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I hunt SE Ohio in the gun season. It seems to me that there are fewer gun hunters every year. I hear fewer shots every year. I think a lot of gun hunters are going to the crossbow. Longer season, better weather & beable to hunt the rut.

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Originally Posted by colorado bob
I hunt SE Ohio in the gun season. It seems to me that there are fewer gun hunters every year. I hear fewer shots every year. I think a lot of gun hunters are going to the crossbow. Longer season, better weather & beable to hunt the rut.

Naw, we're just stacking them up so we can use less ammo. Ammo costs are still too high......


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Originally Posted by colorado bob
I hunt SE Ohio in the gun season. It seems to me that there are fewer gun hunters every year. I hear fewer shots every year. I think a lot of gun hunters are going to the crossbow. Longer season, better weather & beable to hunt the rut.


Same here in the NW part of the state. Most guys are filling their tags during the archery season, and hunters are few and far between during gun season. There are a few "hot spots" in most areas where you will run into other hunters or groups, but if you avoid those areas chances are you might not even see any orange other than your own the whole week. Deer hunting has changed quite a bit in Ohio in the last 15-20 years. Far fewer groups out doing drives in the more open farm country as more and more have taken to sitting in a ground blind or treestand hoping something comes along like the stick chuckers. I only bow hunted a couple years back in the early 2000's as I never had the patience or the desire to practice year round as one should for bow hunting. At this point though I'm most likely going to be buying a crossbow in the next month or two for the very reasons you state - much longer season with better weather and get to hunt the rut. Being a gun nut though it's a very bitter reality to swallow.

I used to hunt down in Crawford county in a section just north of a very popular river bottom along the Old-n-tangy River. Hunted that same area for 25-30 years. When I was a kid we used to count how many shots we would hear come out of that bottom every day during gun season. Opening day it would usually be somewhere between 50 and 75 shots before noon. The last couple years I hunted down there if you heard one or two shots for the whole day on any day it was considered a busy day in the bottom. As you can imagine, that significant change in pressure also resulted in a significant change in our success rate in the next section as we didn't have all those hunters stirring them up out of the bottom and pushing them to us.



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That is not consistent with what I have seen here in central Ohio. Public lands are always too crowded. The largest public access lands are the Mead Paper plant, I believe. We were out in a heavy fog, opening day at Mead a couple years ago. We had GPS to find our climber stands, and could barely tell we were still on our proper path. We walked in about 3 miles, and waited for the weather to lift. When we could finally see, I could see about a dozen orange wearing hunters in view and too close. I will not hunt the ground on public lands. Too many people and too many fields of fire.


"Ohio Hunters Harvest more than 182,000 Deer during 2016-2017 Season

2/7/2017 Division of Wildlife
COLUMBUS, OH - Hunters checked 182,169 white-tailed deer throughout Ohio’s 2016-2017 deer season, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). Last year, 188,329 deer were checked during the 2015-2016 season.

The ODNR Division of Wildlife remains committed to properly managing Ohio’s deer populations. The goal of Ohio’s Deer Management Program is to provide a deer population that maximizes recreational opportunities, while minimizing conflicts with landowners and motorists.

Deer hunting regulations over the past two seasons have been designed to allow for moderate herd growth throughout most of the state. Herd growth is achieved by reducing harvest and protecting female deer.

Hunting Popularity

Ohio ranks fifth nationally in resident hunters and 11th in the number of jobs associated with hunting-related industries. Hunting has a more than $853 million economic impact in Ohio through the sale of equipment, fuel, food, lodging and more, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation publication.

Find more information about deer hunting in the Ohio 2016-2017 Hunting and Trapping Regulations or at wildohio.gov

ODNR ensures a balance between wise use and protection of our natural resources for the benefit of all. Visit the ODNR website at ohiodnr.gov."

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/wildlif...han-182-000-deer-during-2016-2017-season


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I hunt SE Ohio in the gun season. It seems to me that there are fewer gun hunters every year. I hear fewer shots every year.


When I first started hunting south central OH in the early 80's, it was NOT uncommon to count 500 shots on opening day. This was before the max of 3-rounds-in-the-magazine limit though; but if you heard shooting start, it was generally 5 to 8 as fast as they could pull the trigger followed by a couple more people doing the same. Last year, I don't believe I heard 50 shots all day, opening day.

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Somebody needs to make the 35 Ohio. A 357 Max stretched to 30-06 length (or longer)! laugh

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375Win would be a great choice if the cartridges were more available (I know they made a batch this year, but they sold out quickly). 45-70 and 450Bushmaster are good choices, and available factory ammo. For handloaders, a 300gr Barnes TTSX or TSX can be pushed pretty fast in a 458 American, 458 Win Mag, or 458 Lott.

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I hunt in Wayne Nat Forest the south area. I use a .444 Marlin. The area I hunt used to have at least 100 hunters in there on opening day. Same with the areas acrossed the roads. Over the last 15 years there are less and less hunters. The last two years i have been the only hunter in that area. I used to hear shooting every minute but now only hear a few shots an hour. With less gun hunters to keep the deer up and moving and and more bow hunters in the woods prior to general gun I see fewer deer and harvest fewer. We stay up near Jackson where we used to see thousands of deer hunters now we way see fewer. More guys are Bowhunting closer to their homes and filling their tags there. We used to have 30-40 guys from NW ohio who would come down. Last 5 year we have had 5/6.


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