Might be where you hunt, but it's not in the southwest blackbelt. Years of unlimited doe harvest, state working off of bad numbers from a really bad reporting system with virtually zero enforcement, years of GW under-staffing and thus lax enforcement, covid putting huge numbers of people in the woods, and high inflation have not done the state's deer herd any favors. The sky is not falling and corn is not the root of all evil ( I wish they never legalized it and enforced the hell out of the old zero tolerance baiting policy but they didnt and that horse is long gone and out of the barn). Here's the truth of the matter: Harvest numbers are in all probability, just returning to what they historically were before Covid, now that everyone is being forced to go back to work and arent working from home all week, every week. From the 40 page AF&G annual deer report: Deer killed in 2017-18: 212,000 Deer killed in 2018-19: 203,000 Deer killed in 2019-20: 218,000 Deer killed in 2020-21: 272,000 Deer killed in 2021-22 301,000 Deer killed in 2022-23: 308,000

The 2022-2023 season was really when the last of the COVID work from home holiday ended. You'll see the 23-24 numbers drop by probably 30% as a result of the end of Covid and most big companies requiring their employees to actually work at the office. Man days hunted this year will be substantially less than in the previous 3 years. Harvest is probably up just a shade from the pre-covid years because legalized corn has made it easier to just shoot one out your back door. Half the state was hunting over corn anyway but now they dont have to hide it and can use piles visible from satellite. The other reason for the coming drop in 23-24 is the fact that the harvest jumped up so much from the historical harvest numbers during the covid seasons. Harvest had remained and was pretty much stabilized at around 210,000 animals per year and the herd was pretty much stabilized to that level of harvest. Whenever you shoot a herd as hard as it was shot up from 2020 to 2023, and take out 25-30% more animals three years in a row, there simply are not as many deer available to kill in the 2023-2024 season. That's your drop and it's a combination of factors, #1 Covid, #2 inflation, and lastly and playing a minor part is corn making it easier to see and kill deer. I'd expect the deer harvest this year (adjusted up for Corn and inflation and down for most of the work from home ending, bumper acorn crop, and excessive harvest during covid years) to probably be around 200,000 to 215,000 animals for this year. It's just a SWAG but it'll probably be pretty close.

Last edited by abolt300; 01/18/24 01:30 PM.