Simply put, Ohio's 2007-08 deer harvest didn't meet all expectations.

However, the reduced kill wasn't the result of low deer numbers.

Nor is it necessarily any indication of how the 2008 season might be.

The results of the 2007-08 Ohio deer-hunting seasons resulted from poor weather and at least one significant change in the regulations.

Throw in a disease outbreak of historic proportions, and reaching a conclusion -- or making a prediction -- can be challenging. But after sorting through all the news, both good and bad, prospects for 2008 appear to be very good.

IT WAS A WASHOUT!
Was deer biologist Mike Tonkovich satisfied with the season?

"Yes and no," he said.

The No part started with a dismal drop in the deer kill on opening day of the statewide gun season.

"It was a decrease of record proportions for us, but there was a good reason. It rained hard all day, and it rained much of the rest of the week. After a 50 percent reduction in harvest our first day, amazingly enough, we still ended up that week within 7 percent of last year's harvest.

"Hunters did pretty well in terms of recovery. So from that standpoint, I was very pleased that we made that much of a recovery.

"But then we lost another period of normally good hunting to bad weather," the biologist continued.

"We had a two-day firearms season in December. If you were fortunate enough to have hunted the first few hours of Saturday, you'd have been in good shape. But anywhere from 9 a.m. to noon that day, the weather turned sour. It stayed that way for the rest of the day and Sunday, and pretty much ruined that season for us."

Poor results in the firearms seasons did not end there, either.

"Going into the year's last firearms season-- our statewide muzzleloader season, which runs from the week between Christmas and New Year's Day -- we had two strikes against us.

"Whether hunters were soaked to the bone during the previous two hunts and had yet to recover, or if they just lost interest, participation was off. And the harvest declined for the second year in a row.

"I believe some of the reduction in participation was probably due to hunters simply getting tired of being run out of the woods by the weather, even though the weather wasn't bad," Tonkovich said.

"I mean, it wasn't great weather, but it wasn't bad weather. It was just an average year, but after getting washed out twice, I think many hunters lost interest.

"Another thing that may have contributed to some of that lack of interest was that after adding that December gun season, the muzzleloader harvest declined two years in a row," he noted. "We put a two-day firearms season about 10 days ahead of the statewide muzzleloader season. And, lo and behold, the harvest went down two years in a row!

"I anticipated some of that would occur if hunters looked at that December gun hunt as an early muzzleloader hunt," Tonkovich said. (Both shotguns and muzzleloaders were legal firearms during that season.)