2023 Deer Harvest report is out

[Larry]

The 2023 Deer Harvst Report is out on the DEC web site. The total  deer harvest was 209781 with 67.9% of the bucks harvested 2.5 years old or older. the 22 harvest was 231961 with 64% of the bucks being 2.5 years and older.

2023deerrpt.pdf

[2BuckBizCT]

Does harvested down 18% yoy, where is @crappyice?

Those 5-6+ bucks per square mile areas in units 8 and 9 are always insane to me coming from the guy in 3N/Putnam County (1.2)

Edited May 6, 2024 by 2BuckBizCT

[fletchny11]

Lots of info. Two things stand out. Steuben County is fawn murder central lol! And 50% of hunters are lawbreakers which is disheartening. I fail to understand how folks do not fill out harvest reports. 

[Larry]

1 hour ago, fletchny11 said:

Lots of info. Two things stand out. Steuben County is fawn murder central lol! And 50% of hunters are lawbreakers which is disheartening. I fail to understand how folks do not fill out harvest reports. 

I agree we should have to report on all tags weather you kill a deer or not. If you don't you don't get the tag you didn't report the next year.

[dbHunterNY]

18 hours ago, 2BuckBizCT said:

Does harvested down 18% yoy, where is @crappyice?

Those 5-6+ bucks per square mile areas in units 8 and 9 are always insane to me coming from the guy in 3N/Putnam County (1.2)

when you see harvest rates of bucks exceeding doe like here in WMU 4C there may be opportunity will be feast or famine for any deer. Be assured that unless you're in a QDM minded community then you might only see yearling bucks.  When you have antlerless take way above 8+ per sq mile and buck take is half that, well there's no hiding it. the culture in that area for passing younger bucks is there and younger bucks are living. nature tends to self correct and produce close to equal amounts of doe and buck fawns each spring.

[Bolt Action]

How does the DEC determine unreported kills? They have a metric on it, but I'm curious about how they come up with the number. 

[Larry]

41 minutes ago, Bolt Action said:

How does the DEC determine unreported kills? They have a metric on it, but I'm curious about how they come up with the number. 

The DEC like most wildlife agencies use statistical modeling. They take the number of reported kills and from check stations and processor checks if you ever get your tag back from the processor with a hole punched in it, it was checked. Then they use a formula to get the numbers. It's basically the same formula we use for statistical process control. 

[dbHunterNY]

1 hour ago, Bolt Action said:

How does the DEC determine unreported kills? They have a metric on it, but I'm curious about how they come up with the number. 

my understanding with talking to them is that they have wildlife techs and biologists go out to anywhere that might have a lot of deer in one spot; taxidermy shops, euro mount and beetle folks, venison processors, QDM check stations, etc. they only get harvest data from these deer they can find. They know which ones were reported and not tagged only. Through statistical analysis (math) you can say any given sample size (deer reported and checked) can represent a certain bigger size in overall population, yet still be an accurate representation. there's other stuff like covariance and ways to not introduce the likelihood of something to mess with the data. for example you can't just collect a lot of buck data from taxidermists otherwise it'll look like everyone is shooting older deer when they aren't. if you had one tech age jawbones of those bucks one way but another age them a different way then that leads to variance. sample size for bear and other stuff is smaller which in some cases requires your sample size compared to the overall take to be larger, not smaller.

https://deerassociation.com/how-do-state-wildlife-agencies-estimate-deer-harvest/

https://dec.ny.gov/things-to-do/hunting/report-your-harvest/estimating-deer-harvest