Less Deer or Tough Hunting?

[Crimson Arrows]

So, I got another call last night from a buddy of mine, a great bowhunter, who said he hasn't seen the number of deer this year that he usually has. Another two weeks ago another friend I hunt with said it has been his worst season to date. I saw average amounts of deer,harvested 3 does, saw two 150+, but overall not a great year in terms of NUMBERS and I put in my average 100+ hrs in the tree. What are your opinions on the state of our deer herd? Tough year for hunting and movement? Corn? Disease? Too many tags Etc. I am interested to know what everybody thinks as Iowa is ..or should be..as good as it gets! If anybody had a GREAT year for #'s that would be good to know also.Thanks.

 

[BOWSTRING]

I definately have seen less deer. Also my worst bow season ever. I think it's more due to all the corn that was up in my area. Atleast that's what I'm hoping. We'll see next weekend when we start shotgun season. Should give a better idea of what's running around.

 

[dbltree]

I did the bowhunter survey and my numbers were about the same as they have been for the past 5-6 years at least.

Same number of deer, number of bucks, number of mature bucks but...I live in a high deer density area.

The policy has been to lower deer numbers in most of the east and southern counties and in some areas that policy has been successful.

Hunter have perhaps been a little "spoiled" and grown used to high deer numbers. This has also been the subject of much debate here on IW as hunters wonder if they really want to go back to 1990 deer levels.

Landowners have some choice in how many deer they are comfortable with and how many antlerless they wish to take.

Farmers however who do not have their land leased are going to encourage a reduction of deer numbers. Hopefully that will also improve the buck to doe ratio and the quality of mature bucks.

I would also and that the late harvest and warm weather affected deer movements in my area... /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif