{"id":21815,"date":"2014-11-06T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=21815"},"modified":"2014-11-06T09:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T15:17:21","slug":"hunters-hopeful-wetter-summer-means-more-wildlife-in-oklahomas-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2014\/11\/06\/hunters-hopeful-wetter-summer-means-more-wildlife-in-oklahomas-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunters Hopeful Wetter Summer Means More Wildlife In Oklahoma’s Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jack<\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Jack Barrett, owner of the BDC Gun Room in Shawnee, Okla., shows off a new shotgun model popular with hunters.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Nearly a quarter of a million hunters are set to grab their guns and stalk through Oklahoma\u2019s woods when deer gun season<\/a> opens the week before Thanksgiving.<\/p>

But years of drought have taken a toll on wildlife populations in Oklahoma, and the men and women who hunt and fish for them.<\/p>

<\/p>\n

Popular Sport<\/h4>

\u201cThere\u2019s more deer hunters out in the woods on opening day of deer gun season than there is at Lewis Field, at the OU football stadium, and at the Tulsa football stadium combined,\u201d says Micah Holmes with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.<\/p>

Hunting and fishing pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Oklahoma’s economy each year, Holmes says. But last season, the number of deer harvested declined <\/a>nearly 25 percent compared to 2011<\/a>, to only about 88,000 \u2014 Oklahoma’s worst deer-hunting season since the 1990s.<\/p>

Less vegetation means less reproduction, fewer fawns, hungrier prey, and withering water holes that harbor disease.<\/p>

Western Oklahoma didn\u2019t get a lot<\/i> of rain this summer, but Holmes says wildlife officials and hunters around the state are optimistic about deer season, not because of the amount of rainfall, but the timing of it.<\/p>

\u201cWe expect this to be a good deer season,\u201d Holmes says. \u201cRight now there\u2019s already been about 18,000 deer harvested, and we expect to get up near 100,000. That\u2019s been kind of the historical average for the last several years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duck Call<\/h4>

Jack Barrett owns BDC Gun Room<\/a> in Shawnee, a small gun shop that uses military-style trucks as roadside billboards. He says deer hunters have been doing fine in central Oklahoma. It\u2019s ducks he\u2019s worried about.<\/p>

\u201cThe part of the drought that\u2019s had the biggest effect is on the duck hunters, especially down in the Little River bottoms on these slues down there,\u201d Barrett says. \u201cWhat these guys call their little hidden honey holes are just bone, bone dry.\u201d<\/p>

But he says fall rains will mean a good duck season this year, and a cooler summer has already helped dove hunters hit hard by the drought.<\/p>

\u201cThe first day of dove season is September 1st<\/sup>, and if it\u2019s still hot and dry, particularly to the north of us, there\u2019s no reason for them to come south,\u201d Barrett says.<\/p>\n

Trees, Birds<\/h4>

Holmes with the wildlife department says the outlook is better for quail and turkey, too.<\/p>

\u201cThe one thing we have started to notice is that turkeys in western Oklahoma use roost trees at night. They sleep up in the trees,\u201d he says. \u201cThose trees are often cottonwood trees along a creek, and in some areas it\u2019s gotten so dry that those cottonwoods have died, and so it\u2019ll be a number of years before those young cottonwoods get big enough for turkeys to roost in them.\u201d<\/p>

Despite the drought, wildlife officials haven\u2019t shortened any hunting seasons or limited the number of animals Oklahomans are allowed to hunt. But Holmes says stricter restrictions could be considered if the drought worsens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last season, the number of deer harvested was down nearly 25 percent compared to 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":21816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[520,423,427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21815"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21844,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions\/21844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}