I predicted harvest would be down this year due to the wet growing season and the bumper acorn crop. Nothing unusual. Especially coming off of a year like last year.
This doesn’t mean anything. If it starts trending down then there’s something to see.
If it were just a matter of it being a wet growing season and bumper acorn crop then wouldnt you expect to see that effecting things more evenly across the counties than what the map shows??.....
There’s 7 counties out of 67 that showed an increase. The others are about the same or decreased harvest. I’m not a statistician, but I’d call that a pretty consistent decrease statewide. If you look at the total harvest we were only about 10k down from last season, which some have speculated might be one of the highest harvests in years. I am of the opinion harvest was relatively average this year. I know a LOT of people had plenty of deer to shoot, but they didn’t move in day light. Getting other reports currently that some properties are now seeing as many as 3-4x the deer they had on camera in season. Why? Because acorns are scarce now, people quit feeding for the most part, and greenup hasn’t yet started for 90% of the state. It’s all directly related to food availability.
