Outlook points to another productive deer season

Kentucky receives national acclaim for the quality of its deer herd, and the numbers help draw the attention.

The state has produced hundreds of trophy-class bucks over the past five seasons and hunters last season combined to take 138,899 deer overall. It was the second highest harvest total on record behind only the 2013-14 season.

“I think this might be the new norm for a little bit,” said Gabe Jenkins, deer and elk program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “It’s also indicative of how many deer we have on the landscape.”

The 2015-16 deer season arrives Saturday, Sept. 5 with the start of the archery season, and the outlook points to another good season. Biologists say the herd is doing well and estimate it to number about 1 million at the outset.

“We’ve had two pretty harsh winters in a row and people may draw the conclusion that maybe we’re putting a hurt on the population,” Jenkins said. “With the mast crop that we had last year, which gave the animals that lived through the season a good boost, and with a mild and wet summer, the deer should be primed to go into the hunting season. I expect things to be good.”

Herd health assessments conducted last month on Yellowbank Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Breckinridge County, Paintsville Lake WMA in Johnson and Morgan counties and Green River Lake WMA in Taylor and Adair counties produced reassuring results.

“All three locations looked great,” Jenkins said. “Our herd is healthy and our hunters have done a good job of balancing buck and doe harvest.”

Kentucky takes a four-zone approach to deer management with Zones 2 and 3 considered the sweet spot.

Deer populations in some counties hit hardest by the most recent Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) outbreaks are back to pre-2007 levels or better. A change in zone assignments for some counties in the Green River, Bluegrass and Southeast wildlife regions is indicative of that rebound.

Archery season continues through Jan. 18, 2016. In between, early crossbow and muzzleloader seasons arrive in October with the crossbow season picking up again in November at the outset of modern gun season. Modern gun season accounted for 74 percent of the overall harvest total last season and this year opens statewide on Nov. 14. December sees the late muzzleloader and crossbow seasons end.