Clayton, Allamakee and Van Buren topped last year's list of Iowa counties ranked by size of deer harvest. More of the same's expected this year.

Opinions and observations are flying as the 2008-09 Iowa deer hunting seasons approach. Some say our state is the best place in the United States to kill a trophy whitetail buck. Others contend deer numbers are down and regulations need to be tightened to build the herd back up. Still others point to deer/vehicle collisions as an indicator that herd numbers are too high, or complain that deer leases are decreasing the availability of land.

Indications based on statistics and surveys conducted by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources are that Iowa's deer herd is in good to excellent shape heading into the hunting seasons. Herds in 40 percent of Iowa's counties are at or near the IDNR's idea of optimum deer populations for balancing available habitat with minimal deer/human conflicts. The remainder of the state's deer herd is still above optimum levels but slowly decreasing as the IDNR adjusts regulations to allow hunters more opportunities to harvest deer in those areas.

The result: opportunities equal to -- and possibly better than -- recent years' excellent deer hunting.

BY THE NUMBERS
To gauge the potential of this year's Iowa deer seasons, we can look at the combined overall results from last year's seasons. Our deer populations change little from year to year. Where the deer were last year is where they're likely to be this year.

Given that, we can predict that the highest deer populations -- and therefore the highest harvests -- will be in northeast Iowa. Clayton County, in far northeast Iowa, was the No. 1 deer-producing county last year, tallying 7,551 deer over the course of last year's deer seasons. Allamakee County, Clayton's neighbor to the north, and Van Buren County in far southeast Iowa, tied for second place. Hunters in each of those counties killed 4,473 deer last season.

The rest of the top 25 deer-producing counties during last year's seasons were sprinkled across the northeast, east-central and southern counties of Iowa. A band of counties two tiers wide along the eastern and southern borders of the state were -- and probably will be -- our best.

At the other end of the scale, a band of counties four tiers deep across most of the top of the state tallied the lowest per-county harvest of deer during last year's seasons. No surprises there: Those counties contain some of the world's best farmland but few woodlands, and so will never have lots of deer. But some deer do inhabit those counties.

"There are deer anywhere in Iowa (where) there is enough habitat to support them, and sometimes that doesn't take very much habitat," said Willie Suchy, IDNR wildlife research supervisor. "Deer densities per square mile of timbered habitat in northern Iowa are about the same as they are in southern Iowa. There just aren't as many square miles of timber in northern Iowa."

The treeless nature of northern Iowa is reflected in the number of deer harvested from Iowa's bottom five deer-producing counties. Calhoun County tallied the least deer during last year's season, reporting only 136 kills for 99th place in the overall county-by-county rankings of deer killed. Hunters in Grundy County killed 141 deer to earn 98th spot, with Ida County tallying 208 kills for 97th, Pocahontas earning 96th position with 213 deer, Osceola County taking 95th spot with 224 deer and Emmet County "topping" our bottom five deer-producing counties with 269 deer killed.