That other thread got a little goofy so I thought maybe we'd try again and maybe (haha) stay on topic

I like to look at trends and anomalies. A couple things I noticed:

From 2008-2012, the second day of gun season averaged 11,425 deer killed. The low was 8,159 and the high was 13,746. In 2013, the harvest for that day was 3,361; 8,064 below average. The total decrease in deer harvest from 2012 was 10,613.

From 2005 through 2013 (a relatively flat time in relation to historical harvest), in order, we have had 3 years below the trendline, 3 years above the trendline, 1 slightly below, one way above (2012) and one way below (2013).

If you do a rolling 5 year average (this smooths out annual variation), 2013 was -4%. The trendline for the rolling 5 year average is downward.

My impressions are that 2013 was a relatively normal year. As expected, harvest was down but nowhere near as bad as some would judge from anecdotal evidence. We have not fallen off a cliff and alarmism is counterproductive. I get it from a political tool viewpoint but politics generally pisses me off.

Day two was a washout which accounts for the big decrease.

Things are looking UP for us deer hunters in Rush County!!!! Even with the total statewide harvest down by 8%, we killed 12 more deer than last year!!!! A grand total of 351 Deer!!! :rolleyes: Maybe all those years of me passing doe, after doe, just so the neighbors can kill them is finally paying off!!!! :roll eyes: You asked John!!!

Dang Yaz.....I see last year Rush was a 1 bonus county! Does that mean you are close to the levels they want.... ? Hope things change for ya

A washout? Bad weather? Or?

The deer decline is most likely the results of several factors......, weather during the gun season, EHD, increased yote population, loss of habitat and bundle licenses just to name a few.

I know a couple guys who bought the bundle license because it made their buck tag good for any weapon. Normally they would only buy 2 tags and kill 2 deer but killed 3 with the bundle tags. h.h.

SO, you DO see my point!!! Why in the world do we have a "bonus" tag with only averaging 350 deer a year???

Second day was not a washout from weather, I hunted with my grandson in shirt sleeves! There is no way that weather affected the general gun season.

EHD is becoming more of a problem, and IDNR has been slow to react to the losses. To say the local herds will recover quickly......depends on how hard a local was hit. Some male deer will disperse into a given area but does do not move the spend their lives in a family group, most on less than 300 acres.

Increased coyotes, good excuse but, studies show deer hair in the scat, now was the fawn alive or dead from something else when it was found by coyote! All we are certain is coyotes will eat deer.

Loss of habitat? What happened to the deer that were there? They had to go somewhere.

Bundle license, now that is a solid reason for fewer deer. Guy buys it so he can buck hunt all seasons, normally kills 2 deer but killed 3 becausse he had a tag in his pocket. Is it just me or do people not see that we have a DNR that has taught over the years that whitetails are pests and we need to just fill all tags available?

Deer hunting is the cash cow for IDNR, they aint going to let up and most hunters are there for the thrill of killing something. Take a couple of generations for the "thrill of the kill" to change.

Nasty storms the second day of gun season. I was awoken by my brother screaming that the E-Z Up blew into the tent and hit his knee. We had to chase the thing up in the woods. We didn't hunt that morning

Yaz, Rush County has been very stable the past 5 years. Trends are very flat.

Yep. Definitely a washout for lots of hunters over much of the state, especially the south half. It may have been relatively warm, but the high winds and heavy rain kept thousands of hunters out of the deer woods on Sunday, November 17.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/

See monthly reports for weather station nearby and archived reports for November 2013.

Couldnt tell ya how opening gun weekend was. I didnt hunt it at all.....I was on vacation waiting for the Park hunts that Mon/Tue...I do remember wind/cold on that Monday when I killed that State Park buck....Its been several years since Ive gun hunted opening day gun anyways.... with Porter Co. being down 129 deer, one of those I told ya so moments.... I sure hope they start backing of the AL tags/late season gun antlerless and they need to reduce the urban season or move the boundry instead of the whole **** county being urban....stupid is as stupid does when it come to our DNR it seems....

I've purchased the bundle license since it became available. I've taken exactly one deer since.

