New York hunters harvested an estimated 224,190 deer during the 2019-20 hunting season. That’s according to Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos , who stated in a press release that “regulated hunting benefits all New Yorkers by reducing the negative impacts of deer on forests, communities, and crop producers, while also providing more than 10 million pounds of high quality, local protein to families and food pantries around the state every year.”

107,787 antlerless deer, and 120,403 antlered bucks is the estimate for 2019’s take, representing a 9 percent decrease in antlerless harvest, and a 6 percent increase in buck harvest from last season. In the Northern zone hunters took 20,236 deer, while in the Southern zone, 193,954 deer were taken.

Harvesting of young bucks less than 1.5 years old (yearlings) continued to be passed up, and the portion of yearlings in the adult buck harvest dropped to 37 percent percent, which is the lowest level to date. This is also the first time that the harvest of 2.5 year old bucks (at 41 percent) surpassed the harvest of yearling bucks, thanks to the DEC campaign of  Let Young Bucks Go and Watch Them Grow.

The 2019 season was on the side of bowhunters, as bowhunter take increased by 18 percent from the prior year, and regular and muzzleloader seasons were down by 6 percent.

To view the tables, charts, and maps detailing the current and previous years harvests can be found on the DEC’s website. To get a summary report of the 2019 Deer Harvest, you can click here.