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Deer Hunting Forecast

Just came across this. It's a little early for a 2017 forecast, but this one for last year was based on the results from the abysmal 2015 season. Glen should have been promoting this article all along as it is one of the few that doesn't feature FF County as CT's premier deer hunting area. Curiously, the author suggests that pickings on public land are slim and a deer hunter's best bet is to head to private land in the suburbs. He also suggests to hunt recent clear cut areas like we were just talking about, like DEEP's New England cottontail initiative. He also states that the landscape has changed and grandpas old hunting grounds aren't the same now as they used to be. Good article.

I've hunted the clear cuts. Worst hunting I've seen yet. All the of the noise, machinery and habitat transformation during the clear cutting pushed most all of the deer completely out of the area. They still haven't returned. Fools cut down tons of white and red oaks. Even though they said they weren't. Ridiculous.

I'm guessing you were hunting over habitat management for rabbits, in which case, the treatment prescription was a clear cut. Including oak as rabbits need a high stem count not acorns. Deer too need early successional browse but prefer acorns. Hunt it again this year in the absence of hard mast and I bet you'll live up to your name.

Ah, so there's nothing in this article that we all didn't already know and have been saying for quite some time on this site. I find ridiculous that they recommend the northern border of CT but not the southern border of Mass!! I guess they determined that the deer won't cross the state line that shows on the map???? And as a grandpa, the NW corner sucks and I knew that years before the state and this article put it out there, and I'm not even a "Professional", just a stupid hunter stuck in my ways. (BTW - my ways mean - I love the outdoors and don't need to kill deer to be successful)

be careful of some of the numbers here, if you look quickly Connecticut drops off heavily in 2015, but it does not include landowner or youth numbers. In the prior years there was over a thousand landowner each year. Also check New Hampshire 2014 add the column it is not close. I come up with 7516. Some concern over numbers.

deerstalker - you're correct, but VT took more in previous years as well. And like I always say, the numbers don't tell the whole story! Need to include things like - changes in the number of tags, additional hunting days, baiting allowed, etc. The total numbers could show and increase with fewer deer in the state.

BBB, yes I agree the numbers do not tell the whole story, my point was that looking very quickly at this I saw several problems with the numbers not adding up or not having the data to add to the total and someone quickly reviewing this would not pick up on that. New Hampshire would have taken more in 2015 if the 2014 numbers were corrected. Several states did not have entire data to add to total, Rhode Island and Connecticut for example. But I do agree the numbers do not always tell the entire story

Seriously. NH 2013 reported numbers add up to 8161, but the actual harvest was 12,540. The 2014 numbers don’t add up correctly, but the actual reported harvest is pretty close to the 11,395 that NH Fish and Game reported. Someone didn’t proofread.

THX for the update DR.

The northern fringes of Ct. are highlighted which is where Ct. DEEP decided no Sunday archery, and rightly so. Wonder why they colored it brown? I hunt it and it's scarce

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Additionally, Block Island and Nantucket are loaded with deer.

They got it right. There are a lot of deer up along the northern line. They are always moving though, kinda like small mouth on lake Champlain

soap - so why isn't the southern border of Ma also highlighted? I would think that if the deer are always moving, which we know they do, it would spill over to both states? This where I say, go out and do your own scouting. With the big tracts of land along the central and NW borders I know you'll find pockets of good and pockets of bad hunting.

I can’t figure out how they came up with that distribution map for CT. The only zonal info in the Deer Summary Report is shotgun/rifle private land, archery harvest by zone, and total private land harvest by zone. Certainly they didn’t use private land deer harvest, Zone 11 wins that for 2015 harvest with 1,321 unless Glen called the author and told him to exclude Zone 11 because all the deer have been arrowed. And Zone 12 performed ok in terms of 2015 harvest but nothing spectacular. Zones 4b, 5, and 10 have been getting it done in terms of harvest success and density which may explain the eastern portion, but that northern finger going westward from there makes no sense as it spans only the most northerly towns in each of 4 deer management zones (1, 2, 3, 4a). Maybe it is determined by non-resident license sales and that is where all, well most, of the MA guys go to hunt.

I thought the mass guys were going to FF county? Or is it just the few that post here?

Bob, I don't go to FF county. I wouldn't drive through that congestion for 50 dpsm. By the time I get there it would be time to turn around!

Scarety cat...lol

Hahahaha!

I know some of the mass guys said they hunted there, right?

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