Bowhunting cuts into deer gun week totals

Deer gun week remains the hottest ticket of Ohio’s hunting year, although the statewide hunt’s seven-day run doesn’t generate quite the sizzle of yesteryear.

The fraction of the total annual deer kill that takes place during gun week has dropped to around 35 percent. Historically it was far higher.

Baby Boomers, in their younger configuration, hunted during an era when about 90 percent of the deer checked in Ohio were taken in during gun season. Those were Wild West days when a few farmers – wary of hung-over hordes of suburban rustlers, mythical or not – painted “cow” on livestock and sought protection for the family dog with a vest of hunter orange and a prayer.

While the cow story might be apocryphal, at least one dog of earlier times in Meigs County wore an orange wrap as it sniffed and wagged about the property it called home. That the dog’s owners believed in the protective power of prayer is in fact, merely an assumption.

A year ago hunters in the state, hard facts show, checked 63,567 deer during gun week after having already taken 81,674 whitetails in the week leading up to gun week.

Not all of those 81,000-plus deer were killed with longbow and crossbow arrows. A total of 6,234 fell during the youth gun weekend.

This year’s two-day youth hunt, which ended last Sunday, accounted for 5,795 whitetails, slightly below the three-year average. As for the deer count entering gun week 2020, the number stood at 81,056 through Tuesday.

The evolving popularity of crossbows helped transform deer hunting from a gun-centric sport in Ohio. And so did the spread of deer into every county of the state.

The expansion of whitetail range has allowed hunters to do their thing close to home whenever time permits instead of having to wait for gun season and the annual opportunity to descend on deer stronghold counties in southern, eastern and southeastern Ohio.

When tallied and put into context, having so many deer taken before gun week does leave today’s gun hunters with tens of thousands fewer deer to chase than were still standing during the days when archery hunting didn’t have much of an impact.

Yet, aspects of gun week’s industrial scope mixed with the alchemy of tradition holds yet a strong appeal, keeping the gun hunt the most productive week of the deer-hunting season that begins in late September and extends through early February.

Weather, especially when it moves toward extremes, tends to play prominently in hunter success. Hunters can handle cool temperatures and even welcome a little snow on the ground, but wind and rain generally depress the take — the higher the wind and heavier the rain the deeper the depression.

“If the weather cooperates I’m looking for a great deer gun season in Ohio,” said Mike Tonkovich, deer specialist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

The forecast calls for rain and snow early in the week along with cool-tocold temperatures.

Hunters with unfilled tags and landowners with no tags to fill get another shot at gun hunting during the statewide bonus gun weekend of Dec. 19-20. A year ago hunters checked 13,703 whitetails during the bonus hunt.

Sunday is the final day that discounted deer management permits may be used in counties where they have been legal. The counties include Franklin, Licking and Knox.

A reminder: Only one antlerless deer may be taken from all public hunting areas during the hunting year. Beginning Dec. 7 only antlered deer may be taken from specified public hunting areas in Ohio.