Shot counts for the season up or down

Alpena county. Way down from previous years.

 

Interesting. Glad to hear folks are having successful hunts! Funny how observations can be so different on separate areas of the same county.

 

Middle of Muskegon County. Opening day was a bust, but day 2 shots seemed to be way up. I counted 17 before about 3 pm. I would say it was around double what is typical for the first few days of gun season in my area.

 

Northern Clare/Harrison area way down.

 

Hunted the Clare/Osceola county line area the first 3 days and shots were way down. Northern Montcalm since then and the same thing. Around home very little shooting this weekend too so far. I don't think anyone around me is shooting does yet. Of course we have another month of rifle season basically to shoot does.

 

Clinton County, WAY down.

 

Wow everybody herd fewer shots. Shots were down in our western U.P. area.

 

N.E. St. Clair County way down from last year at three different locations. I heard five shots in the the first three days and consider how many could be Coyote shots. Heard one shot last night 3 minutes BLST, first evening shot heard in a week. Deer are more nocturnal but could be the warm weather related. A lot of our local processors were full but you had to take a look at the warm temperatures we had for the opener. These additional license sales had to be for the Xbow hunters.

 

Norther kent County public land shooting was way down, along with deer sightings.
Most years my spot is a deer freeway all day long.
This year I have only seen deer on one afternoon.
I believe it is due to no pressure on them to move to the safety area I hunt off.

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Very very few shots this year in Washtenaw County compared to previous years. Deer numbers are up according to the farmers in the area, but us and a couple neighbors aren’t seeing deer in daylight.

 

No way of judging if it was up or down with that wind are you kidding.

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I agree. North Central Montcalm. Definitely fewer shots noted than last year.

 

I hunt two areas Oakland and Wexford. Shot counts for both areas are way down. I did hear a few more shots in Wexford last night.

 

Just heard more shots today in the first hour than all of the first two days of gun. Hillsdale


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I have a theory...

I would bet that alot of the reason people heard less shooting was due to tagging out early and lousy weather the first 3 days. License sales are up somewhere around 9 % but early october we were up well over 30% pushing 40%.......that means alot of people who typically hunt november hunted early october. our success rate is roughly 50% so half likely shot a deer of some sort. Those earlier hunters may have killed their deer and decided to skip the high winds and rain for gun season. We also had many people skip deer camp because of covid this year.

Were we hunted on crawford county state land I would say we definately saw less people and shot count was typical for most years. My son hunted about a mile from me near an area that is typically loaded with people. He was one of 3 cars that parked there the first 3 days of season. The other two cars had two families.....they all stated they were shooting anything they saw. I think those two families did most of the shooting we heard on day two and day 3. I also think most people hunting state land in our area killed deer from what i saw.

Our camp had 4 hunters and killed 3 bucks. 1 was just before the opener during archery. The one hunter who wasnt successful saw bucks and passed small ones.