DEER % of TOTAL kill
Whitetail Deer
What percent of all big game taken in the United States annually do you estimate are whitetail deer ?
do you want a breakdown of bucks and doe?
Nope l , just peoples thoughts on the question posed.
Given hunter population centers and species density I am curious what people think or know.
As a guess, I would say about 70%, maybe higher. Other game animals have much lower populations and are not very widespread in comparison to white tails.
In CT, it's 100%. We don't have anything else. In HI, it's 0%, they don't have whitetails. But Ollie is probably pretty close.
I have no real basis to estimate but I'd suspect it's high. Maybe 75%
I would be in that same place. 2/3rds to 3/4ths are that one species. Plus you figure in so many places you can take multiples and in some cases a lot of multiples and it really adds up vs any other of the species. Even guys who take an elk mulie bear moose antelope etc are not taking two let alone a half dozen.
It could actually be a higher number.
I would think the total would be very high, 80% percent but wouldn't be surprised if it was higher. NY took 231,961 deer in 2022 and PA took 422,960 in the same year. I would suspect those totals may be higher than a couple western states combined species totals.
In NC I’ll be able to take at least 6 per year if I wanted to. As a resident you get 6 tags with some restrictions etc.
I would guess 80%.
Most of the US only has whitetail, and the western states that have them kill plenty there also.
I won't guess, because it will be a guess only. But given the availability of information in the Google era, I would think you could actually get a damn close number by searching harvest statistics. The only thing I would think that would skew the number is some of the subsistence hunting in Alaska (do they estimate subsistence kills? Maybe they do).
Fortunately for me, I'm not bored enough right now to do it. But I think it would be pretty easy to get a solid number if you were bored enough to google every state's harvest stats
Bake- get some AI on it for us. Thanks.
—Jim
In Vermont it is somewhere near 60% Many people hunt deer . Before you call me crazy I point out wild turkeys are considered "big game ". We take somewhere near 15 000 deer in a season and a few bears. The turkey report is around 8000.
It's well over 80%, mostly because there are so many whitetails compared to other deer species.
LeatherWall down, ut oh, even George is over here... Hi George...
18 pound birds don’t count as big game
I would say Scrappy is probably pretty close. Down south we kill up to 6 deer here. Alabama is a deer a day for about 60 days I believe. Even in MT my buddy can and does kill I believe 8 whitetails each year compared to one elk and one antelope.
i thought of hogs as well and they are big game so yes, but not likely to materially alter the ratio as both area and people pursuing are pretty limited.
I’d disagree bou, I don’t know of any state that classifies hogs as “big game” or even game at all. But I agree, probably does not effect the overall result.
To the original question I would venture a guess of 85% plus.
—Jim
But
Turkeys are indeed classified as big game animals in many if not most states. When I asked the DNR why, it was because they are managed as such with limited tags.
JTreeman parts of Tennessee consider hog as game
I don't care how your state classifies them, turkeys aren't big game. They're upland game birds. Although it's semantics, it would change this discussion.
I'd guess it's >80%.
Makes me wonder how many P&Y entries by % there are in comparison to % of the rest of the NA29.
The thing is, there's so many whitetail does killed every year, that this would skew the % in favor of whitetails being more as other species typically don't have as many females killed.
Fuzzy, Google begs to differ…
However, I does seem that California considers them big game. Admittedly I don’t specifically know what states consider consider them big game, but I bet it’s not many. And already conceded it probably has no bearing on the original discussion.
—Jim
Jim you are correct. I was a bit confused by the specifics of certain public land restrictions on wild hogs.
For grins I did some number crunching and came up with a personal percentage of about 75% Whitetail deer. The numbers were 230ish whitetails, one moose , two black bear, one blacktail deer and 30ish each feral hog and Eastern wild turkey. If you exclude hog and turkey it's almost 99% whitetails
