who get off on killing and won't stop until they fill their limit and their buddies do to, then you have issues and the only way to stop them is to place more restrictive regulations (assuming at minimum they are at least law abiding).
As far as what can be done its really quite simple, yet incredibly complicated at the same time. Either find an existing non profit sportsman's organization who is non political that is willing to actually speak up for and defend hunters interests and that already has a large voice and following, or create one yourself and use platforms like this web forum and social media to grow your own voice and base. Im sure with the wide array of talent and experience on this forum someone is very capable of getting this rolling. The issue though is who has the amount of time that its going to take to dedicate to get something started?
triple_duece
Ragin Cajun.
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So I’m an outsider looking in. Down here we pretty much lived the numbers of deer y’all have seen. Our heyday was in the early to mid 90’s. It was bucks only mostly w a few “doe days”. Then in the 2000’s they went to doe any day. Our numbers have plummeted. No more seeing groups of deer unless it was a doe w fawns.
Today we have mostly a different mindset of hunters. Yester years, people’s mindset “most of the population of hunters” was if it’s brown it’s down thought process. We still have that today, but no where what it used to be. Today IMO a good bunch of
hunters is management thinking. The generation of killers hunting today have good mentors teaching them numbers killed is not the way. It’s take some and pass a lot attitude. It’s inspiring to me to see young kids that think like this. Every area across the land has killed good bucks even way back. Today the bucks are way bigger. Now when I say big it’s dependent on the geographic area of big. But there is more big deer than ever IMO of hunting 35 years. It’s a numbers thing and we all want to see 160’s behind every tree, but we know that could never happen clearly since big bucks won’t tolerate that. They will self disperse on their own. Hunters standards has went up and it shows.
We still have outlaws and people not taking care of the resources. We still have an unbalance in areas with doe/buck ratio. What’s more important is habitat, without good habitat you can’t have much of anything. In the big picture nature will find the balance of what the land can support.
It’s hard to compare to the days of lucky to see a track, to deer running everywhere, to today with a diverse age structure and still a good number of deer.
I don’t agree w the wildlife agency taking a statewide look and saying we need more deer killed approach. If you truly want to manage put your boots on the ground and break areas up. Even w that one side of the county could be loaded w just a mile away in another county with bad numbers. Somewhere in between it’s not good, but where do you draw the line.
I’ve managed my property since 07, never did achieve anything till I got the right neighbors 5-6 years ago. Now we kill a couple nice bucks a year.
I like what QDMA did but the state DMAP program will get you enough tags to kill does till your sitting in the stand watching empty fields every hunt. It is us to try to find the balance and not some political or insurance company dictate how the deer herd should be managed. Want to know why Iowa is the best place to deer hunt? It’s because the state don’t run it and allowed the Iowa Bowhunter’s association to come up w the management plan.
Today we have mostly a different mindset of hunters. Yester years, people’s mindset “most of the population of hunters” was if it’s brown it’s down thought process. We still have that today, but no where what it used to be. Today IMO a good bunch of
hunters is management thinking. The generation of killers hunting today have good mentors teaching them numbers killed is not the way. It’s take some and pass a lot attitude. It’s inspiring to me to see young kids that think like this. Every area across the land has killed good bucks even way back. Today the bucks are way bigger. Now when I say big it’s dependent on the geographic area of big. But there is more big deer than ever IMO of hunting 35 years. It’s a numbers thing and we all want to see 160’s behind every tree, but we know that could never happen clearly since big bucks won’t tolerate that. They will self disperse on their own. Hunters standards has went up and it shows.
We still have outlaws and people not taking care of the resources. We still have an unbalance in areas with doe/buck ratio. What’s more important is habitat, without good habitat you can’t have much of anything. In the big picture nature will find the balance of what the land can support.
It’s hard to compare to the days of lucky to see a track, to deer running everywhere, to today with a diverse age structure and still a good number of deer.
I don’t agree w the wildlife agency taking a statewide look and saying we need more deer killed approach. If you truly want to manage put your boots on the ground and break areas up. Even w that one side of the county could be loaded w just a mile away in another county with bad numbers. Somewhere in between it’s not good, but where do you draw the line.
I’ve managed my property since 07, never did achieve anything till I got the right neighbors 5-6 years ago. Now we kill a couple nice bucks a year.
I like what QDMA did but the state DMAP program will get you enough tags to kill does till your sitting in the stand watching empty fields every hunt. It is us to try to find the balance and not some political or insurance company dictate how the deer herd should be managed. Want to know why Iowa is the best place to deer hunt? It’s because the state don’t run it and allowed the Iowa Bowhunter’s association to come up w the management plan.
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That's what we were on track to do the last time. We started kicking around the idea of renting a booth at the upcoming deer and turkey expo and handing out data-backed literature so hunters stopped believing the lies. Hoping that we could educate them and they could get their buddies on board to maybe better self-manage their local populations. The DNR needs hunters to screw themselves without realizing the bigger picture for their management tactic to work. A few days later I received a call from a big insurance companies staff attorney saying that we're free to form whatever group want, but just a heads up if we mention insurance companies they will file a lawsuit against us.
This is after I received word from a friend that someone who is very friendly with the DNR and wildlife council happened to know an executive where I worked at AEP at the time.
So after that, we thought about trying to bring together an alliance of common interest groups like QDMA, OBA, and a bunch of others. Wouldn't you know it not even a few months later someone else who has great friends at the DNR had the idea of doing just that and brought them together with steak dinners and free hotel stays to talk about deer management with the DNR. They had closed voting and never streamed the meetings despite claiming to be "stakeholders". This group even had a "social media" chair who was supposed to engage the internet hunting crowd for feedback. Think Jesse or my phone rang to fill that chair? The guys who had the most data, discussions, and knowledge on the very topic and had for year's led the discussion online. Nope. Instead, they chose someone who couldn't even figure out how to start a Facebook group and had an obvious intention of falling in line.
And to think that one person I mentioned above on a couple instances wonders why they can't post here anymore. Huh. Go figure.
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