Ohio tinkers with deer hunting dates to soothe unhappy hunters -- Outdoor Notes

By D'Arcy Egan, The Plain Dealer 


CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio wildlife managers tinkered with the deer hunting season dates to try to soothe unhappy Buckeye hunters, but not much changed when the 2015-16 seasons were approved by the Ohio Wildlife Council on Wednesday night.
It's likely Ohio hunters will bag fewer bucks and does this year, in most part due to changes in the county bag limits and the extremely limited use of discount antlerless permits. The Ohio deer harvest declined 6.5 percent last year, when hunters killed 191,459 deer, and was far below the record 261,260 deer killed in 2009-10.
Hunters testifying at the Ohio Deer Summit and Ohio Division of Wildlife open houses were generally unhappy, complaining of a continually shrinking deer herd and fewer hunting opportunities. The Ohio Division of Wildlife management strategy, however, is to continue the decline in deer numbers in favor of a smaller, quality deer herd.
"Hunters always want to see a lot of deer in the woods, but there's a cost associated with that," said Dave Kohler, executive administrator for wildlife management and research with the ODOW. "With the Ohio deer population as high as it was five years ago, we had a combination of more deer on the landscape with less nutrition available."
Liberal hunting regulations had allowed the deer harvest to jump to record levels, resulting in a decline in the number of deer killed the last few years and today's smaller deer herd.
This year's deer gun season is Nov. 30-Dec. 6, with an extra couple of weekdays of gun hunting added Dec. 28-29. The archery deer season is Sept. 26-Feb. 7, the longest bow hunting season in the country.
The ODOW had proposed an October youth gun season, but backed off to Nov. 21-22 after complaints it was too early in the hunting year. The statewide muzzleloader rifle season was pushed back to Jan. 9-12 to allow more time between gun and muzzleloader hunts.
The majority of Ohio counties will have a season bag limit of just two deer. Most counties in northeast Ohio will have a three-deer limit. The only counties with bag limits of four deer will be in urban areas, including Cuyahoga and Summit counties. Hunters are allowed to bag only one buck each year.
Antlerless permits are valid in only 10 of Ohio's 88 counties this fall. That includes Cuyahoga, Lake, Summit, Portage, Stark and Lorain counties.
"The county bag limits and the use of antlerless permits are the tools we use to manage the deer herd," said Kohler. "The season dates, like the extra two-day gun hunt and the muzzleloader hunt, are social issues. We changed those dates in response to what works best for the people who hunt."