Record
year for firearm deer season
Alyssa Famuliner, posted Dec. 5, 2006
It
was a record year for the Missouri’s fall firearm deer
season which took place Nov. 11 through 21. More than 235,000
deer were checked in statewide. Many MU students hunted and
contributed to decreasing the large deer population in Missouri.
Some students found the season as an opportunity to all hunt
together with their friends from college, friends from back
home and their family.
Eric Hoffman, an MU student, invited a few of his fraternity
brothers from all around the state to come home on opening
weekend and hunt together on his farm in Trenton, Mo. “Hunting
with my friends is a lot of fun, since we all share the common
interest and are lucky enough to be from a rural area. After
they left I hunted by myself during the Thanksgiving vacation
and got a real nice size 10-point buck,” Hoffman said.
Ashley Sidwell, an MU student, said it is a tradition that
her and her father go hunting together every year. “It
does not usually end up mattering what size deer we shot,
we go to have fun and keep our close father daughter relationship.
But it is always nice when we get a buck, this year we shot
an 8-point buck,” Sidwell said.
This year, many hunters donated their deer to the Share the
Harvest, a program sponsored by the Department of Conservation
to help Missourians who are in need of red meat. Last year,
more than 4,900 hunters donated over 250,000 pounds to the
program. The numbers for this season have not yet been calculated.
The Missouri Conservation Department’s Protection Division
Program Coordinator, Bill Kohne, said with such a large deer
season they are expecting a larger donation this year.
To learn more about the statistics of this fall’s deer
season, visit the Missouri
Department of Conservation Web site.
