Although weather and isolated disease cut the harvest in some South Carolina counties last year, in many areas the herds are quite dense. Photo by P.J. Reilly

By Terry Madewell

Successful deer hunting is certainly an individual sport - at any given moment, when you are in your stand, the only part of the deer population that matters is the part that might step out of the brush within range of your weapon.

One friend in the Coastal Plain area bowhunts several times a week and I don't recall a time when he didn't at least see deer on every hunting trip and most of the time he had one or more within bow range. On several occasions, he had multiple deer within 25 yards of him during the course of an afternoon hunt. Naturally, not all of them presented a good bow target, but he did have plenty of opportunities to shoot during the course of the season.

The point of the above is that overall the 2003 deer-hunting season was very successful for most hunters.

However, the total statewide harvest declined by about 14 percent, according to South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Deer Project supervisor Charles Ruth. Ruth notes that despite the significant decline in the harvest figures in 2003, he is confident that there's nothing to be worried about and all is well with the South Carolina deer herd.

"I think what's going on with the deer herd right now is not going to have any long-term negative impact. There are some extenuating circumstances that I'll explain; however, on the whole, I think the deer herd is in good shape," Ruth said.

According to Ruth and the data generated from last year's hunting season, there were 273,504 deer harvested during the 2003 season. That figure is noticeably lower than the 319,902 deer harvested during the 2002 hunting season.

"All things considered, that's still a lot of deer to be harvested and frankly as a deer hunter and as a deer biologist, I'm seeing plenty of deer in the woods and because of some unusual circumstances, I think the fluctuation is well within an acceptable range," Ruth said.

Ruth noted that he did receive a number of calls from hunters last year who were concerned about not seeing as many deer in the woods as normal. In many cases, however, the same hunters admitted they still saw lots of deer sign. Ruth has four specific items that he believes could be affecting the overall harvest number.

"First, after several years of drought, we finally got some rain and had plenty of rain in the spring and summer. Because of the ample rain, there were plenty of natural foods available, including persimmons, grapes, plums and other soft food sources. When there's an abundance of food available, deer simply didn't move as much as we were accustomed to seeing them during drought years when they had to move more to find ample food sources.

"The second factor that I'm sure suppressed deer movement during the course of the season was unseasonably warm weather last fall. As both a hunter and wildlife biologist, I know that the warm weather will suppress movements during times when deer are normally more active. Simple lack of deer movement will explain some of the lack of deer sightings," Ruth continued.

The third factor in fewer deer sightings, according to the biologist, may have been an aftereffect of the prolonged drought. While Ruth says that it is very difficult to measure the impact of drought on deer populations across many habitats, toward the end of the drought the long-term lack of water may have decreased the reproductive success of the herd.

Such an effect, in this case, would have been small - perhaps a few percentage points off the normally high rate of reproduction. But coupled with movement suppression and widely distributed food sources, a slightly lowered reproductive rate among deer might have contributed to last year's lower harvest.

"The fourth reason is that during 2002, there was a significant occurrence of hemorrhagic disease in the entire Southeast as well as South Carolina. The problem was more prevalent in the Coastal Plain portion of the state, but this mortality of deer may have had an impact on deer available for reproduction," Ruth said.

Again, this factor would have caused only a small reduction in the harvest: The deer population was not threatened with collapse, but hunters faced several conditions that in combination lowered the harvest.

Ruth also notes that with a pre-hunt season estimate of one million deer in the state and a harvest in the range of 300,000 for each of the last several years until 2003, we still have good numbers of deer and enjoy exceptional hunting compared to other states.

"I hunt deer in South Carolina, so I am concerned as a hunter as well as a deer biologist. I was fortunate last season to have some success early in the season. Mostly because of the hot weather we experienced during the fall last year, I basically did not go hunting after the first few weeks. I accept it's supposed to be hot early in the season, but I enjoy hunting in the cooler weather later on," Ruth said. "Apparently a lot of people felt this way or simply did not go hunting as much as normal for other reasons because we had a 10.7 percent decrease in the number of hunter man-days last season. Roughly there were 2.4 million man-days of hunting last season compared to 2.7 million in 2002. A 10 percent-plus drop in hunter activity also has to translate into fewer deer harvested as well. So when you consider all the points, I think it's several factors which led to the decline and I believe in general, we're fine in terms of our overall herd."

Another factor to consider is the long-standing, extremely high success rate for South Carolina hunters. Last season, the success rate was "only" 75 percent. That's 20-25 percent higher than, for example, the success rate in North Carolina, but it was 5 percent lower than 2002's success rate in South Carolina in terms of hunting quality.

"In addition to the high success rate, the average hunter harvested right at 2.0 deer last season, according to our data," Ruth said. "That's factoring in the hunters who harvested more than that, as well as those who harvested none. That's quite impressive also."

Ruth notes that the prospects for the 2004 hunting season should be about what we experienced the past year.

"I think it will be an interesting season from a biological standpoint. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure out this season if we were actually carrying fewer deer in the state than we have in the past or if (the other) conditions that I noted were having that big of an impact. The projection of our total deer herd number is based on harvest, so with the harvest we experienced in 2003, our deer model indicates we should have a population of about 900,000 deer in the state right now. Remember, most of us who were hunting 15 to 20 years ago when we had only 500,000 deer total population in the state recall having very good hunting then."

Most of the change in the numbers since then, Ruth said, has occurred because deer densities have increased in areas that formally were known to have very few deer. The Pee Dee area is a prime example of this.

"Twenty years ago, deer tracks were tough to find there; now the herd is expanding at a rapid rate and hunting is excellent," Ruth said.

