Antlerless season boosts firearms deer harvest
December 29th, 2005 by Administrator
Antlerless season boosts firearms deer harvest
The final portion of Missouri’s 2005 firearms deer hunting season produced a harvest of 21,922 deer. That pushes the total firearms deer harvest to the third-largest number in modern history.
The antlerless portion of firearms deer season ran from Dec. 10 through 18. This year’s antlerless hunt total was down 2,295 (9.1 percent) from last year. The record was set in 2003, when hunters bagged 25,151 deer during the antlerless-only portion of firearms deer season.
Top counties in the antlerless hunt were Pike, with 756 deer killed, Callaway with 675 and Boone with 628.
The Missouri Department of Conservation recorded no firearms-related deer hunting accidents during the antlerless hunt.
The antlerless season propelled Missouri’s 2005 firearms deer season to a total of 249,912 deer checked. That is 25,417 (9.2 percent) fewer than last year’s record of 275,329.
2005 firearms deer season segments and harvests were:
—Urban, Oct. 7-10, 1,838
—Youth, Oct. 29-30, 10,577
—November - Nov. 12-33, 205,460
—Muzzleloader, Nov. 25-Dec. 4, 10,115
—Antlerless, Dec. 10-18, 21,765
The number of deer killed was down compared to last year in every segment of firearms deer season. Conservation Department Resource Scientist Lonnie Hansen attributes this mostly to an unusual abundance of acorns statewide.
“In years when there are lots of acorns, deer don’t have to move much to find food, and that makes them harder for hunters to find,” said Hansen. “Historically, hunters in heavily forested areas have the most trouble when acorns are plentiful, because deer depend most heavily on acorns for food in forested areas. Knowing that, we expected to see the biggest dips in deer harvest in southwestern and southeastern Missouri and in the Ozarks.”
He said regional deer harvest figures bear out those predictions. The largest decrease in deer harvest, 18 percent, was in the Ozarks. Southwestern Missouri was second, with a 13-percent decrease, followed by the southeast with a 12 percent drop and the St. Louis region with a decrease of 11 percent. Central Missouri saw a 10 percent dip, and northeastern Missouri experienced an 8 percent drop.
Areas least affected were those with the smallest forested acreages. The Kansas City region experienced a drop of only 3 percent, while northwest Missouri, dominated by grassland, saw an increase of 2 percent in its deer harvest.
Hansen said weather played a less-important but still noticeable role in the harvest decrease. Rain and wind kept some hunters indoors on opening weekend, and hunters checked 30,000 fewer deer during the first two days of the 2005 November firearms deer season than they did during the same period last year.
The success of the Conservation Department’s deer management strategy also likely accounts for some of the harvest decrease.
“We have been applying the brakes pretty hard in northeast Missouri for several years now,” said Hansen. “We are succeeding in increasing the doe-to-buck harvest ratio to check the growth of the deer herd in some areas and reduce deer numbers in others. At some point in time, given the number of does we are taking, we hope to see fewer deer harvested because we have fewer deer.”
The Conservation Department recorded 11 firearms-related deer hunting accidents during the 36 days of firearms deer hunting. Two of the accidents resulted in hunter deaths.
Archery deer hunting continues through Jan. 15 in Missouri. Archers have harvested more than 30,000 deer in recent years. Added to the firearms harvest, this puts Missouri’s annual deer kill near 300,000.