While the turning of the leaves on campus reflects the end of the fall semester for many students, the foliage’s auburn hues signal to some a new season arriving in Mississippi. Hunters across the state will rise before the sun on Nov. 18 as deer season kicks off.
Although bow hunting season began on Sept. 15, the vast majority of those with a hunting license participate during the rifle hunting season, which starts on Dec. 16 and lasts until Jan. 17 statewide. The influx of hunters during rifle season is estimated to gross $1 billion dollars annually for the state.
Cody Britt, a junior biology major, shared why he enjoys the season and what the sport of hunting means to him as a symbol of his childhood and familial ties.
“I grew up hunting since I was like five years old with my dad,” Britt said. “It’s always been part of my lifestyle. I enjoy getting out in the great outdoors and the peace and calm that it brings. The good times you make with friends and the stories you tell in a blind are incomparable to anything I’ve ever experienced.”
For those looking to hunt in the Oxford-Lafayette area, hunting is open on all private land and the Holly Springs National Forest; however, the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks does place some restrictions on the type of buck that can be legally hunted on public land. They define a legal buck as, “having either a minimum inside spread of 10 inches or one main beam at least 13 inches long.”
The season begins as the MDWFP estimates the deer population in Mississippi to be 1.5 million, a record high for the state with some estimating the number to be closer to 1.75 million.
Overpopulation of deer in the state can have many negative effects on the animals, one being chronic wasting disease, a fatal neurological disease for deer, elk and moose that was first reported in the state in 2018. Mississippi State University, which recently pioneered a new method for detecting CWD in deer, reported 79 cases of CWD so far this year.
William McKinley, the MDWFP’s deer program coordinator, encouraged hunters to expand their “bag limit” this season in a recent interview with WAPTV-TV. A bag limit refers to the number of deer that a hunter is allowed to kill per season.
“Since there are more deer out there than there have been, there is less food for each individual deer to get to. That’s why we’re encouraging hunters to take an extra deer this season on their bag limit,” McKinley said. “Licensed hunters last season took 270,000 deer, but that still wasn’t quite enough to keep that herd from regrowing this year.”
Despite this increase in deer population, the state bag limit remains the same at one buck per day and a limit of three for the annual season. The reason for no increase in the limit, as explained by McKinley, is that hunters usually do not meet these limits, only averaging two to two and half deer per season. While hunters are not required to record their deer harvests, the MDWFP does encourage hunters to report their harvests via their mobile app to aid in conservation efforts.
“With the spread of CWD among the deer population in Mississippi, it’s a great thing that the Mississippi Department of Wildlife is encouraging hunters to kill more deer this season, because it will reduce the spread of this harmful disease and hopefully make the deer population more healthy and more adequate for the hunter’s consumption,” Isaiah Goss, a sophmore public policy leadership major, said.
