2013 Deer Season Report (M2)

This 2013 deer season was a warm, windy and at times rainy. Opening weekend of the Southern Zone firearms deer season left some hunters scrambling to get their deer to venison processors and others scratching their heads and wondering where the whitetails were. With temperatures climbing into the fifties, many hunters, some of whom would typically butcher their own deer, chose to take their deer to meat cutters. While the bow season was warmer and had worse weather that caused the total deer harvest go down by nine percent.  This deer season had many mixed reports coming in from the hunters. Some hunters got their usual number of deer and some also shot some big bucks, while most of the hunters struggled with warm temperatures. These warm temperatures slowed deer movement down to where hunters only seen four, five, and six pointers with a lot of does because all of the bigger bucks and most of the other deer kept their movement to at night only. The only positive that hunters said about the warm weather was that they were able to sit in the stand for a longer period of time. Which was an advantage for some hunters because they seen more deer than other hunters. These comments were made by hunters in the southern zone. Even though the numbers were down in the southern zone the rest of the state was having a record season. Because of this next year you will probably see more and more permits being sold. Even though I do not think that the deer population is as high as the DEC officials think it is. I also think that there should be a new law to manage the size of the bucks that people are allowed to kill so then we can have an opportunity to see and kill bigger bucks.