GREAT OUTDOORS: Will gunners catch Ohio's deer archery harvest?

Since the deer archery season opened on Sept. 24, bow hunters have tagged 77,044 deer as of Tuesday. During the week-long general firearms season that opens Monday, hunters will quickly add an equal number to Ohio's annual harvest. The general firearms deer seasons run from Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 and Dec. 17-18. The late muzzle loader season goes from Jan. 7-10, 2023. Youth hunters checked in 9,515 deer during their special firearms season on Nov. 19-20. Many hunters will be easy to spot in their mandatory solid or camouflaged-patterned orange outerwear while stalking through fields or waiting in tree stands for deer to appear within range. Others of us will disappear while hiding in ground blinds, an alternative that keeps gaining in popularity. For many years, "gun season" traditionally has begun on the Monday following Thanksgiving Day. A later tweak was the addition of Sunday, once legalized. Then a bonus weekend was added to achieve harvest goals and offer additional days of opportunity afield once the herd could sustain it. Last season, 79,805 deer were taken during the week-long and bonus weekend seasons. Another 12,141 deer were tallied during the special January muzzle loader season. Youths tallied 7,634 during their separate weekend in November ahead of the adult firearms opener. The breakdown of which firearms were successfully used during firearms seasons included shotguns (19%), muzzle loaders (9%), pistols and rifles that shoot straight-walled cartridges (23%). There are traditionalist hunters who use simpler "string and stick" longbows. But as modern compound bows evolved to make it easier to draw and hold the string back until the shot, these vertical bows gained in popularity. Crossbows have the ability to be pre-cocked and utilize a scope, which helped countless new archers to join the ranks. While Ohio always treated them the same as other bows, some states ban(ned) them entirely, restrict(ed) them to separate seasons or only allow(ed) people with qualifying medical issues to use them. Crossbows are especially appreciated by would-be bow hunters who do not otherwise feel like they have time to spend countless hours of target practicing before being able to shoot accurately at game. On a recent TV hunting program, I saw a segment with a deer hunter using a two-shot crossbow. Sure enough, I quickly found a product review on TotalCrossbow.com, a web site that specializes in these tools. For a retail price of $2,222.22 the Excalibur TwinStrike comes with a pair of rails to make a follow-up shot or to shoot both bolts at the same time. Talk about a double-barreled "crossgun!" In some places, hunters are now using large caliber, high-powered air rifles to hunt deer and smaller game. It is hard to say where this will go in Ohio, but improvements in technology for all aspects of daily life often goes in unpredictable directions. As more hunters have become knowledgeable about the rutting habits of deer and the very generous archery season length, the bow and arrow harvest is challenging the numbers of deer killed by the use of all firearms combined. Last year, 196,988 deer were checked in by Ohio's hunters using all methods. Although close, gun hunters (100,779/51%) still killed more deer than archers (96,209/49%) last season. However, due to the long statewide archery season that will run until Feb. 5 and suburban communities finally coming to the realization that deer culls are the best way to reduce damage to property and reduce automobile collisions where the discharge of firearms is prohibited, more deer keep falling to archers. It will not be long until archers harvest more deer than gun hunters kill. In fact, it may happen this season with the head start that the archers have logged ahead of the primary gun seasons. Locally, the three-year average annual deer harvest from 2018-2020 in Erie (1,024) and Sandusky (954) counties was almost double Ottawa County's (536).