Ohio's deer hunters to see same rules, but the weather? Not so much

Ohio’s deer hunters will see a mirrored reflection in the 2016-2017 deer-hunting seasons, bag limits and other regulations, the image being the same as the just concluded all-inclusive 2015-2016 deer-hunting season profile.

 

Thing is that while the deer-hunting regulations will be the same the probability is high – make that, very high – that Ohio’s hunters will encounter much poorer weather.

 

On Wednesday the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council was presented with the proposals for the various up-coming deer-hunting seasons. These rules and regulations were then showcased again this afternoon during an Ohio Division of Wildlife-hosted teleconference with the state’s outdoors writers.

 

Left unchanged are in which counties hunters can shoot two, three, or four deer. Along with those county-by-county respective bag limits come where an antlerless-only tag is legal tender.

 

Under the proposals, only in 10 of Ohio’s 88 counties will a single antlerless-only tag be legal.

 

The proposed various 2016-2017 deer-hunting dates are: Archery - September 24th to February 5^th; Youth-only firearms season – November 19^th and 20^th; General firearms season – November 28^th to December 4^th; “Bonus” two-day general firearms season – December 28th and 29^th; Statewide muzzle-loading season – January 14^th to January 17^th.

 

Wildlife Division officials did, however, engage in some back-peddling on when it would likely propose abandoning its long-standing county-by-country deer management protocols in favor of a deer-management unit profile that is employed by many other states, including next door neighbor, Pennsylvania.

 

“We’re looking for more constituent input,” said Clint McCoy, the Wildlife Division’s lead deer management biologist. “If in six months we hear from more hunters that they want it than it would become more likely (sooner).”

 

About the only noticeable difference between the actual 2015-2016 and the proposed 2016-2017 season dates is where the two-day often-called “bonus” two-day general firearms deer-hunting season lines up. This past December that season fell on a Monday and a Tuesday. For this year the proposal hooks on to a Wednesday and a Thursday.

 

Asked also about the fact the antlered deer harvest jumped an impressive and unexpected 12 percent for the 2015-2016 all-inclusive seasons, Wildlife Division officials reiterated that it was their belief how a poor hard mast crop (the acorns from white and red oaks, mostly)forced many deer to go on a search for food.

 

Such a hunt meant that the deer sought out game feeders and corn piles maintained by hunters, thus making the animals more vulnerable to the arrow and the bullet.

 

Also, the Wildlife Division maintains that this past autumn’s and winter’s El Nino-driven much warmer weather allowed more hunters to stay afield longer than usual.

 

However, neither of those conditions is anticipated for this up-coming all-inclusive deer-hunting season, regardless of which dates the Wildlife Council ultimately does approve.

 

The reason for this upheaval is two-fold. First, seldom is there a back-to-back hard mast crop failure. Typically a lean year of acorn production is followed by a strong year, and vice-versa.

 

Then too, this past year’s El Nino-influenced weather pattern will be nothing more than a memory receding in the weather record book rearview mirror.

 

Scientist’s with the federal government’s Climate Prediction Center have issued a report noting that “Since we are now past the peak of the El Nino event… the relevant questions relate to how quickly the event decays and whether we see a transition to La Nina, which frequently follows on the heels of El Nino events.”

 

In climatologically spoken geek, the Centers’ scientists are predicting a “return to neutral conditions” by late spring and early summer along with a 79-percent chance of “La Nina by next winter.”

 

Likewise, the Centers is saying that the historic run of La Nina events drives wetter than average precipitation amounts in at least some portions of North America.

 

Thus for the upcoming 2016-2017 autumn and winter periods, the Centers is projecting above average amounts of precipitation for the Pacific Northwest, as well as the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes.

 

In short, Ohio’s troupe of deer hunters will almost certainly see both a colder than normal and wetter than normal 2016-2017 all-inclusive deer-hunting season.

 

Or much closer to what they encountered during the 2014-2015 all-inclusive deer-hunting season when deer kill numbers retreated from the previous 2013-2014 all-inclusive deer-hunting season tallies.

 

Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net 

 

Jeff is the retired News-Herald reporter who  covered the earth sciences, the area's three county park systems and the outdoors for the newspaper. During his 30 years with The News-Herald Jeff was the recipient of more than 100 state, regional and national journalism awards. He also is a columnist and features writer for the Ohio Outdoor News, which is published every other week and details the outdoors happenings in the state.