He believes that in areas where the habitat has allowed the deer herd to expand, the hunting will continue to be excellent and perhaps even improve. In areas where the deer have filled the carrying capacity of the habitat, the hunting success rates are likely to be stable.

To help you plan where to focus your efforts this season, let's take a look at the specific areas where the most deer were harvested during the 2003 season. This is a good general guide to the counties and regions of the state where your odds of harvesting a deer are best.

Ruth notes that there were no real surprises in the data, although some counties had significant drops, while others had moderate increases. The pattern of continued growth in counties where herds are expanding remained, and the biggest drops were in counties where herds have been stabilized for a while.

We'll look at the data in two forms. First, a straightforward total number of deer harvested on a county-by-county basis. Second, we'll look at the harvest rate per unit acre.

The second perspective is actually slightly more predictive of the number of deer you are apt to see while hunting in a given county. That's because total harvest figures will naturally be higher in a very large county than in a small county. The small county may have a higher density of deer, however.

One useful quality of raw harvest numbers, however, is that comparing 2002's harvest with 2003's numbers can show which counties fared well in an otherwise tough year.

Leading the total harvest list was Fairfield County with 13,401 deer. There were 5,864 bucks and 7,537 does harvested. The doe harvest was also the top figure in the state and the buck harvest was second only to Orangeburg County. Fairfield County also had an 8 percent increase in harvest over 2002.

Orangeburg County was second overall in total harvest with 12,060 deer, which breaks down to 6,332 bucks and 5,728 does. Orangeburg County had a 23 percent drop in harvest from 2002.

The third-place county in total harvest was Chester County with 11,297 deer taken - 4,810 bucks and 6,487 does. The Chester County harvest was down 7.3 percent from the 2002 total.

Williamsburg County was fourth with a total of 10,972 deer harvested - 5,156 bucks and 5,816 does. The harvest here stayed very close to the previous year, down only 0.4 percent from 2002.

All four counties were in the top 10 list last year, so consistency is a mark of each of them.

In fifth place in 2003 was Newberry County, up from 12th place in 2002 with a harvest of 10,606 deer. There were 4,923 bucks and 5,683 does taken in 2003 and the harvest was up a whopping 21.4 percent over 2002.

Laurens County was sixth with a total of 10,429 deer taken, of which 4,966 were bucks and 5,464 were does. Laurens County also had a big harvest increase with a 33.3 percent jump from 2002.

In seventh place was Hampton County, last year's No. 1 county in total harvest, with 9,586 deer harvested. There were 4,597 bucks and 4,990 does taken, but the harvest was down 39.3 percent from 2002.

Colleton County was eighth with 8,541 deer, of which 4,564 were bucks and 3,977 were does. Colleton also experienced a big decline in harvest, down 35.7 percent from 2002.

In ninth place was Union County with a harvest of 8,500 deer in 2003, down 5.9 percent from 2002. There were 4,106 bucks and 4,394 does taken.

Rounding out the top 10 in total harvest was Kershaw County, up from 15th in 2002, with 8,366 deer. The breakdown was 4,072 bucks and 4,294 does and the overall harvest was up 2 percent from 2002.

As was the case with the raw harvest list, there were some new counties in the list of top harvest rates per square mile.

For counties not previously mentioned, we'll include the percentage change in total harvest for 2003 compared to 2002.

The top county in this format was Chester County with a total of 26.6 deer harvested per square mile, which works out to 24.1 acres per deer harvest rate. Chester County was fourth in 2002.

Allendale was second with 23.9 deer harvested per square mile (one deer harvested per 26.8 acres). Allendale County's harvest was down 7 percent from the 2002 total.

Fairfield County, the No. 1 in total harvest, was third in deer harvested per unit area with 22.3 deer harvested per square mile and 28.7 acres of land per deer harvested.

The fourth-place county was Bamberg County with 21.8 deer harvested per square mile and 29.4 acres per deer harvested. Bamberg County was No. 1 in this ranking last year and the total harvest was down a whopping 40.1 percent.

Fifth place belonged to Newberry County, with 21.4 deer harvested per square mile and 30 acres of land per deer harvested.

Sixth place was claimed by Union County, with 21.1 deer harvested per square mile and 30.4 acres of land per deer harvested.

In seventh place was Laurens County, with 21 deer harvested per square mile, which calculates to 30.5 acres per deer harvested.

In eighth place was Saluda County, with 20.0 deer harvested per square mile and 32.0 acres of land per deer harvested. The total harvest for Saluda County was up 0.3 percent from 2002.

There was a tie for ninth place, so the top 10 rounds out with Hampton and Lancaster counties, each with 18.9 deer harvested per square mile and 33.9 acres per deer harvested. The harvest for Lancaster County was down 5.8 percent from the 2002 total.

Just for general information, the next 10 counties in this list included, Abbeville, Cherokee, Greenwood, Calhoun, Orangeburg, Clarendon, Kershaw, Barnwell, Edgefield and York.

Take a look at the attached maps of the top 10 counties highlighted on a South Carolina county state map for each of the two ways we broke down the harvest figures. There are six counties that are represented on both maps and there are two distinct areas of the state that dominate the listings, one well-defined one in the Piedmont area. These are certainly not the only good deer hunting areas in the state, but you can rest assured the odds of finding deer in these two blocks of land are excellent.

As Charles Ruth notes, exceptional hunting can occur anyplace in South Carolina if the local conditions are good and hunters go to the trouble to make the habitat right. However, the above data will give you an edge in planning your strategy this season.