Deer hunting season starts out slowly

The deer hunting season wraps up this weekend for most hunters, and they are starting to make up for a slow opening weekend.

The hunting take during opening weekend was down 20 percent compared to last year, because of high winds, which made it more dangerous to be on a deer stand. Deer also tend to stay in one place when its windy.

Hunters were more successful the second weekend. Through Tuesday, 143,000 deer had been killed, down 7 percent compared to this time last year.

The Department of Natural Resources still hopes to hit last year's total harvest of just over 200,000 deer, said Lou Cornicelli, Big Game Program Coordinator.

"By and large, that opening weekend does drive the rest of the year, and we're probably going to be at or slightly below what we were last year," he said.

About half a million hunters registered this year. The pre-hunt deer population was estimated to be near one million animals.

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