north vs south deer sightings

adventure · **Posted:** Wed Oct 13, 2010 9:00 pm

I was reading Grizz comments in another discussion about the number of bucks they see south of the border and was wondering how it compares to the northern deer hunters sightings. I have kept a record of every hunt I have been on since 1991 and thought I would tally up to see how many deer I typically see while hunting. Many of the days hunted are morning and night hunts. Here’s what I’ve seen.
Year Buck Doe Days hunted
1991 6, 15, 35
1992 3, 14, 24
1993 4, 30, 18
1994 3, 15, 21
1995 2, 25, 34
1996 4, 36, 27
1997 2, 10, 20
1998 1, 19, 24
1999 1, 1, 5
2000(AB) 3, 14, 4
2001 2, 31, 34
2002 1, 19, 36
2003 3, 18, 28
2004 6, 27, 28
2005 0, 13, 7
2006 2, 5, 4
2007 0, 9, 10
2008 2, 7, 12
2009 0, 4, 10
Totals 45, 312, 381

Interesting how Grizz said they might see 50 bucks a season, I haven’t even seen 50 while hunting since I started keeping track in 19 years.
Anyone else ever tally up their sightings?

Grizzly · **Posted:** Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:14 am

I know 50 bucks in a season does sound quite high and un believable for sure. and thinking back id have to say often im seeing the same bucks quite often so I really didnt mean 50 different bucks per say I guess you could probably cut that in half but i know its still hard to believe, early archery its not uncommon to sit in a tree and have 3 or 4 bucks walk down the trail in a night. often they come right together....... I am a selective hunter last year I took from the gene pool as I often do and I shot the smallest buck in a group of 4, any of wich I could have shot but i selected the scrapper just to get him out of the herd.
I hunt the fingerlakes area of NY, alot of private farm land, and I have in the woods right now as we speak 20 tree stands, all have produced and some stands ive taken 5 or 6 bucks from and let many many others pass by. last year I know for sure I passed on 9 different bucks before shooting one, im not one to harvest a deer unless I know i have the time to deal with it since I process them all myself so work load has alot to do with when I will take the shots but i have to say ill hunt almost every day either morning before work aor nights after, often both morning and nights expessally when the rutt is on.
Dont even get me started on doe's lol, saying all that sounds great right?? well it sure is if you like killing deer but as I mentioned in my last post our gene pool is completely messes up this is why w almost never see Big Deer Like the one Catcher shows, thats a buck of a life time around here 140 class is a Monster and it will tip the scales around 190 pounds, here 200 pounds is HUGE!! and id say the average Buck is 160 pounds.
There is some big woods in the north woods of NY but then the hunting becomes alot like yours where you could hunt a week streight and only see 5 deer ive had as many as 15 deer all under me all shootable in one night, its hard to give up that kind of hunting drive to a place in hopes of killing a Monster.
This is the first year ive ever owned a trail cam and I have to say its a real blast using it.

There is 6 deer right there and this is on land I just bought and have never hunted

catcher · **Joined:** Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:12 pm **Posts:** 393

I am not sure which of the 5 sub species of deer Grizz is hunting in New York but around here we are hunting the Northern whitetail which is the biggest of the sub species. I too see very few deer a year while hunting. If I see maybe 20 or 30 deer a year that is alot and those are mainly all the same deer counted over and over and on 5 farms I hunt. If I went on a drive at night and looked in fields all over with a light I would drive for days to see 50 deer. We do not have the numbers here to support that. People need to practice QDM to get a better deer herd and let the little fellows walk and and take out some does. That is the problem with the deer in New York the genetics for big racked deer is not there. Now I have seen a few deer from New York in the 160's and 170's and well over 200 pounds but they are not common. It is not a state with big deer genetics in it. But they are there. The key is a trail camera or as my wife says " cheating " . The buck I shot last year beleive it or not was less than 100 yards from the farmers house that I hunt at. The farmer was telling me that he was seeing him yet on the sournding farm the hunters which are 13 on one side on two farms and 4 on another on the other side shoot everything that walks. If they shoot 2 or 3 year olds they thought they hit the jack pot. And they would often tell me that there are only small bucks in this area. And that is true every time I hunted the back all I would see were flat tops and small bucks.Well I set my cameras up and I found this big buck living within a 300 yard area way away from the back of the property where all the hunting took place. In a little 1 acre bush lot with food on either side and a mess of just over grown stuff between the woods and the farmers house probably 80 yards from the edge of the farmers lawn. And that is where he lived . Now it took me a week to figure out his pattern but he made the mistake one afternoon and walked 18 yards from me. After he got up from his bed with some does. I firmly beleive they are out there you just got to find them. And I am addicted to finding them. Some times I might not and a three year old or a doe is going down , but I love those big boy's. So as far as seeing numbers of deer I do not see them , now maybe other hunters do. I even think my 20 to 30 number is high and that is a lot of time in the stand. I have seen some years with less than 15 deer seen all season. Now when I went deer hunting in Alberta a few years ago that was a different story. Man there are deer everywhere there. I saw 63 deer in three days. And that was all legal shooting hours. just crazy with deer.