I purchased everything I can.. just figured the coin went to a good cause..

I've bought the bundle last two years. Killed a buck each year and let the does walk. Populations back up in my area. Does may not be safe this fall. Lol

I think all the factors mentioned play some what of a role into the perceived/real decline in numbers for some areas.

I also believe the #1 reason for high harvests through the midwest the last several years and in turn some of the down numbers in areas is the preaching of kill the does.

Every tv show for the last 10 years has pushed that qdma agenda. From: it improves habitat to increases rutting behaviors in bucks and a host of other reasons why shooting does is so great.

There used to be a negative stigma with shooting does now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. The new generation of hunters views does as pest that need to be irraticated. We need to meet in the middle somewhere. JMO

Cody nailed it!!

Can't turn on a deer hunting show on the outdoorsman channel without hearing this message!

Ahh, but..... people "cherry pick" the QDMA message. Kill all the antlerless you can.... blame it if you like but explain the basket rack bucks being killed? Yep they are 2 1/2 year old for the most part, but yet to "mature".

Who measures the available habitat to deer density? It is ....Deer........BANG!!! Can't let it walk the neighbor will kill it.

Come on......... Let's put the responsibility where it needs to be.......... The person pulling the trigger!

Best post in the thread.....


A qoute from harvest report.....

The age and sex structure of the 2013 deer harvest was 37% adult males (antlered bucks), 37% adult females, 11% male fawns (button bucks), and 15% female fawns (Table 5). The proportion of reported antlered deer in the harvest is the second lowest in Indiana’s history. About 39% of the antlered bucks and 35% of the adult does harvested during 2013 were yearlings (1.5 years old) (Figure 9). The percentage of harvested yearling bucks decreased by 2 percentage points in 2013 from 2012.

I'd agree, what was day one of the shotgun season numbers over the years compared to 2013 ?

I saw normal amounts of deer in all but one county. But that county/farm had over 300 acres of standing corn until day before gun season. Then all the deer that aint dead after opening weekend of gun are totally nocturnal

25,786 deer were killed on opening day of gun in 2012. 20,690 were killed on opening day in 2013, a 20% decrease. Antlered were down about 600 (5%) but antlerless were down 4,500 (30%).

you guys try to think wayyyyy too hard about this. numbers are down bc population is down. cant kill whats not there. population is down bc of our liberal a** regs. ya we haven't fallen off a cliff but we aren't getting closer and closer..whats funny and even more sad is that most of the people on here wont wake up until we hit the bottom. definitely not the brightest bunch of guys in the woods that's for sure. not all but majority

Parke is on to something......... You can't kill what isn't there and when antlerless is down by 30% on opening day of gun season there just might be less deer. No one can convince me that it was just gun hunters holding out for a buck.

"You cant kill what isnt there"....****, Ive been saying that on this site for two years or more. Glad some have finally caught up ..

No doubt numbers are down in some areas. All I said was the reason the second day was 8,000 below average was the weather and I don't think anyone can dispute that fact.

I was surprised by the harvest in my county we were first in the state and set an unofficial county record. The number of shots on opening morning seemed down where I was but we also have property on the other end of the county and the numbers there seem normal.

I aplaud and smile at those here who are managing their local deer herd. Boots on the ground know more than statistic of a deer season. Noted biologist Mickey weeks from Purdue told DNR at a public meeting years ago "Deer kill numbers only reflect what was in front of the hunter when he chose to pull the trigger. The numbers are only relevant to dead deer reported".

I will continue to read as people post on why the numbers are down, but it still comes back to the person behind the trigger or string. EHD is here to stay and people are going to learn to deal with it. Coyotes are here to stay, you can't control weather........... what you can control is human impact, starting with the person in the mirror.

Because you bought a license does not mean you have to fill it! Sort of like buying a ticket to the state fair, have to stay until the fair closes for the day........gotta get a return for dollars spent.

Disregarding statistics is just as foolish as relying on them solely. The best and largest body of data we have is harvest statistics. Public policy is data driven.

The disparity between harvest stats and population level is the inherent weakness in our management scheme. Until we can find a better way, that is what we have to deal with.

