Late season antlerless hunters???

[dbltree]

Tom Litchfield,Iowa Department of Natural Resources deer biologist spoke at the Habitat Workshop Saturday and had some great information on the state of Iowa's deer herd in general that was certainly appreciated.

It didn't take long for somone to comment on the problem of shed bucks being shot in the late antlerless season however. Tom was prepared with some interesting stats that I hesitate to quote but I think I can get in the ball park.

4% of the harvest end up being shed bucks and that is I believe all season from the get go and then he broke it down by season with roughly 33-34% of that 4% being harvested in the late antlerless season.

Some might be surprised to hear that 28% are killed in the late muzzleloader season so there is not a great deal of difference.

The % drops during the shotgun seasons but still was surprisingly higher then I would have thought.

As one might expect, he promised that the late antlerless season is not going away unless we take more deer beforehand.

There will be some changes made to encourage hunters to "get busy" in December but I mentioned that in my area many hunters chose to wait simply because they can use rifles.

The herd is on a slight downward trend and antlerless permits in my county are far from sold out. Lack of places to hunt and low deer numbers on lands where they are allowed to hunt no doubt affect that.

On the other side is large properties where no antlerless deer are taken at all, thus exacerbating the "problems" that our legislators hear about.

All I can say is pay attention to what you shoot and encourage others to do the same but if you hunt this time of year by driving deer there is going to be a number of shed bucks killed...just a fact of life I'm afraid...

 

[archery95]

Well DBLTREE....I think Mr. Litchfield gave you the smooth over treatment.At the end of the late ML season there was 820 shed bucks killed.I looked at 9pm Jan.10th.That total is "statewide".So figure an average if 9 or so per county for the 99 counties in Iowa.As of Jan.25th at 7am there had been 1761 shed bucks reported.Well over 50%.That is also for only approx. 20 counties that 941 shed bucks had been killed and there is still 7 days left of this season.I would be willing to guess that by the 31st the shed bucks killed in the late rifle season will be 2/3 of the total.That not even mentioning the 8000-10,000 button bucks shot.

 

[dbltree]

Well DBLTREE....I think Mr. Litchfield gave you the smooth over treatment.At the end of the late ML season there was 820 shed bucks killed.I looked at 9pm Jan.10th.That total is "statewide".So figure an average if 9 or so per county for the 99 counties in Iowa.As of Jan.25th at 7am there had been 1761 shed bucks reported.Well over 50%.That is also for only approx. 20 counties that 941 shed bucks had been killed and there is still 7 days left of this season.I would be willing to guess that by the 31st the shed bucks killed in the late rifle season will be 2/3 of the total.That not even mentioning the 8000-10,000 button bucks shot.

His figures are not for this year but a total of all previous years.

1760-860 = 900 so almost identical for both seasons... although a certain portion of those come from earlier seasons.

I've already said in previous posts I'm not a fan of the late antlerless season but it's not going away in the southern tier of counties regardless of any amount of griping and grumping about it.

Button buck kills start the day season opens and there is no way around that...hunters have to be aware of what they are harvesting but the bulk are not educated about the subject and I suspect probably could care less.

Life isn't perfect so we just have to deal with the cards were dealt i'm afraid...

Here's the totals and looking at them this year...Tom's figures are actually high!

Does bucks BB Shed B Total
68062 47373 15017 1776 132228

Anyway you look at it less then 2% of the deer harvested for the year were shed bucks...double it to account for those unreported and you end up with Tom's figures.

In several counties with no late antlerless season shed buck kills were nearly as high as those with the late season and all told the bucks killed on the highway most likely is a far greater source of mortality...