Trending
With the firearms deer season wrapping up this weekend, many thousands of Pennsylvania hunters will have bagged one or more deer starting from archery season in late September and the special firearms and muzzleloader seasons in mid-October until now.
And for those hunters still desiring to fill a deer tag, they will have the opportunity to do so during the late archery and flintlock seasons that begin the day after Christmas and continue for three weeks into mid-January. We won't know how well deer hunters did overall until the Pennsylvania Game Commission releases its official deer harvest estimates for the 2023-24 season, probably sometime in March.
While doing research about some possible topics for future columns, I recently found a couple of interesting sets of statistics regarding deer hunting and hunting participation nationwide.
The first of those was a list of the top 10 states for deer hunting compiled by Deer & Deer Hunting magazine. Those rankings were based on the average of the last five years of deer harvest for each state.
I'm not sure how closely the average Pennsylvania deer hunter follows the harvest numbers of other states around the country, but I know many avid deer hunters do if for no other reason than to know how Pennsylvania stacks up against other popular deer-hunting locales. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Texas tops the list with a five-year average of 865,656. That tally is more than double number two Pennsylvania's mark of 399,814.
Michigan ranked a close third place to the Keystone State with a five-year average deer harvest of 366,626. Another upper Midwest state, Wisconsin placed fourth with 322,091. Missouri was fifth place with 293,635.
Three southern states occupied the next slots in the rankings. Georgia was sixth with 276,361; Alabama was seventh with 243,720; and Mississippi was eighth with 231,251. Ninth place returns to the northeast to New York with 229,839. Arkansas and Virginia were ranked as a tie for 10th place with nearly identical totals just over 196,000.
Finally, four additional states with tallies close to the top 10 numbers were listed as honorable mentions. They are Ohio with 192,441; South Carolina with 187,987; Minnesota with 186,168; and Louisiana with 186,140.
Being a college football fan as well as a deer hunter, I noticed an interesting comparison between the top 10 deer states and the current top 10 college football playoff rankings. Six of the top 10 football teams this week happen to be from states in the top 10 deer hunting states. The are: Michigan at No. 1; Texas at No. 3, Alabama at No. 4; Georgia at No. 6; Missouri at No. 9; and Penn State at No. 10.
If we stretch both lists to number 11, we gain two more teams. Ohio is No. 11 in deer numbers and Ohio State is No. 7 in football, and Mississippi is No. 8 in deer and No. 11 in football.
I realize this factoid really has nothing to do with either deer hunting or college football but given the time of year thought it would be fun to pass it on.
Shortly after seeing the deer harvest statistics, I discovered another interesting list relating to the number of licensed hunters across the United States. Once again, it was no surprise to see Texas and Pennsylvania at the top of the list for hunting licenses sold.
Texas issues about 1.1 million licenses annually, while Pennsylvania's total for hunting and furtaker licenses is almost 900,000 per year. Georgia ranks third in license sales with more than 769,000 and Tennessee is fourth with more than 728,000.
A real indication of how popular deer are to the hunting public is the fact that seven of the top 10 states with licensed hunters are also in the top 10 states for deer harvest. They are, in addition to the aforementioned Texas, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and Missouri.
There is no doubt that deer drive hunting license sales in most states that have substantial numbers of hunters. And sales of hunting licenses are an important source of revenue for the game and fish agencies in most states.
License revenues are especially vital in Pennsylvania because our Game Commission and Fish and Boat Commission receive no general state tax revenue. That situation makes deer an important "cash crop" for most wildlife management agencies.
Once again, it's probably no coincidence that four of the top 10 states in revenue generated from hunting license sales are in the top 10 for deer harvests. Although Colorado ranks first in hunting license revenues, Texas and Pennsylvania again rank high on the list at second and third, respectively, with Michigan at sixth and Wisconsin at seventh.