You cannot expect DNR or other policy makers to rely on anecdotal evidence to determine public policy for the entire state. And to expect the average hunter to put the kind of effort into understanding the back story to public policy related to deer management is unrealistic. She/He is simply going to hunt.

The DNR wants the herd reduced and the harvest numbers were expected to be down....and they were....Big surprise.....

That fact would seem to beg the next few questions....

Will the harvest numbers be down again next year or will the numbers rise or level off?
Will the buck harvest remain more or less level as it has the last two seasons or will it rise or fall?
Will the DNR lower bonus antler less permits in counties that showed lower harvests?
Will the DNR factor in EHD from last year and the harsh Winter we've had in deciding bonus antler less permit numbers for this upcoming season?
Will the number of counties participating in this upcoming season's late antler less season be lower, higher or about the same?

Finally, in the end if you aren't seeing the number of deer you wish to, I'd say it's time to pass on shooting deer.

Hey John, I agree with a lot of the things you say but tend to differ on the point: "Public policy is data driven." IMO policy is money driven and legislation driven. Making policy w/ just data would be too easy.

Joe has this one right.. just because you have a tag to pull the trigger doesn't mean you should!
I don't depend on the guberment to manage anything.. the buck stops with you! ( or lives another year).

Time for turkeys anyway..

Bean,

Certainly. I agree data is not the only driver but it is very difficult to get policy made without it.

Looking closely at the numbers there were less hunters in 2013 than in 2012. Less hunters will equal to less deer taken. Then if you add in that the younger hunters are coming in with less experience than ever before, we are lucky to get the numbers that we have.
I don't understand how someone can figure that less deer killed means less deer out there to hunt??
In my hunting area I saw more deer & let more deer pass than ever before. Also I took the largest & most deer than I ever had before. So I can not say the deer numbers are down, it is just less quality hunters to take the deer that are out there.
If you crunch the numbers in 2012 we took .682 deer per hunter compare that to .659 deer per hunter in 2013, that is down only .023 deer per hunter. That is not enough to worry about in anyone's book.

The public input aspect of all of this is that without input from observations of hunters from the field, in regard to deer numbers or "inventory", then policy and rule revision will often times only happen after a critical point has been surpassed. Because hunters will generally shoot whatever is in front of them, and since there is no good way to really count the number of deer in Indiana, it is very possible that we could arrive at a year when the harvest crashes dramatically. Individual experience is generally unimportant but a collective experience in regard to deer sightings is very important. Harvest numbers merely reflect that which was available and removed from inventory but has little meaning as to what specifically continues to remain in the inventory. Generally speaking, it seems there is little doubt about the apparent loss of deer or inventory in the field regardless of what the harvest numbers indicate. While illogical, it is possible that there could be only 150,000 deer in inventory before a season and there be 125,000 killed or removed from inventory that year. The difficulty about the discussion is harvest totals while important don't have a direct correlation to remaining inventory. Deer management, being in essence a science, has no right, wrong or absolute mathematical equation.

posey...u haven't had much schoolin have ya? funny how u choose to look in only your back yard when it comes to the state wide numbers. I know it seems weird but we are actually talking about the state NOT where YOU hunt. der da der. you're def one of the bright ones

our herd cannot compete with our regs. numbers will continue to drop. it is way too easy to slaughter em and unfortunately theres a lotta guys like posey who hunt. its creepin up on us and sooner than later going to explode and when it does guys like posey will still not get it..lol funny and sad at same time

If you rely on regs to manage any resource you have already given up!. Wildlife managent starts when you shoulder your gun ( or crossbow)

In the end the hunter pulls the trigger

Can't say it better GunDude........

When YOU put the "booger hook on the bang button" YOU have made a management decision.

Everytime YOU add to the deer harvest YOU are contributing to the "STATE WIDE" harvest figures.


I can/could kill a deer every day I hunt in Switzerland county, I am a lifetime license holder, it would not cost me an additional cent. But I see what is happening and I am willing to "conserve my resources" for the future.

For those with plenty of deer and no need to restrain..... your time will come.