Deer harvest per county per square mile

[hickslawns]

Saw this and it intrigued me. Woodbury Outfitters has deer harvested per square mile per county. I think this could be useful but it is not complete in my eyes. Take these same stats with year over year numbers and we might be able to learn more. My county went from 2 deer county up to 4 deer county and back to 2 deer county this year. I'd love to see our numbers from when we used to be a 2 deer county compared to this season's numbers. I believe this would be a more telling piece of data. If nothing else, it is good conversation if we can keep it on course. It is also good to know larger companies are putting this info out on their website. They are noticing. Maybe some larger players need to do the talking? Maybe a co-op with Woodbury/The Fin/maybe some other Ohio outdoor companies who have their bottom line affected by deer join together to stand up for the hunters in Ohio?

https://woodburyoutfitters.com/the-...Jrsame0ZXXzRmDzdK2sTGkM0weIjkFB5FlOVL7ULch-94

 

[Jackalope]

Interesting that they would put it out there. If you remember back when we had three zones and were discussing on here how the ODNR really needed to go to a county by county management system, we also said the country numbers need to be based on actual huntable land. Some counties are far more rural that others while some have large chunks taken up by urban and suburban areas. For instance the human population of Clark county is around 3x that of it's neighboring Champaign county, this is largely due to Springfield and other towns. Yet both counties have the same deer harvest limits.

The ODNR is kicking around the idea of going to "Deer Management Units" and splitting them up based on habitat. The positive to that is it would get rid of boundaries like county lines that have little to do with deer management and more to do with ease of understanding. The downside it is would place those boundaries among other notable features like roads, highways, rivers etc. Logical from a management position, but it may be difficult for some to grasp as they'll have to remember that a country could be split between 2 or even three DMUs, and also to know where that split happens.

 

[Hortontoter]

I was shocked to see Carroll County ranked 84th in land and number two in kills. It got me to thinking. How much does the geographical placement have to do with the number killed. Also how many hunters are hunting a given county would surely have some bearing on the kill numbers. I am certain that the herd numbers are down where I hunt, that is why I was shocked to see Carroll ranked #2.

1. Carroll County has very little land that is incorporated. And only one somewhat bigger city, Carrollton.
2. Carroll County is within an hours drive of many major cities.
3. From my experiences, landowners there are fairly hunter friendly.
4. A couple good chunks of public land are available.
5. A lot of land is being leased for hunting.
6. A large portion of the woodlots have been divided due to the gas well production and pipeline right of ways.

 

["J"]

I was shocked to see Carroll County ranked 84th in land and number two in kills. It got me to thinking. How much does the geographical placement have to do with the number killed. Also how many hunters are hunting a given county would surely have some bearing on the kill numbers. I am certain that the herd numbers are down where I hunt, that is why I was shocked to see Carroll ranked #2.

1. Carroll County has very little land that is incorporated. And only one somewhat bigger city, Carrollton.
2. Carroll County is within an hours drive of many major cities.
3. From my experiences, landowners there are fairly hunter friendly.
4. A couple good chunks of public land are available.
5. A lot of land is being leased for hunting.
6. A large portion of the woodlots have been divided due to the gas well production and pipeline right of ways.

I’ve hunted with a buddy the last 4 years a little bit in Carroll county, just in that time frame the numbers are down in the area we’ve hunted.... There’s some definite poaching going on and some of the undesirables have been cited. 5 in one day on neighboring property. 2 arrested and the remaining heavily cited.
Some folks don’t play by the rules, or think the rules don’t apply too them because of their religious affiliation.

 

[Jackalope]

I was shocked to see Carroll County ranked 84th in land and number two in kills. It got me to thinking. How much does the geographical placement have to do with the number killed. Also how many hunters are hunting a given county would surely have some bearing on the kill numbers. I am certain that the herd numbers are down where I hunt, that is why I was shocked to see Carroll ranked #2.

1. Carroll County has very little land that is incorporated. And only one somewhat bigger city, Carrollton.
2. Carroll County is within an hours drive of many major cities.
3. From my experiences, landowners there are fairly hunter friendly.
4. A couple good chunks of public land are available.
5. A lot of land is being leased for hunting.
6. A large portion of the woodlots have been divided due to the gas well production and pipeline right of ways.

Thats kind of what I was saying. While the data is interesting, its largely useless for anything other than a "neat" factor. You can't reach any sort of hypothesis based on just that data as there are too many large variables. Number of active hunters in that country, average days afield, huntable land mass, habitat variance. Each of these can change the outlook of those numbers drastically.

 

[Murphy31]

Here's a better one for ya. It's from 2015 though. http://maps.adventuremapping.com/whitetail_map/deer_density_map_1.asp

 

[giles]

I’m all for the management areas and new boundaries. The county thing never made any sense to me. Judging by the map posted above, I should be looking for property around Pittsburg!

 

[cspot]

Interesting that they would put it out there. If you remember back when we had three zones and were discussing on here how the ODNR really needed to go to a county by county management system, we also said the country numbers need to be based on actual huntable land. Some counties are far more rural that others while some have large chunks taken up by urban and suburban areas. For instance the human population of Clark county is around 3x that of it's neighboring Champaign county, this is largely due to Springfield and other towns. Yet both counties have the same deer harvest limits.

The ODNR is kicking around the idea of going to "Deer Management Units" and splitting them up based on habitat. The positive to that is it would get rid of boundaries like county lines that have little to do with deer management and more to do with ease of understanding. The downside it is would place those boundaries among other notable features like roads, highways, rivers etc. Logical from a management position, but it may be difficult for some to grasp as they'll have to remember that a country could be split between 2 or even three DMUs, and also to know where that split happens.

In PA we probably have had management units for about 16 years or so. Maybe longer. Are they perfect? Probably not. I think that some of them are larger than they should be. We don't have either sex tags and each WMU has an allocation each year of antlerless tags which are sold in rounds. You can get up to 3 except you can get more in the units that hold Pittsburgh and PHilly for obvious reasons which pretty much have unlimited tags. I think the plus side is that it controls the antlerless harvest better. It also allows them to concentrate tags in urban areas where they are needed in many cases. They have modified a few of the units over the years to better distinguish differences in areas.

As far as the boundaries they are located along major roads and rivers so it is easy to distinguish which WMU that you are in. IT is actually easier than the county system for that.