According to the latest deer harvest estimates, 27% of our deer hunters were successful at taking an antlered deer. Running some math results in a estimate of only 636,000 deer hunters left in this state. This is down from a estimated 1.2 million in the late 80s and early 90's. We have lost around 575,,000 deer hunters and most of those are rifle only folks.
I am a bit skeptical of it though. The last PGC numbers I saw on deer hunters was around 750,000 and that was just about 5 years ago. Did we really lose another 100,000 deer hunters in just a few years?