Part of the reason coastal deer regions are no longer at the top in the deer harvest trends lies in the liberalization of either-sex hunting seasons across the Piedmont and mountains. In the early '90s, the Coastal Plain was the first region to see a greatly increased number of either-sex hunting days, leading to the coastal region having the highest harvests. The deer herd at the coast expanded the fastest and had the best deer population densities at the beginning of the restoration process.

"Our goal back then was to increase the antlerless harvest to slow population trends based on evaluations of herd health, talking to the constituents and evaluating deer density issues," Stanford said. "We increased hunting opportunities to slow population growth. That is now not only occurring in the Coastal Plain, but in all of our 15 different management zones across the state. With a couple of exceptions, deer populations appear to be decreasing."

In urban and suburban areas where hunting has been lost as a management tool, deer densities are still on the increase and are making newspaper headlines as deer severely damage ornamental plants and are involved in increasing numbers of auto collisions. While hunting with firearms is prohibited in many of these highly developed areas, bowhunting represents an option for hunters who want to see lots of deer in low-pressure hunting conditions.

"At Wake Forest, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and all along the I-40 corridor, we have rapidly developing regions," Stanford said. "We are getting complaints from property owners. But urbanized settings are not usually receptive to hunting to help reduce the deer herd. A lot of these areas where the population is still increasing typically have no laws against hunting with bows, just with firearms, and that represents an opportunity some hunters may be missing."

Taking a look at the harvest statistics shows the northwestern counties, particularly Ashe, Alleghany and Wilkes, to be top producers of deer. Wilkes is consistently among the top counties in terms of deer harvest.

NORTH CAROLINA'S TOP 10 COUNTIES 2004 HARVEST
1. Halifax	5,484
2. Northhampton	4,382
3. Bertie	4,131
4. Wilkes	3,945
5. Anson	3,448
6. Pender	3,383
7. Bladen	2,981
8. Duplin	2,841
9. Columbus	2,731
10. Edgecombe	2,629

"A lot of people want longer hunting seasons in the mountains," Stanford said. "The northwestern season has been extended 44 percent in the last four years and now those mountain counties actually harvest more deer per mile than do the counties in the eastern region. In that region of the state, there is a large proportion of agriculture land and there are still lots of rural areas where hunters can actually find places to hunt."

The total deer harvest in each county is only one measure of what deer populations are like. Because the size of counties varies, and because the percentage of deer habitat in counties also varies, a better measure is found in the number of deer per square mile of habitat. The northwestern region had a harvest of 5.1 deer per square mile of habitat. The central region had a harvest of 5.0; the eastern region had a harvest of 3.9 and the western region had a harvest of 1.5 deer per square mile of habitat.

The western area of the state has lower deer densities due to poor quality habitat resulting from poor soils and short growing seasons in the mountain region. With the exception of the western part of the state, adding, say, a 20 percent longer season does not increase the harvest by 20 percent.

Stanford said, "There's a limit to the effective length of the deer season. If you extend the season beyond a certain length, you will not really harvest any more deer. A lot of northern states have a weeklong season and take the same proportions of their deer populations than we do with a longer season. But up there, they have to consider weather conditions and do not have the traditions of the longer seasons we do in North Carolina."