By Mike Bleech

How do you follow up a record deer harvest? How about with another record harvest?

That might be a little optimistic, but another excellent Ohio deer season is anticipated this year.

"We may see another record kill," said Mike Tonkovich, wildlife research biologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife. "We're looking at 26 out of 88 counties with a three-deer tag and 34 counties under a two-deer tag, so I don't think the opportunities have ever been as great. In fact, we may break the 2002-03 record harvest. At this point, the preliminary projection would put us over the 200,000 mark."

Ohio's deer management strategy is to provide a deer population that maximizes recreation while avoiding conflicts with agriculture, motor travel and other human activities. Unlike some of its neighbors, the Buckeye State has seen this approach result in populations that have never exceeded the carrying capacity of the habitat. Numbers are achieved by manipulating the number of available permits in the various zones. Statewide - and particularly in Zone C, which is roughly the southeastern corner of the state - the deer population has risen during the past several years. Going into the deer season last fall, the whitetail population was estimated at 681,000 deer.

DOW biologists began using a new method of estimating the deer population last year that indicated there were more deer than estimates by the previous method had suggested. The population had been calculated to be 575,000 deer going into the 2002-03 seasons, but using the new method, that number was adjusted to 685,000 deer.

The new method of estimating the deer population incorporates the total deer harvest in each county, along with birth rates, into models that project population size. The previous method used data primarily from the gun-hunting season.

The Dec. 1-7 gun hunting season last year produced a take of 116,004 deer including 83,955 bucks and 112,129 antlerless deer, a 12 percent drop from the previous year. The kill was down in 60 counties, but up in 28 counties.

Photo by BillKinney.com

The Dec. 27-30 muzzleloader season produced a record kill of 24,981 deer, a 13 percent increase over the year before. The first-ever youth deer-hunting season produced a take of 5,289 deer.

Broken down by method (after adjustments for incomplete harvest record forms), hunters took 115,283 deer by gun, 29,103 by means of crossbows, 21,009 by means of longbows and 23,796 by means of primitive weapons.

All seasons combined, the 196,084 deer taken in 2003-04 was the second-highest deer kill on record, trailing only the 204,652 deer taken in the 2002-03 seasons. Third best was the 179,543 deer taken during the 1995-96 hunting seasons.

Ohio's deer herd should be in good shape, as usual, regardless of the long winter. "Winter forage is really not much of an issue," Tonkovich said. "Certainly there's no shortage of food. We're not at the point where our deer populations are dependent on mast to carry them through the winter."

Following: a look at the deer-hunting situation in each district as we enter the 2004 hunting season:

Licking County had the fourth highest total harvest in the state during the 2003-04 hunting seasons, with 5,525 deer, and the sixth-highest antlerless harvest in the state with 3,041 deer. Knox County had the fifth-highest antlerless harvest in the state with 3,147 deer, and the sixth highest total harvest in the state (5,255 deer). These two counties accounted for 42 percent of the deer harvest in the 13-county district.

At the other end of the scale, only 496 deer were taken in Fayette County, sixth-poorest in the state, plus 568 in Marion County and 582 in Madison County. Harvests in the remainder ranged from 977 to 2,617 deer.

According to Dan Huss, district wildlife management supervisor, the district office receives a fair number of complaints about deer in the central Ohio area, and many of these landowners have changed their attitude about killing deer. They are seeing at first hand how fast an un-hunted deer population can grow. A fair number of landowners will allow limited bowhunting on their properties wherever local ordinances don't prohibit hunting.

"Deer are vulnerable to overharvest in the west," Tonkovich pointed out. With a limited amount of escape cover and extensive open agricultural lands, deer could be hunted to the point of elimination, which was the case in the past.

Richland County led the district during the 2003-04 hunting seasons with a total harvest of 2,756 deer. That was a jump of 54 percent from the previous year, and 83 percent over the average of the previous four years. Nonetheless, Richland County has the best five-year average in the district, at 1,752 deer. Huron County, with 2,267 deer, was the only other county in the district with a harvest over 2,000 deer during the 2003-04 hunting seasons. These two counties accounted for 27 percent of the total harvest in this 20-county district.

District Two had the two lowest ranking counties in the state: Van Wert County, with a harvest of 352 total deer, and Ottawa County, with a harvest of 370 total deer. The third-best county in the district ranked just 48th. The average county harvest in the district last year was 934 deer.

Tim Plagemen, district wildlife supervisor, suggested that the Williams and Richland county areas have the highest deer densities in the district. The Lake La Su An Wildlife Area in Williams County and the Killdeer Plains WA in Wyandot County are the two best public hunting options. However, hunting on public areas is only fair, owing to heavy hunting pressure.

