For decades Owen County has been Kentucky’s top deer producer.
As incredulous as it may seem, hunters have checked in over 3,000 deer each of the past 15 seasons. No other county in Kentucky has ever approached that level of deer harvest, year after year.
Ranked 43rd in size, at 352 square miles, and 98th in population, Owen County is a rural county at the heart of Kentucky’s Golden Triangle, an area of 16 counties between the state’s three largest urban areas — Louisville, Lexington and metropolitan Cincinnati.
During the 2013-14 deer season, Owen County became the first, and so far, the only county in Kentucky, with a reported deer harvest to exceed 4,000 (4,069). Remarkably, the county’s harvest tally flirted with 4,000 two other times — during the 2008-09 season (3,910) and 2004-05 season (3,997).
Owen County’s rise to the perennial leader in deer harvest is linked to the growth of deer herds in the region as a whole.
“North-central Kentucky was one of the first areas in the state to have dense deer herds, and quality hunting,” said John Phillips, who was deer biologist for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources for 20 years, during the later stages of deer restoration. “When I became deer biologist in 1979 deer herds had already been restored throughout the Golden Triangle counties, but populations were low.”
But it didn’t take long for that to change. Phillips attributes the rapid growth of deer herds in the region to the abundance of quality habitat.
“The limestone soils are fairly fertile, and the timber had lots of vegetation in the understory,” he said. “There was plenty of food for deer.”
From 1979 to 1985, the combined deer harvest in the Golden Triangle counties jumped from 1,002 to 6,554.
Owen County’s meteoric rise in deer harvest is hard to comprehend. In just six years, between 1979 and 1985, the deer harvest rocketed from 193 to 1,645. By 1999, at the end of Phillips’ two decades as deer biologist, the deer harvest in Owen County had grown to 2,814. That was the last year the harvest has fallen below 3,000 deer.
Kyle Sams, a private lands deer biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said Owen County offers the perfect scenario for deer.
“It’s the combination of hills for cover, food (in forests) and agriculture, mostly pastures for cattle,” said Sams. “The sheer amount of quality habitat enables the deer herd to bounce back from big harvests.”
What’s remarkable is that in 13 of the past 15 seasons hunters bagged more antlerless deer (does) than bucks in Owen County. Generally, more than 50 percent does in the harvest depresses harvest the following season, but that has not always been the case in Owen County.
One of the densest deer herds in the state, Owen County had an estimated 70 deer per square mile, prior to the opening of hunting season this year, yet the body condition of deer in the county remains good overall.
“The county is about 350 square miles in size, and 99 percent of it is useable habitat for deer,” said Sams. “Deer get what they need.”
The county’s reputation for producing quality deer hunting has had an economic impact for decades, peaking each fall when visiting hunters pump money into the local economy, eating at restaurants, buying groceries and other staples, and gassing up their trucks and 4-wheelers.
Dave Jones, a real estate broker and co-owner of Golden Triangle Realty, LLC, in Owenton, Ky., said the demand for deer hunting land is steady.
“Deer hunting is big here. We get calls from people looking to buy or lease land,” said Jones. “They come here to hunt deer from as far away as New York, Illinois and Michigan.”
During the 2008 downturn in the real estate values, Owen County farms remained stable, Jones said. “Recreational buyers contributed to that.”
In a class by itself, Owen County’s deer herd has withstood the test of time, and in the process, become Kentucky’s number one hunting destination.
Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.