Hunting Archery Duck Deer

Ohio’s deer hunters performed surprisingly well during the first seven days of the gun-deer season, which ended Sunday, checking in a statewide bag of 103,195 whitetails.

While that tally shows some slippage from the 111,672 from the same period in 2006, it is almost remarkable given a week of some of the worst possible hunting conditions. Cold steady rain marked the beginning and ending days of the period, and three of the middle days were marked by woods carpeted with noisy Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes.

The latter terms are explained thusly: Heavy overnight frosts and freezing temperatures left the leave layers crunchy and hard to tread upon stealthily until midday, then after a brief thaw and leaves quickly turned crackly after being wind and sun-dried. Either way, unless hunters moved with the speed of molasses in January, with frequent stops, deer were certain to pick up on their tromping long before detection by hunter eyes or ears.

In any case, most observers and participants expected a much lower bag. Among them was Mike Tonkovich, state deer biologist.

“I was pleased, to say the least,” he said, noting many comments to his office about seemingly nonexistent hunting pressure. Some staffers had expected a statewide bag as low as 80,000 to 90,000 deer because of the weather.

Actually, because of record bags in the first six weeks of archery season and the record gun-deer kill in the youth weekend, last week’s take has led to an all-seasons running total on deer that is about 1,800 ahead of last year’s record pace at 167,965.

“I think we’ll be 4,000 to 5,000 ahead when we see the interim archery harvest between the first six weeks and Thanksgiving,” Tonkovich said. He has said that one of the changes in Ohio deer hunting over recent years is a redistribution of hunting effort to archery and other special seasons rather than reliance solely on the “shotgun” week.

With another weekend of deer-gun hunting in store for Dec. 15 and 16, archery season continuing through Feb. 3, and statewide muzzleloader season to run Dec. 27-30, the biologist is optimistic that a forecast all-seasons bag of 240,000 to 250,000 deer still is possible. That would exceed last year’s record total of 237,316.

Tonkovich said that with ideal weather, the Dec. 15-16 bag could easily be 25,000 to 40,000 deer. A county-by-county listing of the gun week bag is available on-line at www.ohiodnr.com. The totals in most northwest Ohio counties ended up exceeding the 2006 figures.

The season was marred by 11 shooting incidents, one of them fatal, five of them self-inflicted including the fatality. The latter occurred in Coshocton County opening day. That total compares with nine incidents, four of them self-inflicted and one of them a fatality, in 2006. Each year more than 400,000 hunters participate in the deer-gun season.

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