Outdoors: Ohio archery season opens Saturday
Sep. 21—There are many signs that the season is changing — the cooler nights, the earlier sunsets, football weekends, and shrink-wrapped boats are all harbingers of fall.
For the white-tailed deer hunters in Ohio, the real season starts Saturday at exactly 30 minutes before sunrise. That is when archery hunting opens in the Buckeye State for its more than four-month-long season.
Hunting deer with a bow and arrows requires patience, planning, a certain advanced skill set, and an ability to get close to your quarry without being detected. Archery hunters will frequently recount the dozens of shots they did not take since an ethical and clean harvest was not likely.
Despite its increased challenges when compared to gun hunting, archery continues to grow in popularity with Ohio hunters. In the 2020-21 Ohio deer season, archery hunters harvested more than 93,500 deer, the highest number on record.
The total for all of the deer seasons — archery, gun, muzzleloader — showed that 47 percent of the total harvest came via bow hunting. It was the eighth year in a row that more Ohio deer were harvested with archery equipment than were harvested during the week-long deer gun season.
Throughout all of the phases of the 2020-21 deer season, hunters in Ohio harvested 197,721 deer, which is nearly 10 percent higher than the three-year harvest average. That harvest total broke down to 83,332 bucks, 94,763 does, and 19,626 button bucks.
Archery hunters get the first opportunity to hunt deer, and Ohio Division of Wildlife Chief Kendra Wecker expects their opportunities to harvest a whitetail will only improve as the calendar flips deeper into autumn.
"White-tailed deer are highly active during October and November because of the breeding season, making these months popular for bowhunters," Wecker said.
Ohio has earned a national reputation for being home to trophy-class white-tailed deer. That distinction translated into 36,664 non-resident season hunting licenses being sold last season, and 1,576 non-resident three-day licenses.
"Ohio's long-term management plan has led to quality deer hunting that is recognized as some of the best in the nation," Wecker said.
Ohio's record non-typical buck scored 304⁶/⁸ and was harvested in Greene County in 2000 by Michael Beatty. The two top typical bucks, harvested by Brad Jerman in 2004 in Warren County and by William Kontras in1986 in Clark County, both scored 201 1/8 . The important aspect is that all three of the record deer were harvested with archery equipment.
Locally, the outlook for archery hunters is promising with strong deer numbers and an abundance of quality bucks. "I think it is going to be a great year for bow hunters," said Rock Vetell, owner of Rock Solid Archery in Haskins. "From what I am seeing, there are a lot of big deer out there, some real trophies, so there's reason to be excited about the bow season."
Legal archery gear in Ohio includes longbows, compound bows, and recurve bows with a minimum draw weight of 40 pounds. The arrow tip is required to have at least two cutting edges, and mechanical or expandable broadheads are legal. Crossbows with a minimum draw weight of 75 pounds are also legal, with the same arrow tip and broadhead regulations.
The deer harvest limits in Ohio are set by county, with most counties having a three-deer limit. Van Wert, Putnam, and Allen County have two-deer limits, while Lucas County is one of five Ohio counties with large metropolitan areas and the associated problems with burgeoning deer populations where the limit is four deer.
Additional rules limit hunters to just one antlered deer during the 2021-22 season, regardless of the method used to harvest the deer.
The archery season that opens Saturday runs through Feb. 6, 2022. Saturday is also National Hunting & Fishing Day, which recognizes the long tradition of hunting and fishing, and reminds everyone that the sale of licenses, plus the excise taxes paid on the purchase of firearms, ammunition, archery equipment, and fishing equipment, contribute billions to wildlife conservation efforts.
Ohio's gun season takes place in two phases, with the full week taking place Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, and the bonus weekend Dec. 18 and 19. The youth gun season takes place Nov. 20 and 21. The muzzleloader season takes place Jan. 8 and 11, 2022.
Michigan's archery season for white-tailed deer opens on Oct. 1 with the first phase running through Nov. 14. A second statewide archery period runs from Dec. 1 to Jan. 1. In Macomb, Wayne, and Oakland counties, the archery season extends until Jan. 31 as those metropolitan Detroit area counties continue to address persistent human-deer conflicts.
