Deer Numbers Are Down

In Williams County, the open­ing day of the one-week white tail deer-gun sea­son got off to a rather slow start. Wildlife offi­cers say only 286 deer were har­vested in Williams County… almost 16 per­cent less than the 340 deer killed on open­ing day last year. Wildlife offi­cers say it’s part of a down­ward trend they have been watch­ing for the past decade or so. Part of the rea­son is that the num­ber of hunters is also down sub­stan­tially.

Fig­ures in so far show that the deer har­vest in the five-county north­west Ohio region this year is down about 6.6 per­cent from last year, with Williams County show­ing the sharpest decline.

Defi­ance County was the only county in the area to show an increase this year, with 280 deer har­vested com­pared to 269 last year.

Across the state, the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources says so far, there has 22 per­cent less deer shot this year. They say there were 17,512 shot on Mon­day, com­pared to 22,619 last year on open­ing day.