The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says hunters checked 175,745 deer during all 2014-2015 hunting seasons.
The number of deer checked was down from more than 191,000 the previous season.
The state says the decreased number of deer reflects the effectiveness of deer management efforts. Bag limits were reduced in 46 counties prior to the 2014-2015 deer hunting season. Antlerless permits were eliminated in 29 counties.
Deer population goals will be revised this summer through a random survey of hunters and farmers.
The Ohio county that reported the most checked deer during the 2014-2015 seasons was Coshocton with more than 5,700.
15,255 fewer deer than the 2013-2014 deer season.
Combine the reduced harvest with coyote predation,and outbreaks of EHD in 2012 and 2013,and Ohio's deer herd is in far worse shape than ODNR claims.
Ohio's deer harvest has been dropping since the 2009-2010 season. Granted,deer were overpopulated in many parts of the state,but ODNR's efforts to reduce the size of the deer herd have more than succeeded,the herd has been reduced too much. Years of too many doe tags,the urban zones,where doe tags were valid all season,not just until the day before gun season,years of depredation permits being given to farmers,the 2012-13 EHD outbreaks,and increased fawn predation due to the exploding coyote population.
Unless ODNR stops the excessive doe harvest,and does a whole lot more to encourage hunters to reduce coyote numbers-deer hunting in Ohio is going to be like it was in the 70's,when you could hunt the entire week of gun season, not see a deer,and hear very few shots fired at deer.
Many hunters also claim the electronic deer check,which can be done online,or by phone,even with a smartphone-has lead to more poaching.
I don't believe that to be the case,data from a whole lot of other states that use the same procedures has shown no increase in poaching.
Poachers are going to poach deer no matter what the check-in procedure is,and ethical hunters-which is most of us- are going to check their deer in no matter what the procedure is.
What needs to happen is coyotes need to be aggressively hunted-the fewer coyotes there are-the more fawns that survive. Areas with high coyote populations have lower deer populations due to fawn predation,and the fact that eastern coyotes hunt in packs because they have a substantial amount of wolf DNA due to their interbreeding with wolves,which has been going on since at least the 1930's,and was first documented in Canadian coyote populations in Algonquin Provincial Park in northen Ontario.
The coyotes we have in Ohio came here from Canada by traveling along the Appalachian mountains-then moving east,and from the UP of Michigan,along with Minnesota-then moving to the east. Both populations interbred with gray wolves along their way here.
So, we now have a coyote population that hunts in packs, and is capable of taking down adult deer,in Michigan,a small pack of 'yotes took down a horse.
Hunt these deer killing machines-while they rarely prey on adult deer,and their normal diet is smaller animals like rodents-squirrels,chipmunks,mice,rabbits,etc. - when there's a shortage of smaller animals-they will kill adult deer. In the spring,many coyote packs subsist mainly on deer fawns.
Studies have shown that fawn predation can be as high as 70% in areas with high 'yote populations.
Anyone who wants to see Ohio's deer herd recover needs to get out and start hunting 'yotes,from now,until the last fawns are dropped in late May/early June. Every 'yote killed is one more fawn that has a 90% better chance of growing up.Every 'yote not killed is a few more fawns that become coyote food.
Fur prices are stable,and up from last year,so coyote hunting will pay for itself.
Fewer coyotes = more deer.
No comments:
Post a Comment