Deer harvest up in the Kansas City area, statewide

Thursday, November 18, 2004

By Joe Warren

Nevada Daily Mail

The opening weekend deer harvest report for the Kansas City Region has been released and the numbers show that it is not a good time to be a deer.

But it is a good time to be a deer hunter. A record harvest was taken during opening firearms weekend throughout the state. There were 133,136 deer taken in Missouri over the two-day period of Saturday and Sunday.

That is an increase of 22,141 deer from last year, and is almost 6,000 more deer bagged this year when compared to the previous record of 127,995 set in 2002.

As a percentage, almost 20 percent more deer were taken this opening weekend than last year.

As far as the record is concerned, almost five percent more deer were taken this year than in 2002, when the old record was set.

The Kansas City Region also had large increases. The region includes Bates, Benton, Cass, Clay, Henry, Jackson, Johnson, Lafayette, Pettis, Platte, St. Clair and Vernon counties.

The regions totals were 14,672 for opening weekend this year.

That is up 1,433 from last year, almost a 10 percent increase.

In Vernon County, there were 837 deer harvested on opening weekend.

Vernon County Conservation Agent Larry Abraham said the numbers are good.

"With the deer accidents and crop damage reports we've been getting, we need to get the number of deer down," Abraham said.

Abraham also said the key statistics to look at were the number of hunting accidents on opening weekend.

There were only two hunting accidents in the entire state over opening weekend, and neither of them were fatal.

Vernon County did not have any reported hunting accident, something Abraham said has been on par as of late.

"We haven't had an accident here for several years," he said. "I think the quality of instructors we've got for hunter's safety classes are the reason why."

Abraham said there were two things that he has heard have gone well which have helped the hunting situation this year.

"(Hunters) like the 24-our check-in," he said. Previously hunters had to be at a certain place at 8 a.m. to check in their harvested deer the morning of the kill (or next day).

Now hunters can check-in their deer any time.

The other thing getting a large positive response was the Tele-check system. The Tele-check allows people to check-in their deer on the phone or the internet.

"A lot of landowners like the Tele-check," Abraham said.

Abraham said nothing out of the ordinary has been reported yet this season.

"We get the usual complaints of road hunting and trespassing," Abraham said.

The firearms deer season ends Wednesday, Nov. 24.

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