Sheldon · **Posted:** Thu Oct 14, 2010 8:04 am

The deer population has really been hit hard over the past 2 years. I hunt #57 and 4 years ago 4 of us counted 32 deer on the first day!!!! no joke. mostly does and fawns with some spikes and 4 and 6 pointers(7 total) my cousin and I both shot nice 10 pointers opening day. 3 years ago we only counted 24 deer all week. got a nice 8 that year. the past 2 years the population has been hit hard with all the coyotes around. I only counted 5 deer last year for the week. This year it is gonna be the same. not as many deer around. We only shoot 8 pointers or better at the farm so it could be another hard year. Oh well we got fresh moose meat in the freezer so we will be OK for the year.Hey Catcher, Maybe we should go down and help Grizz with his deer population troubles.LOL.
Good luck everyone.

Grizzly · **Posted:** Thu Oct 14, 2010 2:30 pm

Yes im talking North American Whitetails lol.........I believe one of the biggest reasons is because alot of the breeding is being done by 1 and 2 year old bucks because the doe population is high, a big buck will tend a doe for days and days while the lil scrappers are running around hitting all the ladies the bigger bucks arnt tending to.
I have friends who hunt in Long Island and they are killing 160 class deer quite often that only weigh in at 180 pounds.. and these bucks are being killed in golf courses and peoples back yards in a very dencely populated area... I think alot has to do with big winters, it takes a good healthy deer to make it thru the hard winters so what makes it thru is going to be good stock for sure,expessally in the north country where snow piles 4 feet deep and stays that way all winter long
Years back when winters were hard here our deer used to yard up around farms and sunny slopes of the hills.... I know this is hard to believe but i have seen 300 deer yards before. yes Deer NOT SHEEP lol. ....
The area I hunt used to get huge pressure form hunters you have to remember this is NY right. alot of big city hunters would come here and hunt even then the deer were doing well. now days there is alot less hunting pressure and the biggest pressure now is Coyoties....... I dont think coyotes take many adult deer but they sure do kill off the fawns
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Hunters harvested approximately 222,800 deer in the 2009 season, virtually the same number as were harvested statewide the previous season, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Pete Grannis announced today.
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I am wondering what the deer kill was in all of Ontario last year ? .. and I wanna tell you there was probably 100.000 deer killed by cars last year and thouse numbers are not counted . it isnt un common for me to drive past 2 or 3 dead deer most every morning on my 35 mile drive to work.
$140 non residant big game tag. ill set you right up boys. you wanna see deer by god ill show you deer lol....... you might see a whole seasons worth in one night lol I hunt a vally here where friends from different camps are in radio contact this puts us all in less than 2 miles of each other and you should hear the chatter..... ive seen six, another says iv seen 5. another saw 7, and this is in the first hour lol..... it gets pretty crazy really sometimes with all the shooting you would think yer in Viet Nam I plant myself right in the middle of 100 acre plot of land with no other hunters so its safe and I see lots of deer this year I can Take 5 deer...... I might take two.last year I pretty well turned a whole deer into Jerky.... but I guarentee I could kill 50 if all I wanted to do was shoot deer and fill tags .
NY archery opens saturday and ill probably be working lol I usually get serious first of November but i always take my gear to work and hit the stands 1 hour before dark and there is only one or two days i can even think of that I havent seen deer every time ive ever hunted .
I will take a camera and show you stands that have been in the same tree so long the tree as grown around the chains holding the stands up lol........ and still always looking for a new place to hunt but really the stands I have up all produce deer and i would say pretty much every day, Guess im lucky to have such a good hunting area eh!! . now if my lake would hold walleye id be good to go lol

TheLandshark · **Posted:** Thu Oct 14, 2010 5:17 pm

I really havent seen that many deer in Canada, I only travel the 1000 island bridge to picton but I have never seen one along the 401. On Interstae 81, It seems like I dodge them, the same with the scaranton area of PA. I never gave it though until I read this thread but if I took a spotlight out this evening it would be nothing to see 50 deer in an hour. I'd say on average I will see one buck to every 5-10 doe. My father owned a body shop here and he couldnt keep up this time of year. My fiance alone has hit 6 and she just turned 26 including one last week. :roll:

