How many times have your heard this argument by trophy buck hunters: “If you want meat, just kill a doe!” That mantra has been repeated loudly on almost any deer hunting website, social media page or YouTube channel that’s dedicated to whitetail hunting in recent memory.

Ironically, in the old days (30+ years ago), the battle cry was just the opposite: “Kill a doe? Heck no!” Or my personal all-time favorite:  “If you keep taking a cow out of the barn, pretty soon you won’t have a farm no more!”

I’m old enough to remember those cries of our fathers and forefathers. And, in hindsight, they surely knew what it took to build a deer herd to a size that was large enough to keep lots of folks happy and interested in deer hunting. As a result, we had states with 500,000 or more deer hunters. In fact, several states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, had more than 1 million deer hunters each back in those days. 

Well, folks, those days are gone. And the recent gun-hunting season results not only show where we’ve fallen; they show a sign of cloudier days on the horizon. Chew on the preliminary results from nine states:

Wisconsin: 25% decrease in gun-deer harvest. Gun-hunters took home 160,769 deer in 2019.

West Virginia: 17% decrease in buck harvest. Gun-hunters took home 36,796 deer from the season that ran Nov. 25 to Dec. 7. This is down considerably from the 44,599 bucks that were harvested in 2018.

Illinois: 15% decrease in gun-deer harvest. Gun-hunters took home approximately 151,000 deer. The state’s record harvest of 199,705 was set in 2007.

Maryland: 14% decrease from 2018. Gun-hunters took home 27,088 deer this year. Last year, they took home 31,631.

Maine: 13% decrease from 2018. Gun-hunters took home 28,314 deer this year. Last year, they took home 32,451.

Missouri: 11% decrease from 2018. Gun-hunters took home 178,936 deer this year. The state’s record harvest of 321,829 was set in 2006.

Indiana: 10% decrease from 2018. Gun-hunters took home 100,025 deer this year. The state’s record harvest of 136,248 was set in 2012.

Minnesota: 5% decrease from 2018. Gun-hunters took home just over 200,000 deer this year. The state’s record harvest of 290,000 was set in 2003.

Michigan: Statewide reporting is not yet available, but a preliminary report from the Upper Peninsula indicated that hunters took home somewhere between 5% and 10% fewer deer in 2019 compared to 2018.

That’s just nine states, but you get the idea. New York and Pennsylvania’s numbers aren’t in yet, because both of those states have gun-deer seasons that push into late November. In Pennsylvania’s case, the season is just starting. One bright spot was Ohio, where the harvest was up slightly — 4.5% — in 2019 compared to 2018. Kentucky also posted a small increase, as hunters there shot 107,039 deer during the gun season (235 more deer than were harvested in KY in 2018).

Numerous Southern states will not have deer harvest figures until later this winter, but the downward trend seems to be affecting everyone. For example, in Tennessee, the early bowhunting season harvest was down considerably heading into the state’s regular firearm season. Bowhunters had killed 18,606 heading into the gun season, which is a 26% decrease from the same point in 2018.

The key point to remember here is all of these state’s are years removed from their heyday. Michigan put up gaudy numbers for nearly 30 straight years, beginning in 1987, including 18 years of deer harvests exceeding 400,000. Its record of 544,895 deer harvested was set in 1999.

Similarly, Wisconsin had a 30-plus year run that started in 1985. Wisconsin hunters set a national record in 2000 with a mind-numbing deer harvest of 618,274 whitetails. Today, the state’s hunters are taking home one-third that many deer.

Many folks bemoan the loss of hunters to modern technology, the fracturing of families, lack of access to quality hunting land, and so on. State agencies try to couch the lack of success by stating the herds are still at record levels (insert cough that sounds like someone uttering a phrase associated with bovine dung) and add in that weather and unharvested crops are to blame for hunters’ lack of success.

I will say it (again) here and now, and I will loudly repeat it until folks get the message: Our dwindling deer herds, deer harvests and hunter participation rates are tied directly to fewer deer in the woods. Period.

If we want to do something about it, we need to be smarter on which deer we shoot, and more importantly, which ones we do not.