I was thinking about giving up deer hunting, because of the lack of deer. I saw one doe the whole season, and everyone I talked to is saying the same thing they didn't see hardly anything this year. In central ohio they (coyotes) are so common anymore I think that they have thinned the deer herd way down. I was looking at the deer harvest figures for the past couple of years and they gradually have been getting lower and lower up to 25% for some counties! I'm thinking why would I go out next year and waste my time and money to not even see anything, I don't care if I harvest one, but I would like to see something. I have also recently decided to start to go after the varmits. Has anyone delt with the same scenario I did this season and felt it wasn't even worth it to go out?
We've been talking about the Ohio deer problem over on The Ohio Outdoors all season long and many think it's a combination of coyotes and the liberal deer tags the ODNR has been allowing over the years. I hunt down in Meigs County and for sure it is a combination of people that fill their tags regardless of the number of deer that are actually there and an increase in coyote population. We stopped shooting does down there a few years back because we weren't seeing them. This past year after running 5 trail cameras and figuring out our deer sightings we felt we only had 4 does that were frequenting the almost 200 acres we own. The neighbors have always been tag fillers and even to talk about letting young bucks grow falls on deaf ears.
Like I said on another thread, find a trapper in your area and let him have at the coyotes. A good trapper will kill way more coyotes than you'll ever shoot. This isn't against the OP but I'm amazed at the number of people that complain about coyotes and either do nothing or think they can control them by hunting.
