Deer numbers are down in my county have been for several years. Looks like they closed a bunch of counties again this year to antlerless harvest the white ares are closed looks like the National Forest is also. Not so long ago heading out for turkey hunting before sunup a guy would see hundreds of them feeding in the ditches where it greens up first in the spring. Lots of deer but not much size to them we did see some nicer bucks on the last elk hunt in the Hills.

What do you consider the main reasons for decline in the deer population?

Severe winter several years ago combined with a couple of EHD outbreaks.

Looks like I’ll be hunting MO again this year.

LD, I’m not saying that the above doesn’t play some role, but we’ve had far worse winters in my youth and been ok afterwards. I believe it all boils down to big farming, tiling, and overall habitat loss. In many areas where I live there is barely enough cover for a mouse to eke out an existence, let alone a herd of deer. The only groves left are the ones with an actively lived in home, waterways are virtually nonexistent, and most fencelines are ripped out to farm to the side of the road. That I believe is really the issue at hand. It forces all the deer to congregate into a few pockets of cover scattered throughout the county and live in tight quarters for the better part of 5 months. When growing up, i remember going out fox hunting with my father in the middle of winter and seeing groups of 30-50 deer scattered around the countryside in every direction from home. Seemed like every 5-6 miles was another wintering herd, dad had them all named by the farmers grove they called home throughout the winter. Now they are all in one tight area and is nothing to see a couple hundred together feeding across a bottom area. But those couple hundred are all the deer from 4-5 townships all crammed together for the winter. Very different than in years past is all I know…. Back then, we even had double tags, and still couldn’t put a dent in the population, we have had single draw tags now for at least the last 25 years or so and the population continues to decline. I am lucky to draw a tag every 3 years…. That is my experience and what I have seen here on the east central part of our state anyhow.

Seeing more slash and burning now plus cedar beating was popular for several years in the river breaks. The bigger outfits buy up land then clear the little habitat that’s remaining. Like you said it’s fence to fence farming now the tracks along the fences are gone in some places in some areas even the fences are being taken out. When it’s dry enough even the slough pot holes get turned or baled not much gets a pass.

EHD made a few appearances but the winters have been mild mostly we had way worse winter hits when we had more deer it’s just not bouncing back here. My apple tree has been dropping apples with all the wind we had but they just lay there. Very few tracks on the shoreline of the lake just not here when there’s a track it’s one or 2 deer.

I did see where they did some cedar beating the younger trees were popping up everywhere so I’m not sure if that did much to rid them of the cedars.

Blue tongue is terrible and seems to circle around more and more often these days.

Osky

Blue tongue is what took out all the good meal deer hunting in wyoming that I had when I was a kid.

Ehd hit hard

Minnesota guys killed them all

You would think that they came up with a bunch of new tag hoops to jump through now its quite the reversal from 10 years ago. It’s getting more practical to go out of state and simplify things. Onx needs a pocket lawyer app to keep up with the regulations they come up with now. We went from getting about as man as you would want to just a couple now.

It took me 26 years to to pull a bull elk tag might get that way for deer soon the way it’s going I hope they figure it out.

Buy enough land you can get a NR landowner tag, I don’t have enough land to qualify for the resident landowner tag plus if there’s not that many deer it wouldn’t matter. LOL