The News Outside

I have been hearing a lot of talk lately about concentrated areas of high numbers of deer deaths this year.  It seems that the midwest wide EHD epidemic isn’t near as bad as last year, but these certain areas where people are finding dozens to even hundreds of deer has the DNR concerned and some are saying its not EHD.  Has anyone heard anything about this?

Haven’t heard anything Matt.  Where did they find hundreds? Were they all in the same area?

Who at the DNR is concerned?  Just read an article by Dale Bowman ( I’m sure it will be posted on “The News Outside” above -
He interviewed Paul Shelton, I certainly did not get the impression that Paul is concerned about it.  He is expecting a great shotgun
season to bring kill numbers up and seams to indicate the low archery totals is more weather related.

Excerpts From the article Paul Shelton

He pointed out that by age structure and sex ratio, Illinois’ deer herd has not been slipping.

‘‘Opportunities are there,’’ he said.

He said for those who manage their herd to provide a framework, ‘‘a byproduct will be you are producing some very nice deer.’’

Size of harvest will be an eternal concern, too. Shelton expects harvest for all forms of hunting to be near the 180,000-182,000 it has been the last three years.

‘‘That is perfectly adequate,’’ he said.

He expects harvest during the two firearm seasons to be in the 95,000-100,000 range it has been the last several years.

Every week so far, harvest by bowhunters has lagged behind last year. I asked Shelton if he was concerned.

‘‘By the time we hit gun season, we should be flush, depending on how heavily the rain comes [over the weekend],’’ he said. ‘‘Rain during rut never helps.’’

The biggest “kill zone” I have heard about is just NorthEast of Peoria.

I’m in Woodford and have heard the same about the kill off.  There just seems to be very few deer around, much less older bucks and
older does around me.

I heard a rumor that it may have something to do with a new hybrid corn.  Please note, I said rumor.  I spoke with one farmer in Peoria County who found some dead deer in his corn field and said every site looked very strange.  Every weed and blade of grass was blackened in the area surrounding the dead deer.  He said it looked like the area was poisoned.  Has anyone else heard this rumor?

You may be on to something John.

Don’t know what it is matt but the Illinois deer herd is in trouble. Freakin sad we had kick-ass deer #s and now a lot are struggling to put 1 deer in the freezer. I have a bad feeling boyz and I think the worst is yet to come…....

on my farm , knox and fulton county line , were seeing a lot less deer this yr , on my largest food plot , normally we see maby 25-30 deer in the evening but now maby 8 or so !

Boys I hope the weather stays bad. Thats the only thing the DNR has to stand on for the low kill numbers we are going to have. If they think that the numbers for archery season will be level when shotgun season starts they are freakin nuts. If they think illlinois will kill 180,000 deer in the gun seasons they are freakin nuts. It is evident that with the low funds in the DNR that they have not been out there to get an idea of what the population of deer are right now. The first firearm season is going to be filled with a few nice deer and alot of guys filling their tag if they can with a fawn born this year. Which is going to wipe us out!

I know this sounds rotten, but I’m hoping for tons of hard rain this weekend.  It’s about the only thing I can think of that will save some of the deer in any sort of immediate fashion.  The IDNR will not help.  The first part of solving a problem is admitting that you have one.  The IDNR will not even admit we have a problem with deer numbers.

Hard rain and 40 mph winds!! 

I can only speak to my area; deer numbers are not as bad as I thought considering how bad EHD hit my area (11+ dead deer on ~60acres).  With that said, I am not finding any mature deer from stand or trail cameras.

Looking at the trends of B&C and P&Y deer by state certainly shows a very steep decline for Illinois.  Given increased tag numbers, lower success rates and decreasing kill numbers I think its very reasonable to believe the deer herd in IL is in decline.

The DNR is pretty sure the numbers will all level out after shotgun season, they are real confident. The reason they are so confident is because they will use their “fuzzy” math to make sure it happens. These numbers we are getting aren’t right and we all know it.

Numbers will “even out” after gun season because we got an extra week of bowhunting before gun season. Archery harvest drops substantially after gun season each year. When you get an extra week before gun season, you’ll logically have a higher archery harvest from last year to this year.

Similarly, we lost a weekend in last year’s archery season.  Would that not contribute to the decline in last year’s archery harvest?  There were less than 2200 fewer (perhaps a weekend’s worth(?)) archery kills in 2012 compared to 2011.