For most Midwestern outdoorsmen and women, this time of year our daydreams tend toward fishing, boating and spending time outside swatting mosquitoes in places where snow drifts covered large sheets of ice just a couple of months ago.
In North Dakota, typically about two-thirds of the way through spring, we also get a brief interlude to think about fall when the annual deer gun season license applications come out. This year, tens of thousands of North Dakota men and women face a June 8 deadline to submit their name in the weighted lottery, with hopes of drawing a license a preferred license in a preferred unit.
Much like a fishing trip pulled together based on reports of a hot bite, submitting an application is not a guarantee of success in the license drawing. And of course, drawing a license does not guarantee hunting success – it simply allows an opportunity to hunt.
That’s why it’s called hunting, because there are no guarantees.
With this season’s allotment of just under 110,000 licenses, the odds for obtaining a coveted first choice are probably a bit lower than in the recent past in most units. The final number is down nearly 7,000 licenses from last year, and is about 40,000 fewer than just three years ago.
Much has happened since then.
In 2008, a major snowstorm hit the western half of the state the day before the deer opener, plugging roads and limiting hunter mobility. Rain in the eastern half of the state prevented harvest of much standing corn until well after deer gun season ended.
Still, for the season, statewide hunter success was about normal, at around 70 percent. Depending on who you ask, some hunters point to the fall of 2008 as the last really great season. Again, that’s debatable, but with around 91,000 deer taken it ranks among the better years in the last decade.
The winter of 2008-09, which basically started with the deer-opener snowstorm and didn’t let up, caused notable deer mortality in much of the state. The State Game and Fish Department reduced licenses by about 5,000 for fall 2009. Despite a rather mild November and generally average hunting conditions, the total harvest of 75,000 and individual hunter success of about 60 percent were down considerably, and reflected perhaps the lower end of the customer satisfaction spectrum.
The winter 2009-2010 was not as bad as 2008-09, but it was still more difficult than average. Winter surveys revealed even fewer deer than the previous year and Game and Fish allotted 116,775 deer gun licenses for 2010, with more than 99 percent issued to hunters.
While overall hunter success was up to 64 percent, the total harvest was down to 67,000. A closer look at the numbers showed hunter success for antlered white-tailed deer was 68 percent, and antlerless whitetail was 63 percent.
Mule deer buck success was 68 percent, while mule deer doe hunters had a success rate of 70 percent.
Hunters with any-antlered or any-antlerless licenses almost exclusively harvest white-tailed deer. These buck and doe hunters each had a success rate of 64 percent.
This year, following the third difficult winter in a row, the license allocation is down again, though the state still has at least one license available for each of its 100,000 or so deer hunters.
Opportunities for more than one doe license are much reduced from three years ago, and mule deer licenses will be harder to draw, but North Dakota hunters will have plenty of reasons to daydream about fall after the license drawing is held sometime during the first few weeks of summer.
Doug Leier is a biologist with the Game & Fish Department. He can be reached by email:dleier@nd.gov
Article Source:
http://justnorth.com/Articles/tabid/105/articleType/AuthorView/authorID/220/Doug_Leier.aspx