Kansas deer season by the numbers

For the past 15 falls, I’ve interviewed Lloyd Fox about the state of our state’s our states deer herd for a forecast the weekend before firearms deer season. Wednesday through Dec. 13 is this year’s season.

Fox, big-game program coordinator for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, has reported nearly the same thing the last 10 years. The exceptions would be a couple of years when drought lowered the deer population.

This year, again, Fox is predicting a good season with a harvest near last year’s kill of about 97,000 deer. To get his figures, Fox uses data gathered from the department’s annual summer and fall spotlight surveys across the state.

Here are things to watch for the next two weeks:

Plenty of non-residents – More than 20 percent of deer hunters are non-residents. Hard to believe we started with about 5 percent 20 years ago. Other states aren’t seeing the same.

“Percentage-wise, we have the highest percentage of non-resident deer hunters of any state in the Midwest,” Fox said. “We don’t have more non-residents hunting our deer than places like Wisconsin or Michigan. As for the percentage of our hunters, it’s substantially higher than any other state in the Midwest.”

Fox said that number hasn’t changed much the past seven years, but with about 3,000 non-residents denied permits this year, I’m betting next year we’ll see some sizable increases as the department meets the “meet the demand” requirement by the legislature.

Crossing over to crossbows – There’s no doubt the hottest new weapon for deer hunting are crossbows, which can be used by anyone during the archery seasons. They’re being used successfully, too.

Fox said in 2010, when only hunters who couldn’t use a regular bow because of physical difficulties could get a special crossbow permit, less than 400 deer were shot by crossbows in Kansas.

In 2013, when all were allowed to use crossbows, the kill jumped to 3,200. Last year it was 5,541. For comparison, about 26,000 were killed using regular hunting bows. But that could change.

“It might eventually be half and half, where half of the archers will be using crossbows,” said Fox. “That’s what you hear when you talk to people in Ohio and Arkansas, where (crossbows) have been legal for quite a while.”

Fox said in some such states the archery harvest is higher than the firearms harvest, which could be problematic for herd management.

“The day may come when reduced archery opportunities may need to be considered in the future,” said Fox.

It will be interesting to see where this trend leads in Kansas, especially since the public, and wildlife commissioners, were once told crossbows would have no more impact on the Kansas deer population than regular bows.

Non-residents use mandatory tag – Within a two-year time frame, non-resident kills on antlerless whitetails in Kansas has increased from less than 2,000 to 8,600. Fox said that’s probably because the state now mandates out-of-state hunters purchase an antlerless whitetail permit if they draw a permit that allows them to shoot a buck. Before, the “doe permits” were sold separately for around $52.

“The hope was that it would put more harvest in areas where there was a lot of leasing of hunting spots and then the adjacent neighbors were complaining about crop damage,” Fox said. “It really did what we wanted it to do.”

Though a high percentage increase, that killing of an extra 6,000-plus does probably has little negative impact on the overall deer herd. That could change if the legislature, which wants more deer killed, requires resident hunters to get the same mandatory permit.

Deer populations rebounding – Fox said deer numbers are rebounding across most of Kansas, but are not up to par in many areas. He said fewer hunters will be allowed to shoot mule deer this season, especially antlerless mule deer. Antlerless whitetails are seeing increased protection in southwest Kansas and several other management units as they try to recover from several years of drought or related disease outbreaks.

Though opportunities to kill whitetails in Unit 16 have held steady for bucks and decreased for whitetail does, Fox said survey data shows “we’re much better this year than it had been, but it’s still not back to where we’d like.”

Every western Kansas rancher, farmer and avid hunter I’ve talked to agree the mule deer population merits reduced harvest opportunities. Most say the state’s not going far enough in reducing permit numbers and that the current populations don’t warrant any permits designed for antlerless mule deer. Two longtime ranchers, who are trophy mule deer hunters, estimate their populations are about half of what they were before the drought.

I’ve yet to meet a Unit 16 landowner or land manager, though I only know a dozen or so, who think their deer population is much better this year. Case in point are two ranches that total right at 80,000 acres. That’s 125 square miles of the unit that was once Kansas most famed for trophy deer and high deer numbers.

Both take their wildlife management almost as seriously as their bison or beef management and are famous for old, trophy whitetails. Both keep track of their herd numbers by actual count and trail cameras. One even has a professional biologist come in annually to make a count and recommend harvest numbers.

Both ranches will take but a fraction of the number of hunters they did a few years ago. Rather than 20 trophy hunters, one allowed seven bowhunters this fall. The other, which used to allow almost limitless does be killed by youth groups, hasn’t allowed a female whitetail to be shot for about four years. On that same 42,000 acres, only four bucks can be killed this year.

Anytime you get a rancher who is willing to sacrifice more than $80,000 in potential income because he fears his local herd can’t take the hunting pressure, that’s a pretty good indication things actually can’t get much worse.

Many are also partially blaming a decreased number of trophy bucks on poaching, due to Kansas’ reputation for huge deer and a skeleton staff of game wardens.

This story was originally published November 29, 2015 at 8:14 AM with the headline "Kansas deer season by the numbers."