Back Then

 

I am so old (83), it’s sometimes hard for me to believe how far down the road has come the success of the annual Oklahoma deer season since I first hunted it as a twenty-one-year-old in November 1966. My grandfather, Austin Howell, never hunted deer in Oklahoma because there were none to hunt, and he was born here in 1896 and lived here all his life.

The deer in Oklahoma were essentially gone by the time he was a ten-year-old-boy, with only squirrels and quail left to hunt. There were a few deer left in extreme southeastern Oklahoma, but the annual take was often less than a hundred all through the early Twentieth Century, which was the major portion of Grandpa’s life. Some years there was no season at all. People that saw a deer run across the highway in that time talked about it for years, and the listeners were rapt, wondering what a wild deer might look like, and would they ever see one themselves.

Now, the wisest drivers in the state, cross their fingers and hope they don’t kill one themselves on the highway during the month of November anywhere you live in Oklahoma. They are not foolish thinkers.

I am not very good at math, but some numbers stick well in my brain because of my exercise with them. In 1966, I killed a buck on the old Brooks Ranch down in Hughes County. That year, I think 5,180 deer (all bucks, the only sex legal) were killed in the state.

I don’t know if any were killed in Osage county. Really. If any were, the number reported did not strike a spark in my weak brain. Southeastern Oklahoma was still the only real “deer country” in the state. So unusual was the harvest of a deer in the state, anywhere, during season (poaching had never stopped) that successful hunters had their names printed up in local, large metropolitan dailies. Mine was one of them.

I remember one year early in the state’s archery season, “back in the day” when less than a dozen deer were killed. Some people of that era believed killing a deer with a bow was not possible. People in the family talked about “Conrad’s deer”, killed with a gun, for several years. Well, here I am talking about it 56 years later.

Arriving in the mail last week was my annual 2012 Big Game Report compiled by the Oklahoma Wildlife Department, and written up by Jerry Shaw, Programs Director for the ODWC, and Gary Keller, Wildlife Research Technician for the same. It’s not just “my” report: You could get it, too, with an annual subscription (think Christmas present) to the ODWC full color, bi-monthly magazine. Barring that, you could buy a copy off any good magazine rack. Try Steve’s Sundries about 26th and Harvard.

The Big Game Report is always essentially a numbers analysis of the previous year’s deer harvest, as complete as can be compiled. I’m going to refer to it right now, but not nearly as complete in detail as did Shaw and Keller. The report is stuffed full of fascinating facts that take up nearly the full magazine for September/October. My space is limited.

I just gave you a “full” report for Oklahoma’s 1966 deer season, right? Holy mackerel. Last year in Oklahoma, all seasons tallied, 112,863 deer were harvested, the third highest deer bag ever recorded and just behind the all-time record harvest of 119,346 set in 2006.

Last year, high power gun hunters took 68,410 deer and muzzleloaders 19,545. Bowhunters set a new harvest record with a total kill of 24,908 deer. Incredible, for us. Remember when people said not one could be taken with a bow? I do. I’m so old.

The county with the highest total harvest was Osage with 5,118 deer killed. Remember what I said about that county earlier? Remember what I said was the total harvest for the whole state back in ‘66? I mean, incredible. Second and third for 2011 were Pittsburg with 3,765, and Atoka with 3,386. It is now possible for a single deer hunter, all gun seasons “tagged out,” buck and doe, a couple of special “draw” hunts thrown in, to take upwards of ten deer by themselves. I am stunned, and impressed with how well the ODWC has put my hunting license fees to work for me, and you, over the years.

Yes, at the ripe old age of 47, I am not very good at recalling numbers exactly, but I can still write down what I see other people put on paper. What I can’t believe is what I know to be true, and what I have largely seen happen with my own ancient (still blue) eyes: The “good old days” of Oklahoma deer hunting are happening right now.

Copyright © 2012 Conrad M. Vollertsen