Making sense of Ohio's to-date deer kill

 

Deer hunters in Ohio continue to bring home more animals than they did one year ago but not at the blistering pace seen during the first couple of weeks of the state’s long archery-hunting season.

Based on data supplied by the Ohio Division of Wildlife, the number of deer killed through November 3rd was 42,559 animals. For the compatible period in 2019 that figure was 41,712 animals. Thus, only 847 more deer have been killed so far in 2020 when compared to 2019 for the same period.

But during the first four days of the season the deer kill was up 58 percent.

Of Ohio’s 88 counties, some 34 showed declines when their to-date 2020 numbers were laid next to their comparable 2019 figures, two counties had identical numbers, and the rest showed increases.

It is in the details that the whole cloth of the story gets told, however.

In the three counties that saw their seasonal deer bag limit reduced from two animals to one, the Wildlife Division saw an average drop of 26 percent, with Clinton and Pickaway each falling around 36 percent, while Fayette tumbled only six percent, says Mike Tonkovich, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s deer management administrator.

Tonkovich was quick to note, though, that the difference is based on a comparison of this year’s deer kill with the average of the last three years, “not last years harvest alone.”

“This tends to dampen the sometimes dramatic year-to-year variations that see due to weather and other events unrelated to actual changes in the deer population,” Tonkovich said.

Thus the comparisons “are more meaningful,” Tonkovich says.

“Yet in the 15, three-deer counties where we added a deer management permit are up an average of six percent,” Tonkovich also said. “And in the 12, two-deer counties where we added a deer to the bag, harvests are up 14 percent.”

Tonkovich says likewise the 11, three-deer counties where the agency removed a deer from the season bag limit the deer kills are down only an average of eight percent.

“And in those 46 counties where no changes occurred, we see that the total harvest is down just three deer,” Tonkovich says.

Delaware County was “something of an anomaly” because the Wildlife Division reduced the bag limit by one deer and took away the management permit there, Tonkovich said.

“But the deer harvest there is presently up two percent,” he said.

Among the to-date big gainers (with their respective 2019 to-date figures in parentheses) were: Ashtabula – 1,261 (1,193); Licking – 1,278 (1,207); Lorain – 656 (592); Muskingum – 970 (926); Perry – 492 (445); Stark – 823 (703); and Tuscarawas – 1,312 (1,252).

Among the counties indicating declines (again, with their respective 2019 to-date figures in parentheses) were: Hamilton – 559 (612); Hocking 468 (622); Mahoning – 54 (566); Pickaway – 94 (148); Seneca – 415 (443); Vinton– 388 (460); and Washington – 424 (478).

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com