Buck totals up, antlerless take down
The final number of deer taken in Vermont’s 2023 hunting seasons will not be available for a few more weeks, but the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department says the final tally will be a little over 16,800 deer. Those deer will provide approximately 3.4 million servings of local, nutritious venison.
The buck harvest will be close to 9,800, which will be up from 2022 (9,619) and the previous 3-year average of 9,336. The final antlerless deer harvest will be around 7,000, which will be down from the previous 3-year average (8,101).
“Hunting conditions were mixed in 2023,” said Nick Fortin, the department’s deer project leader. “Warm weather in October limited deer movement during the day, and frequent weekend rain events reduced hunter effort. This resulted in harvests during the archery, youth and novice, and October muzzleloader seasons being down considerably from 2022. Conversely, seasonable temperatures and snow in much of the state during November and December resulted in increased harvests during the regular season and December muzzleloader season.”
The primary goal of Vermont’s deer management strategy is to keep the deer herd stable, healthy and in balance with available habitat. “Maintaining an appropriate number of deer on the landscape ensures deer and the habitats that support them remain in good condition and productive,” said Fortin.
The 2023 White-tailed Deer Harvest Report with final numbers will be on Fish and Wildlife’s website in early March. Beginning in late March, the department will be holding informational hearings to share biological information and to listen to any information people wish to share.
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Categories: Outdoors
To our Fish and Wildlife professional managers, Thank you for sound professional management of this renewable resource, and as always, hold fast against those who “know better’ than our professionals (you) who have actually been doing your jobs so well that we are blessed with these healthy resources .
Agreed Patrick.. Not an easy job with so many variables. I do wonder about the buck kill numbers though.. most hunters Ive talked to agree that this season was not great and deer encounters were way down. The nut crop was impacted by a late spring frost so feed sources took a hit. That may have played a part in our area but overall the deer kill seemed lower than what they’re saying. Maybe I just had an off year..
I really can not coment as to how many bucks there were as I happened to tag out at 10:15 on opening morning this year. It was the first time I’ve tagged out on opening day in at least 20 years, but in my general area (within 1/2 mile of me) I know of 3 other bucks being taken. That’s pretty average .
I am a seventy-two-year-old Vermonter and have been hunting since I was a kid and still hunt today, I see the deer herd is being diminished for two reasons, all the land being purchased ” overtaken” and posted, and then the excessive amount of doe being killed, year after year !!
At the rate the deer herd is going, it will be gone before I am…………….
According to VT F&W, there are more whitetail deer in VT today than there were in the 60s and 70s….”or at any other time in the past several hundred years.”
Otherwise, the population has dropped somewhat in the last two years “…but is about average for the past 10-20 years.”
And as noted above, “…the antlerless deer harvest [for 2023] will be around 7,000, which will be down from the previous 3-year average (8,101).
But, having lived in PA and OH, where the whitetail populations are at nusance levels, Vt’s whitetail population seems to me to be reasonable and sustainable.
Am I missing something?
CHenry, I’m a few years younger than you, but I have to say that has not been my experience for whatever reason. Maybe I’m just lucky. I too am from the generation where killing does was viewed as not making sense. How can you shoot does and have more deer ? Many missed the point of harvesting antlerless deer. It was never about increasing the deer herd, it has always been about bringing deer herd numbers into balance with their environment. I can remember very well meetings where Guido Rossi and Ben Day would go head to head, nose to nose over this topic. It was entertaining if not educational. Back in those days my mother worked for the Fed. Bureau of Sport Fisheries, and Wildlife, so maybe I just got a little more exposure to that side of the issue, but hindsight being 20/20, I would have to say that Ben Day’s approach while not popular at the time bore out my belief that wildlife should be managed by professional people with degrees in wildlife management, not legislators, or bleeding heart animal rights people. As far as your prediction that the deer herd will be gone before you are, I hope you and I live for as long as the deer herd in Vermont has justifiable numbers to hunt. (notice I did not say as long as we can hunt deer in Vermont, as the antis may get their way if we do not continue to fight them at every turn).
Respectfully,
Pat Finnie
The now extinct “Catamount” and Gray Wolf once brought deer herd numbers into balance quite effectively. But that was before Europeans settled North America and considered apex predators their enemy & proceeded to annihilate them.