2006 deer/bear harvests were mediocre

Hunters, especially deer, bear and turkey hunters, are often mesmerized by numbers – specifically, the harvest numbers of deer, bear or turkeys taken, from areas they hunt as well as those from areas they'd like to hunt. The same could probably be said of elk hunters out West. So, for all you hunters' edification, here's a bunch of harvest figures from last year's deer and bear seasons. Unfortunately, the DEC doesn't have the final 2006 turkey harvest figures available, but it advised me that those figures, along with the winter flock survey, survival/banding study, spring harvest, summer productivity and fall harvest, will be available later this month

During the 2006-07 deer hunting seasons, New York hunters harvested slightly more than 189,100 deer, including approximately 96,600 bucks and 92,500 antlerless deer. After three years of declining deer takes, results from this past season represent a slight increase from the 2005 deer harvest. The DEC said the slight increase was expected following management actions in 2004 and 2005 intended to rebuild and stabilize the deer population in many areas of the state, since many Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) were below desired levels.

Western and West-Central New York continues to lead the state in total deer harvest densities, with the top five counties being: Yates County (10.4 total deer per sq.miile), Genesee County (9.4 total deer/mi), Tompkins County (8.5 total deer/mi), Ontario County (8.3 total deer/mi), and Tioga County (8.1 total deer/mi). In comparison, Chenango County deer harvest density last fall was 3.0 total deer per sq. mile, or nearly a third less than the top counties.

In 2006, muzzleloader hunting once again gained in popularity with over 220,000 hunters holding muzzleloading licenses and a total take of more than 15,700 deer, 67 percent of which were antlerless. This is the highest muzzleloading take on record. One reason the harvest was so large probably was due to fewer DMPs being issued. So more hunters used the muzzleloader season to take an antlerless deer. New York's 200,000 archers also faired well in 2006, with a take of almost 29,500 deer. Bowhunters continued to show a strong preference for taking bucks, which comprised 65 percent of their harvest, while passing up does. The top five counties in New York for buck harvest density were: Allegany County (4.2 bucks/mile), Yates County (3.9 bucks/mi), Tompkins County (3.6 bucks/mi), Wyoming County (3.6 bucks/mi), and Orange County (3.6 bucks/mi). Chenango County's buck/mile density rate was 3.0, up 0.4 from the 2005 season. Despite testing over 7,900 deer, including 1,800 deer from the CWD Containment Area in Oneida and Herkimer counties in 2006, no new cases were detected.