I saw one last summer swimming in Lake Ontario.

adventure · **Posted:** Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:50 pm

Very cool seeing that many. Wish I had the time to take that offer. I see one about every 5-6 times out with the majority seen in late Decamber when they start to yard up. Tonight was my 4th bowhunt and I still have yet to see one hunting. The trail cam is getting good at catching the same 3 does though. Always when I'm at work or after dark though.
In WMU 71 (west side of Trent River above Trenton), I might see 30-40 driving around from spring to fall. But like Sheldon said, the deer seem to less around here as well the last few years. I used to see over 100 driving around from spring -fall 5 years ago.
I would say average does dress out 125-150 lbs and average bucks dress out 150-180 lbs. The local big buck contest winner is always over 260 and there's usually quite a few up there. The biggest doe I got dressed out about 200 lbs and the biggest buck I got was around 245lb. So far...
As for deer on the hiways, I only remember seeing one this year on the road. Funny how I saw more (two) stuck after falling through the thin ice in the Trent River last winter than hit by a car. BTW, the fire department went out and got them both. The deer I saw dead on the road was in the same place they rescued one...
I asked about Ontario harvest numbers, I'll let you know what our wildlife depatment have to say.
Adventure

catcher · **Joined:** Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:12 pm **Posts:** 393

Actually there are 37 subspeices of Whitetail deer but in the main group there are 5. And the Northern Woodland whitetails are the biggest in size. They are all North American whitetails Grizz that is not what I meant. LOL ............ We have in Ontario the northern variety and I am not sure if the deer in New york are the same or they might be the part of the southern strain. Any way that is what I meant in my post about the subspecies.

Grizzly · **Posted:** Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:19 pm

well here catcher we have 48 subspecies we have NY deer and Pa deer and Ohio deer and california deer and georgia deer and alabama deer and so on and so forth lol , but I knew what ya ment bud......... what i didnt know is that there was 38 subspecies of whitetail deers maybe thats just a canadian thinggy like as far as I know we only have wolfs, and coyoties but i remember reading up in canada you guys invented yer own species called a brush wolf lol , but then again no place in this world is a walleye called a pickerl other than canada also lol...... ok ok im just a wize azz american who loves to pick on my friends as much as they love picking on me lol
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There are only two species of native North American deer (they do occasionally interbreed): whitetail (Odocoileus virginianus) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). A third group, the Pacific coastal (or Columbia) blacktail (O. h. columbianus), is simply a regional variation of the mule deer with enough individuality to be considered a legitimate subspecies. Other offshoots of the two primary species include the Sitka deer of Alaska (O. h. sitkensis), a close relative of the blacktail (and consequently of the muley), and two diminutive cousins to the whitetail: the Coues deer (O. v. covesi) of the American Southwest and the Florida Key deer (O. v. clavium).

-Dave- · **Posted:** Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:52 pm

chuck, if i had a passport id take yya up on the offer, when you moving up here so you can hunt the "Big" deer.

riverdogg11 · **Posted:** Sat Oct 23, 2010 7:03 pm

TheLandshark wrote:

I really havent seen that many deer in Canada, I only travel the 1000 island bridge to picton but I have never seen one along the 401. On Interstae 81, It seems like I dodge them, the same with the scaranton area of PA. I never gave it though until I read this thread but if I took a spotlight out this evening it would be nothing to see 50 deer in an hour. I'd say on average I will see one buck to every 5-10 doe. My father owned a body shop here and he couldnt keep up this time of year. My fiance alone has hit 6 and she just turned 26 including one last week. :roll:

I saw one last summer swimming in Lake Ontario.

Landshark,
I travel up from the Philly,PA area to hunt family property in NY just before the 1000 islands bridge. The deer in our area are few and far between in the past few years. I just posted some pictures of coyotes on the trail cam thread. They are running our woods like squirrels. They must be wreaking havoc on the fawns. I also have noticed alot less road kill in the section from Scranton to Binghamton or even Syracuse in the past few years. Glad to hear you guys still have a good population. Feel free to relocate some of those southern tier bucks to just before the bridge on your walleye trips this fall.

'eye chaser · **Posted:** Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:14 pm

as im typing this i am watching approx. 40 wild turkeys, and 184 deer, the deer # is down big time this yr, other yrs the herd has been 300 plus for the past 17yrs. :cry:

damn coyotes , the neighbouring bush to me had 12 coyotes permanently evicted from earth last wk

its amazing and rather comical how the turks, and deer interact with each other.

-Dave- · **Posted:** Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:59 pm

nice, thats more deer than ive seen in the last 2 or 3 years

Dave

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north vs south deer sightings

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