Originally posted by John Scifres:
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. 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
