First Posted: 1/26/2015
AKRON (AP) — Ohio hunters say they’re frustrated by a drop in the number of deer being bagged this hunting season.
About 90 people in northeast Ohio took their complaints to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources over the weekend at one of five deer hunting summits held around the state, the Akron Beacon Journal reported (http://bit.ly/1CrG0dd).
State estimates say Ohio hunters will bag about 180,000 deer during the 2014-2015 season. That’s nearly 11,500 fewer deer than last year’s season.
Hunters at the meeting said they haven’t been able to kill deer because they aren’t seeing any to shoot.
Taxidermist Fritz Birkheimer said he usually handles more than 150 deer each season, but expects he will handle less than 100 dear this year.
Ohio’s deer herd is about 700,000, up about 300,000 from a decade ago. But a number of the population is in urban areas where hunting is not permitted.
The number of deer killed by hunters has gone down under the state’s deer management plans, the newspaper reports.
The overall condition of Ohio’s deer herd is suffering from population increases and loss of habitat, said state biologist Mike Tonkovich.
