Route 20 West 1831 W. Main Street Bellevue, Ohio

419-483-5789

Deer Hunter Survey

Please help us enhance Ohio’s deer management program! As a deer hunter, you know that the county has always been the basic unit for deer management in the state. While this system has served us well, there is room for improvement.

In addition to harvest data, effective management of Ohio’s deer herd requires us to collect measures of herd health and conduct a number of hunter surveys. We must collect a sufficient number of samples from each management unit in order to make sound management decisions. However, collecting enough data from each of our 88 counties is simply not practical. By grouping counties or portions of counties into Deer Management Units (DMUs) that have similar deer populations, hunter access, and habitat characteristics, county-specific data will no longer be necessary. These new DMUs will allow us to more efficiently gather the necessary data to make sound management decisions. Plans to implement the newly formed DMUs have not been finalized, but we anticipate a roll-out date sometime next year.

We have completed the first phase of the project by creating six broad deer management regions. The next step involves you! To carve the new DMUs out of these six regions, the Division of Wildlife is asking you to provide locations of where you hunted antlerless deer, regardless of whether you were successful or not, during the 2011−12, 2012−13, or 2013−14 seasons. These harvest/hunt locations will allow us to group similar counties, or portions of counties, within our six broad regions to form the new DMUs.

·         Get more information about Developing New Deer Management Units [pdf 395Kb]

Your participation is essential to the success of this project. By completing this survey, you will be taking an active role in the management of Ohio’s deer population. Participation is completely voluntary.

This survey should take less than 15 minutes. Please remember there are no right or wrong answers. Rest assured that the information you provide will remain confidential, and survey data will only be released as summaries of the total dataset. Please click this link to access the survey.