NCRS - The Changing Midwest Assessment

Deer management is serious business in the seven states that comprise the North Central Region. For many years deer management simply meant monitoring deer numbers and the sales of hunting licenses. Then, there was a push for "big buck" management. Today, the most pressing management issue is chronic wasting disease.

Whatever the reason, people are very interested in deer. They want to know how many there are and where they are most abundant.

To that end, this slide show consists of a series of maps that depict how the harvest intensity of antlered whitetail deer has changed from roughly 1980 to 2000.

Note: Harvest intensity is the number of deer harvested per square mile.