Muzzleloading season appears to have fewer bucks – MariettaTimes.com

By Brad Bauer, bbauer@mariettatimes.comPOSTED: January 11, 2010 “Muzzleloading season appears to have fewer bucks” For the past several weeks Joseph Hendershot had been seeing a large buck roaming around his Stanleyville-area home, but the buck disappeared – sort of.Hendershot, 48, hoped to take aim at the impressive 10-point buck during the state's muzzleloader deer season, which opened Saturday and continues through Tuesday.”I froze all day Saturday and most of Sunday looking for him,” he said. “I saw lots of deer, but nothing with horns.”Hendershot said he began to theorize his buck may have been killed by a bowhunter or moved to another area. But on his way out of the woods for lunch on Sunday, Hendershot said he found a clue to the mystery.”I looked down and found a shed,” he said. “It looked like half of the rack from my buck… That buck probably walked past me 10 times and I didn't know it because he's already dropped his horns.”Nearly all bucks shed their antlers each winter, but the shed generally doesn't occur until late January or later. Wildlife officials said the difference this year is likely related to a food shortage.Many parts of the region encountered the worst crop of nuts and other wildlife foods in the last 40 years this past fall.Hunters in West Virginia said they noticed fewer bucks during their muzzleloader season last week.”There's a definite biological reason for it,” Chris Ryan, wildlife management supervisor for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources told the Associated Press. “When bucks are malnourished, they tend to shed their antlers earlier than usual.”Hendershot said he planned to go back out to the woods on Sunday in hopes of finding the other half of the shed and maybe another buck that hasn't lost his rack yet.”I'm going to be afraid to shoot a doe, just because I don't want to accidentally shoot that buck,” he said. “If that guy can make it through the rest of the season, he should be a real dandy come fall.”A total of 227,748 deer have been harvested so far this season in Ohio when combining the adult and youth gun seasons, early muzzleloader season, gun weekend, and the first nine weeks of the archery season.That compares to a total of 218,890 killed last year during the same time period. Hunters took a total of 252,017 deer during all of last year's hunting seasons.Prior to the start of the hunting season, Ohio's deer population was estimated at 650,000. The Division of Wildlife expects as many as 210,000 hunters will participate in the muzzleloader season.Ohio's statewide archery season continues through Feb. 7.

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