Whitetail deer?

[jarhead]

Illinois deer season this year is very poor this year, anyone else noticing a decline in the deer population? We kinda depend on deer meat for our food and my father and I have been hunting hard and not seen anything. Been suddenly seeing BOBCATS, can't shoot them in Illinois, wonder if they have anything to do with the decline.?

[pete lynch]

still plenty of whitetail in our area. We are actually trying to reduce the herd on Delmarva. They have exploded in population over the last decade.

[hunter63]

We just finished our last week.
Saw a few, but our area has been down as we are 5 miles from the "eradication" zone.....trying to kill off a lot of deer because of chronic wasting disease.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
Don't ask my opinion on that.

Any way, neighbors did fine got several.

I didn't work at it too hard this year.......so I gonna use my Visa card at the locker plant....LOL

[DSJohnson]

Farm Doe 29Nov13.jpg Third one in two day off my 50 acres. We have a rapidly expanding deer herd here in Oklahoma.

[Canuckette]

Our Whitetails are suffering here in East Quebec. They look thin and are looking for food closer to populated areas.

[jarhead]

We only get 7 days with shotgun. Today is day 5, awoke to fresh 9" snow, found 2 different sets of tracks, trailed & stalked, no luck, I reckon I gotta get in line with Hunter at the meat shop.

[pete lynch]

Wasting disease is nowhere as bad this year as last. I found, at seperate ponds last year, two floating dead in the water.

[hunter63]

So here is the secret method........
Go get your self a "Deer Crossing" sign....a real one....and put it up by your road, pull up a chair and wait......Has to work.

[LowKey]

Ha, yah, no kidding there hunter.

I was hoping to go out tomorrow but it's icing up out there pretty good and the snow is starting to fall.This week and next for shotgun. The next two weeks after that are black powder.

I have only seen does chowing down on short grass on the highway medians (some pretty large stretches of wide woods between highway lanes.) Actually quite a few. Saw a really nice herd in someone's front yard in one of the nearer suburbs of Boston. Really big fat healthy things, eating the shrubbery there. Serves those anti-hunting liberals right in that particular city to have their landscapes mowed by the increasing deer herds. Haven't seen anything in places where you could actually legally fire a weapon.

[hunter63]

Ain't that the truth.....protect all the wild animals ...until the deer eat your landscaping, the geese crap in your pools and patio's, the raccoons break into your attic......Yeah, things as they should be.....LOL

[Old Professor]

Our deer herd was hit hard by the late spring snow storms this year! Especially the fawns and yearlings. They were in poor shape all summer in spite of a bumper crop of apples and other natural foods. Same with the bears this year. Nearly no body fat! I register bear kills for the DNR and I have never seen such skinny bears! Out of thirteen that I registered this year, only one was over two hundred pounds dressed.
We managed to be successful on deer between my SIL, my GD and myself. My 10 year old GD killed her first deer, a nice doe. I killed one and my SIL killed four, so far. We have deer Management Assistance Permits from the farmer on whose land we hunt. As the season progressed, we saw more and more deer, rather than fewer deer. The reason was a failed sugar beet crop that was planted too late and by freeze up were smaller than carrots and not worth harvesting. The deer sure loved them! Late in the day they hit the beet fields hard. The farmer also planted soy beans on another farm and the locals were complaining that all the deer, bucks in particular, were concentrated in the soy bean fields. Find the current food source /find the deer. Bucks were very elusive for us this year.

[NVRDONE]

Shotgun season starts this Monday, Muzzleloader the following Monday, and goes till Jan 31st here in NJ. We dont have a rifle season. The bow hunters in my club have done really good this year. One guy who hunts a swamp has taken 5 already, all nice sized. Bow started Sept. 14th.

[xjosh40x]

In Mississippi our bow season starts October 1 and rifle start in mid November through early Janurary. Followed by bow the rest if Janurary. Our limits and restrictions are very relaxed compared to most states yet we still have excellent deer herd. The state actually issues special spring and summer deer permits to farmers to save their crops from the hundreds of deer that destroy soy bean and corn crop.

[pete lynch]

No rifle season in Delaware either; too flat the DNR says. But you can hunt squirrel with a 22 rifle. Go figure the logic of that.
I would think northern NJ with it's hilly/mountainous terrain would be safe for rifle hunting.

[NVRDONE]

No rifle season in Delaware either; too flat the DNR says. But you can hunt squirrel with a 22 rifle. Go figure the logic of that.
I would think northern NJ with it's hilly/mountainous terrain would be safe for rifle hunting.

It probably is. But this is such a anti-gun, anti-hunting state it would be hard to convince people otherwise. Here's a couple shockers, we have been allowed to hunt with crossbows for maybe 3 or 4 years now. And just this year the DFW let us use air rifles for small game (e.g. rabbit and squirrel), for the longest it was shotguns only.