The leading counties for deer harvests in the district are at the extreme northern and southern ends, though the numbers are heavily weighted in the south. Tuscarawas County ranked fifth in the state, with 5,518 total deer, and fourth for antlerless deer, with 3,202. Jefferson County ranked seventh in the state with 5,040 total deer and 10th for antlerless with 2,749. Harrison County ranked ninth in the state with a total harvest of 4,951 deer, and seventh in antlerless the category with 2,940. Holmes County ranked 13th in the state with 4,400 total deer, and 13th for antlerless deer, with 2,658.

At the extreme northeastern corner of the district, Ashtabula County ranked 10th in the state with 4,715 total deer and eighth in the state for antlerless deer, with 2,918.

Those five counties accounted for 48 percent of the total deer harvest in this 19-county district.

Trumbull, Columbiana and Carroll counties all had total harvests of more than 3,200 deer, but otherwise the county harvests in District Three dropped off considerably. Cuyahoga County ranked 84th with a total harvest of 439 deer; Lake County hunters harvested 908 deer.

Hunting situations vary considerably through this district, which includes vast urban-suburban areas around Cleveland, Akron, Warren and Youngstown, and several public lands with highly varied and very thick cover.

Although hunting pressure here is heavy, sportsmen can find very good opportunities, especially bowhunters willing to put forth the extra effort it takes to get into the nastiest cover.

District Four hunters tagged 40 percent of the total state deer harvest during the 2003-04 hunting seasons with 78,762 deer. This district had the steepest decline from the 2002-03 hunting season, 14 percent.

The average harvest per county during the 2003-04 hunting seasons was 2,228 deer. Of the 88 counties, 37 had harvests above average. The lowest-ranking county in District Four, Scioto, ranked 38th.

The top three counties for total deer harvest and for antlerless harvest during the 2003-04 hunting seasons were all in District Four. Coshocton County led the state with a total harvest of 6,711 deer and 4,023 antlerless deer. That total was a 10 percent drop from the previous year, although that was a 19 percent improvement over the five-year average. As recently as 1999, only 3,372 total deer were taken here. The 2002-03 harvest of 7,439 deer might have been the highest county total deer harvest on record.

Muskingum County ranked second in the state both for total deer (6,407) and for antlerless deer (3,642). That total deer kill was a 7 percent decline from the 2002-03 hunting seasons. Muskingum County is the only county in the state with a five-year average total harvest of more than 6,000 deer (6,128).

Guernsey County ranked third in the state for both total deer (5,533) and antlerless deer (3,266). The total harvest was a 16 percent drop from the previous year, but 12 percent better than the five-year average.

Athens County ranked eighth in the state for a total harvest of 5,033 deer and ninth in the state for antlerless deer, with 2,846. Though it was fourth in the district last year, it is third in the district for its five-year average total deer harvest. This is one of only three counties in the state with a five-year average total harvest of more than 5,000 deer.

District Four holds the greatest concentration of public land in the state, and like public land everywhere it is hunted hard, according to wildlife management supervisor Keith Morrow.

This hilly area includes Ohio's larger state forests and Wayne National Forest. A 10-county band that straddles the borders between districts One, Three and Four accounted for 27 percent of the total state deer harvest last year.

The bulk of the 2003-04 deer harvest in District Five was in a four-county block in the southern tip of the 17-county district that accounted for very nearly half of the district's total deer kill.

Adams County led the district with a 2003-04 total harvest of 3,147 deer, which included 1,728 antlerless deer. It ranked 27th for total deer and 28th for antlerless deer. The five-year average harvest is 2,296 deer.

The deer harvest has increased each year since 1999. From 2002-03 to 2003-04, the harvest improved 8 percent.

Neighboring Highland County has also had a steadily increasing deer harvest, from 1,068 in 1999 to 2,551 total deer last year, a 7 percent jump from the year before. The five-year total harvest average here is 1,859 deer.

Clermont County and Brown County ranked third and fourth, respectively, in the district last year. The Clermont County total harvest was 2,546 deer, an 11-percent decline from the previous year. The Brown County harvest was 2,339 deer, an 8 percent decline from the year before. Clermont County has the second-highest five-year average total harvest in District Five, with 2,199 deer.

Dan Frevert, the district's wildlife management supervisor, noted that Brush Creek State Forest holds good deer numbers, however, the terrain is rugged and hunters can expect to walk to find deer. This forest is spread between Adams County in District Five and Pike and Scioto counties in District Four.

Tranquility WA also has good numbers of deer. This area has a mixture of habitat types including woodlands, prairies and croplands. The hunting at both areas is best during the archery season, because there is a substantial amount of pressure during the gun seasons.