During the 2023-24 hunting seasons, New York hunters harvested an estimated 209,781 deer, including 112,224 antlered bucks and 97,557 antlerless deer. The buck harvest primarily consisted of older deer, with nearly 70% aged two years or older, reflecting the success of DEC’s “Let Young Bucks Go and Watch Them Grow” campaign.
The harvest included more than twice as many older bucks, bucks two-and-a-half years old or older, than were harvested in the early 1990s, and nearly five times as many than were harvested in 1969 when DEC first began monitoring the age structure of New York’s deer herd.
However, the antlerless deer harvest decreased by 15.6% from the previous season, a concerning trend as managing antlerless deer is crucial for balancing deer populations with available habitat and reducing negative impacts like crop damage and deer-vehicle collisions.
The highest deer harvest densities occurred in the Western Finger Lakes and Central Appalachian Plateau regions, with some Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) seeing over 10 deer harvested per square mile. DEC is considering strategies to increase antlerless deer harvests in areas where current numbers fall short of management goals.
DEC conducted Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) surveillance on 2,713 deer, with no positive cases detected, maintaining New York’s CWD-free status. There were also no outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease in 2023.
