Valley bucks national hunting trend

By kristine gill

kgill@vindy.com

diamond

It’s not uncommon to see a line of pickup trucks waiting in the Lakers Inc. parking lot late at night during deer season.

Tired but animated hunters usually swap tales while they wait to register their kills at the convenience store that serves as a check station through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.

“They tell me some fish stories and stay and have coffee,” said Lakers owner Sami Awadallah.

The Ohio hunting industry is holding steady despite a national trend that indicates interest in the sport is dwindling. But a change in the way deer and other game are checked through the ODNR Division of Wildlife could affect the tradition, and that has business owners worried.

Come March 1, deer and turkey can be checked online or by phone. The system is already in place in several other states and could save local hunters the hassle of traveling to distant check- points.

While businesses such as Awadallah’s don’t have to pay fees to be a checkpoint through the state, they aren’t paid for their services either. Some worry checking game remotely will limit the cash flow some enjoy when hunters buy gas or a cup of coffee after a long day in the woods.

“The hope is that when people have to wait a bit, they grab a bag of chips or something,” said Tom Frank, Mahoning County wildlife officer with ODNR. “These (business owners) are really doing us a favor.”

Frank collects forms from each of the three Mahoning county check stations on a regular basis. On Wednesday, he picked up 35 forms filed in just two days at Lakers Inc., a gas and convenience store in Diamond.

Awadallah has owned the store since 1995, and it has been a check point for hunters for about four years. So far this season, he said the store has checked about 1,500 deer.

Awadallah and his employees take photos of the hunters who stop by and hang the best of the photos on a wall in their gas station. They submit some to trade magazines for publication.

“I’m kind of disappointed because I might lose business,” Awadallah said. “When people come in here, they might pick something up.”

Mary McCarthy, owner of Red’s Sport Shop in Columbiana, said sharing stories in her store’s parking lot is half the fun.

“It’s all the experiences that go into it, the story, the things that happen to them,” she said. “The hunt is what it is, it’s not the kill so much.”

Despite the new check system, Frank said many hunters will still do things the old way.

“I firmly believe a good percentage will come to check in at a station,” he said. “Guys will do it just to be able to say, ‘hey, that’s a good deer.’”

Linda Dickson, owner of Monty’s Mosquito Lake Carryout & Restaurant in Cortland, agreed.

“A lot of the fun of hunting is being able to share your stories with other hunters and being able to come in and see what the other guys got,” she said. “We take a lot of pictures and those pictures are passed around many, many, many times over. Half the time I think they come in just so they can see those pictures.”

Jamey Graham, spokesperson for the northeast Ohio division office of ODNR’s Division of Wildlife, said the new system could even encourage more hunters to buy licenses next season if the process is less time-consuming. Hunters are required to check their kills by 8 p.m. the day after harvest.

“In more rural counties like Harrison, there aren’t many check stations,” Graham said. “If you shoot a deer late at night and have to work the next day, you might have to take off work or drive around. Now they can go straight home and do it online or grab a cell phone check it in the field.”

Also under the new law, those locations that have sold hunting licenses and permits in the past will also have to check deer and wild turkey. They will now earn a dollar per license sold instead of just 50 cents. The state earned about $23 million in license and permit sales in both 2009 and 2010, according to data collected by the ODNR.

Graham said statistics indicate that Ohioans are still avid hunters and youth continue to get involved in the sport.

“We do make effort to try to increase or maintain our hunting license sales. We’re certainly not suffering like other states,” she said adding that many states have seen drops in license sales in the tens of thousands.

Graham said fluctuation in Ohio license sales from year to year is expected and usually due to weather.

The number of hunting and fishing licenses sold in 2009 and 2008 have held steady in Mahoning, Columbiana and Trumbull counties at around 27,000, 31,000 and 50,000 respectively. Data is not yet available for 2010.

Graham said Ohio sold about 298,000 licences in 2009 and about 12,000 fewer in 2010, a 4 percent drop.

But the state’s non-resident license sales have increased 8 percent between 2009 and 2010.

“Ohio has some premiere deer hunting,” Graham said. “We have trophy bucks, which is very appealing to hunters, and an extremely healthy herd.”

Before the deer season began in November, there were 750,000 deer in Ohio. Graham said that number is down to about 500,000 now, but usually rebounds between seasons each year.

“We’re doing really good in Ohio,” Graham said.

HUNTING STATS

Hunters in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties took more deer on opening day than last year, reports the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.

The final tallies for Monday were 307; 639; and 851 for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana, respectively.

Hunters across the state took 37,805 white-tailed deer on Monday, according to the ODNR. This represents an increase of 12.5 percent from last year’s opening day total of 33,607.

The deer-gun season remains open until Sunday and then reopens Dec. 18 and 19.

Combining the Monday’s results with those from the early muzzleloader season, the first six weeks of archery season and the recent youth deer-gun season, a preliminary total of 96,725 deer have been killed so far this season, compared to 97, 371 last year at this time.