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Hunters in both firearms and archery seasons saw a significant drop in deer harvest numbers from last year, except in Northeast Ohio where modest gains have been reported. From this story in The News-Herald (northern Ohio):

_Ohio’s firearms deer hunters are following the footsteps of their archery deer hunting brethren, and that is spelling a reduced kill.

For Ohio’s recently concluded seven-day firearms deer hunting season, sportsmen shot 104,442 animals. For the same seven-day hunt in 2009, Ohio sportsmen killed 114,633 deer.
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_Ditto the drop for both the first six weeks of the statewide archery deer hunting season as well as the two-day, youth-only firearms deer hunting season. For the former, archers killed 49,384 deer, while last year archers shot 53,959 deer.

Youths killed 9,024 deer during their two-day season this year (Nov. 20-21), compared to the 9,331 animals shot during the same hunt in 2009.

The total preliminary to-date deer harvest is off as well. This figure stands at 163,362 animals thus far this season, compared with the 178,397 deer taken for the same period in 2009.

Bucking the gun-week white-tailed deer decline, however, was much of Northeast Ohio. Modest gains were noted in this sector, based on preliminary figures reported to the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

In all, about three dozen of Ohio’s 88 counties experienced preliminary gains in their respective deer harvests, while about 50 had declines.

Among the not-so-fortunate were the traditional high-deer-kill counties located in southeast Ohio. Notable harvest drops occurred in such places as Guernsey, Muskingum, Harrison and Washington counties._