Ohio Reports Big Deer Harvest Numbers This Gun Season
Posted 2025-01-06 by
Total of deer taken during the early December gun week is the most since 2011
The harvest during this year’s Ohio gun season was the highest since 2011. (Photo by Tom Reichner)
Ohio hunters checked in 87,192 deer between the December 2 opening day of gun season and the December 8 closing day.
According to The Columbus Dispatch , this is the highest harvest number since 90,282 deer were taken during gun week in 2011. Hunters took 17,089 (24%) more deer than last year’s total of 70,103.
The previous three gun-week totals averaged 70,806.
According to Clint McCoy, deer specialist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife, 83 of Ohio’s 88 counties showed an increase of at least 10% from the three-year average of gun-week results. The one exception was Franklin County, which was 20 short of the 170 three-year averages.
The other central Ohio counties boasted big numbers with 712 more whitetails than the seven combined counties averaged during the previous three years. Licking led with 1,860 and Fairfield followed with 900. Delaware had 495 whitetail checked, Union 472, Pickaway 458 and Madison 255.
Why the increase in numbers? According to the experts, there are many factors contributing to the swell in numbers of deer harvested.
Pickaway and Madison in Central Ohio were upgraded from two-deer counties in 2023-24 to three-deer counties this season.
In the rest of Ohio, four counties – Fayette, Greene, Clinton and Butler – changed from a two-deer to three-deer limit.
The overall state-wide deer take reached 189,970 by Tuesday, December 10, which is 20,000 more than the 169,885 checked at about the same point of the season a year ago. The current number surpasses the entire season's totals from 2013 through 2019.
The Dec. 21-22 gun week and a January 4-7 muzzleloader season will likely add tens of thousands of whitetails to the 2024-25 count. The combined totals for those hunts numbered 28,181 last season.
Archery hunters will continue adding to the statewide total through the season’s last day, Feb. 2.
Ohio’s deer kill is on the path to not only to surpass last season’s count of 213,928 but it could reach numbers not seen in more than a decade.
Deer permit sales have not increased with the number of deer harvested. In 2009, when the division liberalized regulations to shrink the deer herd due to crop loss, hunters purchased 624,909 permits. Sales fell to 393,367 in 2019.
This year’s permit sales totaled around 404,331 through Dec. 8, slightly below the six-year average.
