Where Did They Go?

[Katmandeux]

The deer...they're just...gone.:confused2:

We killed a few bucks this year, but didn't see any does. Not in the woods, not on the roads, very few road kills...there's almost no sign in the woods. No tracks, scat, rubs, scrapes. Food plots have gone untouched, ditto corn.

It's not just where I hunt, I hear the same thing from all over eastern OK, from other hunters and biologists. They're saying the harvest in the NE Region will be off >30% this year.

Spooky. Sad, and spooky.:sad2:

[gbigskin]

dave, i live on bigskin bayou in sequoyah co. i heard the same thing from kenny reese who runs the village sport shop which is the check station in sallisaw. he reckons it is due to more pressure on public land and maybe the increased doe tags and days in the season is beginning to have its desired effect. i do not hunt my place but my son-in-law does. he went to his stand twice this yr and scored a10 point both times. did not see any doe. my friend who is disabled and can only hunt now when the weather is fairly good asked me to get him another deer for his freezer during the last doe season so i went to his place on sat. afternoon of the last doe season and saw a buck, doe and yearling. i took the yearling for him. as to my own experiance i saw about what i consider normal as to number of doe as i was coming and going late in the afternoon. you are not going to believe the call i just got as i was typing this message. it was ron justice with state wildlife stationed at cookson doing a landowner survey on turkey numbers for the county. i asked him about the deer situation and he said the numbers state wide were off about 20% from last yr but that last yr was a 20,000 increase from the previous yr and it is normaly only about a 1,000 increase. he said numbers in northeast ok were about normal. he said that during gunseason landowners with trail cams out reported most of the deer were moving at 2-3 am. he also thought that the heavy spring and early summer rains produced more forage than normal and the deer did not have to move much and did not need to hit the corn feeders as heavy. what ron told me makes since. i think the deer are there hunters just did not see them.

[xringer3]

Dave, I've got two leases I hunt. One around Webber Falls I've had for 5 years. I hardly ever saw a doe there and it was loaded with bucks, mostly little scrubs. The first three years we thinned out the scrubs and pretty much left what does we did see alone. This year, I've seen several big bucks, took one in BP season. I also saw 5 times as many does this year, so I took one of those too. She was chasing the bucks off and wouldn't breed so I figures she was dry.

The other place is north of Muskogee on the river and we saw LOTS of does. I sat it the first morning and had as many as 12 does around me. We've got pictures of some nice bucks there but I tagged out too early this year to spend much time deer watching. It seems to depend on the area and how it was previously hunted as to how many does there are.

[youngbuck]

The deer...they're just...gone.:confused2:

We killed a few bucks this year, but didn't see any does. Not in the woods, not on the roads, very few road kills...there's almost no sign in the woods. No tracks, scat, rubs, scrapes. Food plots have gone untouched, ditto corn.

It's not just where I hunt, I hear the same thing from all over eastern OK, from other hunters and biologists. They're saying the harvest in the NE Region will be off >30% this year.

Spooky. Sad, and spooky.:sad2:
i hunt in kansas and i killed a couple doe but during buck season we barely saw any thing all nothing in range anyway

[youngbuck]

The deer...they're just...gone.:confused2:

We killed a few bucks this year, but didn't see any does. Not in the woods, not on the roads, very few road kills...there's almost no sign in the woods. No tracks, scat, rubs, scrapes. Food plots have gone untouched, ditto corn.

It's not just where I hunt, I hear the same thing from all over eastern OK, from other hunters and biologists. They're saying the harvest in the NE Region will be off >30% this year.

Spooky. Sad, and spooky.:sad2:
well i hunt in the NE region of Kansas and there was a 26 pointer killed right across the road from were i hunt and our cousins said i know this is hard to believe but he said he counted 90 deer up there were we hunt when the weather got warmer a few days ago

[jlingle]

The numbers weren't really off down here in SW Oklahoma. Of couse we don't have the acorn crop to contend with. I would imagine that would have a lot to do with deer movement where you guys are. The deer here were moving, not always in the same places they normally were, but they were moving. There were lots of huge bucks killed in Oklahoma this year. The early moisture we received in the spring & early summer helped a bunch.

[David Knotts]

Yalls deer must have moved to my lease in Louisiana, I can't tell you how many does I saw this last year. I saw deer every time I sat in a stand, But I only saw one good buck, and didn't get a shot at it. I ended up killin 5, 3 bucks, and 2 does. As for that good buck, well I didn't hear of any body gettin a shot at him, so I hope that next year, I get to conect with him.

[CountryHart]

I live in southwestern part of Missouri and we have alot of deer here.