From Ohio Department of Natural Resources

-- Steady rains dampened the efforts of Ohio hunters on opening day of the 2007 deer-gun season. Hunters took 19,391 white-tailed deer on Monday, Nov. 26, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife. The deer-gun season remains open through Sunday, Dec. 2, and then reopens for two days on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 15-16.

The preliminary figure from deer check stations throughout the state shows a decline from last year's opening day total of 39,629. Counties reporting the highest numbers of deer checked on Monday included Guernsey-871, Tuscarawas-833, Harrison-732, Coshocton-659, Athens-649, Holmes-621, Ashtabula-588, Noble-531, Licking-494 and Muskingum-471.

Deer hunting in the state is off to a great start this year, with both early archery and youth deer-gun season figures up from 2006. When combining the results of Monday's harvest, along 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 84,161 deer have been killed so far this deer hunting season. That number compares to 94,491 harvested last year at this time. In all, hunters took a total of 237,316 deer during all of last year's hunting seasons.

Approximately 400,000 hunters are expected to participate in the statewide deer-gun season. Ohio's deer population was estimated to be 675,000 prior to the start of the fall hunting seasons.