I read the article in the paper today about ND's deer harvest and then noticed on F&S, and i feel that I can add some info that was not listed in the article (and i can only say what i will say from experience).
The article says that the opening weekend was hampered by snowfall in the state. This is entirely correct (there was a small town in northen ND that had more inches of snow than it did registered residents {23-18}). I hunt in the SE portion of the state, and while we did not get any snow, it was cold, rainy, windy, and there were occasional snow flurries. I will now give a couple of things I observed and are obvious from these weather conditions.
1.) People will not go out to hunt as much. This is true. I have been a part of many opening weekends now, and I can honestly say that I have never heard it so quiet. We hunt in a valley, so we can hear gunshots from all around. When we were driving to our farm, we have never seen so few cars on opening day. People just lose faith because of the weather.
2.) Deer will go hide in the bottoms. This is true. For one, in ND, not many people have adequate land in the trees down low, and not much public land can say the same. We tried a walk through the CRP once; and did not find a single deer. We then walked through the bottoms and deer were everywhere. We succeeded in kicking up every deer into the property adjacent to us and no hunters were on that land. (There goes the theory that deer are stupid).
Overall, I expected there to be a way worse harvest than that.

Nate

My regards to the man's family... but I wonder if the media will make such a big deal out this as they did the swine flu.

I am surprised it was in NY, I am from NY and have never had a tick on me. But I am stationed in NC and can not even walk into my backyard next to the woods with out getting atleast two on me.