Jeff Wilson began hunting 33 years ago, when he was 7.
He remembers staying up until 3 a.m. the night before firearm deer season began, restless with anticipation.
On Friday, he browsed the wares at The Gun Center in Frederick with his son on the eve of the start of this year’s two-week-long firearm deer season. He said he gets more rest than when he was a child.
“I guess the biggest excitement about deer hunting is that you never know what you’ll see,” Wilson said.
Each year, about 56,000 hunters seek deer with a firearm in the state, and they kill about 54 percent of the harvested deer, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
During the 2009-2010 season, hunters in Frederick County killed 8,447 deer. Roughly 5,000 of those deer were killed by hunters with firearms, the DNR said. That’s about a 2.5 percent increase over the total number of deer harvested in the county in the 2008-2009 season.
About 88 percent of the deer harvest in 2009-2010 statewide was taken on private property, the DNR said.
Despite the year-over-year increase, Wilson and Gun Center owner Bill Kelley said he has noticed a general decrease in the number of deer hunters in Frederick County over the past several years.
Kelley said he’s seen a slackening of sales at his shop from hunters in the past decade.
In previous years, he’d sell several cases of ammunition to hunters before deer season started, Kelley said. Recently, he’s been selling a fraction of that.
A hunter himself, Kelley said he believed part of the reason for the decline was that many hunters prefer to hunt private land, which increased development and change of ownership have made more difficult to do.
“A lot more people go to the range and target shoot,” Kelley said.
Wilson agreed and said many landowners do not want hunting on their property, and leases of land for hunters through the deer season have become more expensive.
Sgt. Art Windemuth, spokesman for the state’s Natural Resources Police, agreed that development reduces the amount of land available for hunters, though he said there is still plenty of hunting available on public land. Frederick County has more than 16,500 acres in six areas, according to the DNR website.
Wilson and Kelley said that public lands are often crowded and can attract inexperienced hunters.
Still, Windemuth said opening day of firearm deer season is “the most popular day afield for our sportsmen.”
He stressed the importance of safety precautions, including inspecting tree stands, guns, keeping written approval from owners on hand while hunting, and the most basic tenet of gun ownership: Treat every gun as if it is loaded and don’t point a gun at anything unless you intend to shoot.
Windemuth also recommended hunters with tree stands use a full body harness and tie a prusik knot to keep themselves from falling.
There have already been three fatal tree-stand accidents in the state so far this year, he said.
Brian Bowman, owner of Shuff’s Meat Market in Thurmont, said the number of deer brought to be processed dropped last year, and that he didn’t know what to expect this year.
Last year, Bowman said he processed about 380 deer, and in a typical year, he does about 440.
“I don’t know whether the economy will have a play in it or not,” Bowman said.
Wilson and Kelley agreed aside from economics or land issues, weather will always be a factor in hunter turnout. According to the National Weather Service, today will be sunny and breezy, far from ideal conditions, Wilson and Kelley said.
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