The short answer as to why Ohio's deer gun week produced the lowest whitetail kill since 1987 is … well, history provides few short answers.

The short answer as to why Ohio�s deer gun week produced the lowest whitetail kill since 1987 is � well, history provides few short answers.

�It�s the result of trends that have been going on for a long time,� said biologist Mike Tonkovich, the deer project leader for the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

The trends, surely shaped by human intervention, represent the results of biological forces and social desires � well-fed deer on an agricultural landscape represent a biological force; farmers and hunters, who want deer dead, albeit for dissimilar reasons, exert a primary social influence.

The wildlife division, exercising influence on what it can control, acts as referee.

�We are trying to manage for as many deer as we can given the social conflicts,� Tonkovich said.

What can be influenced with regulations is how deer and people interact, particularly in a predator-prey relationship. For people, the interaction is shaped by factors that include leisure time, money, age, access to hunting grounds and the number of available deer.

The way Ohio hunters pursue whitetails has changed the meaning of gun week, once considered the measure of how healthy deer business is in the state. Thus, observers who fail to consider what has changed have looked askance at the tumbling numbers during recent years.

The week�s harvest from Dec. 1-7 totaled 65,485 whitetails, the fewest taken during gun week since about 64,000 were checked in 1987. Only six years ago, hunters tagged 116,798 whitetails during gun week.

Tonkovich considers the 1987 number �a useless fact,� given that the 64,000 represented about 85 percent of the 75,000 whitetails harvested that year. By 1998, when 79,356 deer were tagged during gun week alone, the bow kill represented about 25 percent and gun week about 75 percent of the all-seasons harvest.

Since those times, particularly after hunters embraced crossbows, the archery kill has increased dramatically. A year ago, Ohio�s bow harvest surpassed the gun-week total for the first time.

Here�s a little history: An estimated 110,000 hunters last year used crossbows to take 49,041 deer, which was 25.6 percent of the total take of 191,459. In 1976, the first year crossbows were allowed, an estimated 600 hunters during a three-week season killed 27 of the 23,000 deer checked that year.

The harvest by hunters using vertical bows also has climbed, although the number of hunters using traditional and compound bows has remained within a range of 75,000 to 95,000 annually since 1981. The success rate, however, has increased from about 4.5 percent in 1981-82 to 23.2 percent a year ago.

Another 36,520 deer, or 19.1 percent of the harvest last year, were taken by an estimated 75,000 hunters using vertical bows. Archery, then, accounted for about 45 percent of the deer taken, and gun hunters about 55 percent.

That�s a lot of numbers, but they indicate a trend toward bow hunting and away from deer gun week. Of the 191,459 deer checked in 2013-14, 115,655 (60.4 percent) were not killed during gun week.

Older hunters, many wielding crossbows, have embraced the warmer-weather hunting available starting in late September. Such factors, as well as an early-season muzzleloader hunt, a weekend youth gun season and available deer in nearly every part of Ohio, means not as much pent-up enthusiasm needs to be released by gun week.

Fewer gun hunters in the woods and fields also results in fewer moving deer, an important factor in success during gun week, Tonkovich noted.

Tonkovich does not deny that Ohio has fewer deer than it had in the past, although the harvest is pretty much in line with expectations given the decrease in availability of antlerless permits. Nor does Tonkovich reject the charge that the wildlife division pays attention to farmers� wishes when it comes to deer.

�We live in an agricultural state,� he said. �Turning our backs on the farming community would be a big mistake.�

Farmers benefit deer hunters in two significant ways, Tonkovich said. One is that the community�s demands for a smaller herd translates into a generally healthier herd. Another is that the crops farmers are trying to protect provide the nutrition base that makes Ohio deer the envy of hunters from most other states.

outdoors@dispatch.com