Ohio's deer-hunting season continues its strong pace; fall turkey season, not so much

 

With about three weeks into the Ohio archery deer-hunting season, the pace of hunters bringing home the venison continues briskly though not with the sprinting speed seen during the first week.

However, for the state’s fall wild turkey hunters the news – while not glum – is hardly in the same league.

To-date for 2020 and for the period September 26th through October 20^th, hunters in Ohio had killed 23,371 deer. For the comparable time frame in 2019 that figure was 21,263 deer.

“The harvest is up approximately 10 percent, which is a slight improvement over last week when we were at just over eight percent ahead of last year,” said Mike Tonkovich, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s deer management administrator. “After the first week, the harvest was up 59 percent, but we knew that wouldn’t be sustained.”

Along with the increase in the deer kill, sales of deer-hunting tags also has demonstrated an upward climb.

Tonkovich says that through October 13^th, hunting license and deer permit sales were up 10 percent and four percent, respectively, over last year for the same time period.

As for a thumbnail breakdown, of Ohio’s 88 counties, 16 of them recorded to-date declines when their respective 2019 and 2020 were laid side-by-side.

Among the noteworthy counties showing drops were Hocking: 263 animals to-date this year verses 314 animals for the same recording period in 2019; and Logan, with a 2020 to-date kill of 248 animals verses 298 for the same recording period in 2019.

Noteworthy gainers (with their respective 2020 to-date numbers followed by their respective to-date 2019 numbers in parentheses) were: Brown – 312 (267); Licking – 704 (576); Meigs – 341 (270); Muskingum – 483 (397), and Trumbull – 781 (671).

So far this season and based on the October 20^th to date numbers, only nine of Ohio’s 88 counties had yet to see deer kills of 100 or more animals each. Last year for the same recording period that figure was 11 counties.

Tonkovich said also the Wildlife Division had projected a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in the deer kill for the entire 2020-2021 deer-hunting season.

“And barring any major unforeseen problems, I expect we should land pretty close to that. Of course, we are only three weeks into a sixteen-plus week season,” Tonkovich said.

For Ohio’s fall turkey hunting season – which opened October 10th and will run through November 29th – the take is hardly the stuff of legend-making, says Mark Wiley, the Wildlife Division’s turkey management biologist.

Wiley said that in the first 10 days of Ohio’s 2020 fall turkey season, 290 birds were recorded as being taken. During the first 10 days of the 2019 fall wild turkey-hunting season that figure was 315 birds.

“On this trajectory we would expect the 2020 fall harvest total to be around 1,000 birds, which is below the 5-year average of 1,388 birds,” Wiley said.

The fall turkey kill decline, says Wiley, is being attributed to a continued slide in poult production over the past four years.

By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com