“We would go three or four days without seeing a single deer. I’ve seen numbers go up and down before, but not like this. They just weren’t there,” says Hicks, a 40-year-old heating and air conditioning mechanic from Goochland, Virginia. “We would go three or four days without seeing a single deer. I’ve seen numbers go up and down before, but not like this. They just weren’t there,” says Hicks, a 40-year-old heating and air conditioning mechanic from Goochland, Virginia. “We normally kill 30 to 40 deer, but we only killed eight this year. I didn’t shoot a buck all season.”
He’s not alone. Hunters throughout whitetail country are experiencing the same thing: hours in a stand with little to show for their efforts. Like Hicks, many spent days in the woods without seeing a single deer.
Get used to it. Lower deer numbers are likely the new normal.
South Carolina’s deer population has been trending downward for nearly 20 years, dropping from 1.2 million animals in 1996 to 800,000. The decline is even more dramatic in Iowa, where 550,000 deer roamed the state in 2006. It’s close to half that now. Ohio’s deer kill was also down to the lowest level in 14 years. Other states like Michigan, West Virginia, Minnesota, Kansas, and Missouri are experiencing similar declines.
Hicks is no biologist, but he has a pretty good idea what’s going on where he hunts.
“We are just killing too many deer,” he says.
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Love how Hicks in the write up says we used to kill 30 to 40 deer now only 8.....then state the problem is "We are killing too many deer".....
Pretty good read once you get by that and they bring up some valid points about predidation and it's impact.
