Deer seasons come and go, though seldom without alteration. Change, this time as a response to nature’s haphazardness, is again on the way.
License and permit buyers, who are the most affected by this year’s change, knew much of what was coming after the Ohio Division of Wildlife released its 2026-27 hunting season proposals a few months ago.
Proposals were originally approved for most game seasons by the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council, a citizens’ oversight panel, in April. However, the fluctuating state of whitetail livelihood triggered adjustments.
Specifically, testing of 6,617 deer for chronic wasting disease (CWD) undertaken during the recent season that ended in February turned up 40 positives, all in six counties northwest of Columbus.
That brings to 113 the number of positives in Ohio for CWD, an untreatable neurological disorder related to mad cow disease that kills by attacking the brain and nervous system.
The finding of a record number of infected deer, many of them increasingly distant from the initial positive detected in Wyandot County in 2020, indicates the disease zone is spreading and infections escalating briskly despite vigorous containment efforts.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS: More on Ohio hunting and fishing
To further help check CWD, the 2026-27 regulations will increase the scope of the so-called Deer Surveillance Area (DSA) where special hunting rules apply.
Moreover, within the expanded DSA, which will cover all of Allen, Hardin, Wyandot and Marion counties and parts of Hancock, Crawford, Morrow, Delaware and Union counties, the season deer limit will be six whitetails. The norm is three for most of the state.
Disease and its discontents figure in a few other county-based regulations that will be in force next deer season.
Hit by a severe outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) that reduced deer numbers sufficiently to temporarily cut the season limit, Defiance, Paulding and Warren counties will have three-deer season limits restored.
A number of southeastern counties where deer hunting is widespread will continue to deal with the ravages of EHD, a deadly viral scourge borne by biting midges, which has erupted in the last few years.
Last year’s outbreak during summer and fall killed so many deer in Athens, Meigs and Washington counties that the division made the unusual move of dropping the deer limit from three deer to two during the hunting season.
Better searches: Prefer The Dispatch on Google
Regulatory fallout for the coming deer season will mean that hunters in the three counties are limited to a single antlerless whitetail. In that way, the resulting preservation of does is expected to hasten the restoration of deer numbers when spring fawning rolls around.
A second deer taken in the three counties, by default, would have to be antlered.
Other two-deer counties include Morgan, Hocking, Vinton, Jackson and Lawrence. EHD hit Morgan County hard last year, and the other nearby counties had their deer numbers depleted by an outbreak two years ago.
Because deer numbers have already begun to bounce back in those counties, the two-deer limit doesn’t bar hunters from taking two antlerless deer.
Turkey update
Hunters in five northeastern counties joined Ohio’s spring turkey chase May 2-3, with an opening weekend take of 438 birds. The total in each of the five counties – Ashtabula, Trumbull, Geauga, Lake and Cuyahoga – surpassed the three-year average.
Results of the northeastern opening weekend, the first full week of the South Zone hunt and two youth hunts add up to 11,044 bearded birds. That’s quite a jump from the 10,078 turkeys checked at the same point of the season a year ago. It also bested the three-year average of 10,335.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Wasting disease, EHD affect start of 2026-27 deer season in Ohio
Reporting by Dave Golowenski, Special to The Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
