2017 Southern Deer Forecast
Photo By Ron Sinfelt
September 20, 2017
By Game & Fish Online Staff
No matter where you're hunting in the South, you can find the latest state analysis and where-to-go hotspots in our annual Deer Forecast.
Just choose your state from the list below.
The deer hunting forecast in Texas is always good. Even in what the whitetail prognosticators term as 'down ' or 'average ' years, we've still got the largest population estimate in the country. This year again has been one that may go down as average, but according to the Lone Star State's resident deer expert, that's still actually great. Alan Cain, the whitetail program leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, again said that the overall harvest last year was on par with previous average years, noting that the total number of deer taken again will be well above a....
Not since 1998 have Virginia deer hunters killed as few deer as they did last season. There are many factors that impact the harvest and hunter success rates, and Matt Knox, VDGIF's Deer Project Coordinator, shed light on the decline in the harvest. One factor is that in many areas of the state it is not necessarily desirable for hunters to kill more deer every year. Increasing harvest generally means the herd is increasing in number, but after a point either the habitat cannot support more deer, or deer-human interactions outside of hunting become a problem for farmers and people driving....
According to WVDNR Wildlife Biologist James Crum, one of the most important factors in deer management is evaluating the deer-to-habitat relationship — comparing deer numbers to available habitat to support those densities. Over the past 40 years, there have been declines in antler growth and the average weight of yearling bucks. The percentage of fawn breeding has dropped from 20 to 30 percent, to zero to 10 percent. Parasites have increased, and woodland plots protected behind fencing have indicated deer are over-browsing available....
Things are looking quite good these days for deer hunters in the Volunteer State. Not only are harvest numbers up and holding steady, but the quality of antlered bucks seems to be on the rise as well. And that is not even taking into consideration the pending new world record whitetail taken in Tennessee last season or what would have been a new state record deer had it not been for the world-record-class deer....
For several years recently we saw a decline in populations of many kinds of Oklahoma wildlife as drought persisted year after year, especially in the western parts of our state. As the drought persisted, many hunters and landowners were seeing far fewer deer than usual. Thank goodness, after a couple of years of more normal rainfall, we're seeing a rebound in several species. Last year's deer harvest was a marked improvement over the previous year's....
North Carolina hunters reported harvesting 149,811 deer last season, down 7.8 percent from the 2015-16 season harvest of 162,558. Hunters killed fewer deer in every district of the state, with declines ranging from a 1.2 percent drop in District 9 to 14.1 percent in District 5. Almost exactly half of the deer that hunters killed were bucks; about 6 percent were button bucks, and 43 percent were does. The age and sex percentages have remained the same for many....
Lightening may not strike the same place twice, but don't tell deer hunters in the South Carolina coastal plains that hurricanes abide by the same law of nature. Hunters have endured two straight seasons of major hurricane rains and flooding that have significantly disrupted deer seasons. Additional weather effects were felt over a wide area of the state both years, but certainly the coastal areas — where, traditionally, exceptional hunting occurs....
