Best Deer Counties in Ohio: Coshocton Leads Per Square Mile at 13.20

The best deer county in Ohio by harvest per square mile is Coshocton, where hunters registered 13.20 deer for every square mile in an average season from 2020 to 2024. Holmes (12.23) and Carroll (12.02) rank next, the eastern hill counties hold the top of the list, and the flat farm counties trail, ending with Fayette at 1.01. We ranked all 88 counties by registered deer divided by land area, which puts big and small counties on one scale. The rate reflects hunter effort and access as well as deer, so it shows where registered kills were heaviest and leaves the size of the herd open.

A county total is a rate multiplied by land. Give one county twice the ground at the same rate and its total doubles, which is how a large county can top a list of totals with an ordinary rate. Dividing each county's average season by its land area in square miles takes size out of the comparison and leaves one question: how many deer did hunters register on each square mile? We averaged the 2020 to 2024 seasons so that one odd year would not set a county's place, and we took land area from the USDA Cropland Data Layer county summaries. Coshocton's average of 7,492 registered deer a season works out to the 13.20 that leads the state.

The top five all register 10.71 or more: Coshocton (13.20), Holmes (12.23), Carroll (12.02), Tuscarawas (11.86) and Knox (10.71). Harrison (9.89), Guernsey (9.83) and Ashland (9.42) come next, and the twelve counties in the figure end with Muskingum (8.49), Noble (8.35), Richland (8.34) and Morgan (8.01). For scale, the median Ohio county registered 4.66, so Coshocton's rate is about 2.8 times the typical county's.

The upper end of the list belongs to the eastern hill counties, and the flat farm counties of the west sit at the other end. Our forest-cover paper used this same measure across five Midwest states and found that Ohio counties with more forest tended to be the ones with higher rates, which lines up with the hills leading. That comparison shows two things moving together across counties and does not say why.

An average can hide one lucky year, so we also checked every season alone. A county counted as top tenth in a season when it ranked among the highest eight of Ohio's 88 counties on that season's rate (88 divided by 10, rounded down). Eight counties passed that test in all five seasons from 2020 to 2024: Ashland, Carroll, Coshocton, Guernsey, Harrison, Holmes, Knox and Tuscarawas. With eight places open each season and eight counties holding a place in all five, the same counties filled every place in every year, and no ninth county broke in.

They are also the first eight rows of the five-season ranking, from Coshocton at 13.20 down to Ashland at 9.42, so the year-by-year view and the average tell the same story. Muskingum, ninth at 8.49, sat close behind in the average and never reached the top tenth in a single season. Five seasons is a short record. It shows these counties held their places recently, and only a longer record could show whether they keep them.

The last column of the table gives each county's rank by its raw average total. Coshocton is first on both lists and Knox is fifth on both. Beyond those two the lists part company. Holmes ranks eighth by total, so seven counties registered more deer a season than its 5,186, yet only Coshocton beats its rate. Carroll's 4,797 is the ninth-largest total and its rate is third. Ashtabula runs the other way: it registered 1,615 more deer a season than Harrison (5,675 against 4,060) and still ranks thirteenth at 8.00, against Harrison's sixth at 9.89. Jefferson makes the same move lower down, 32nd by total and 19th at 6.73.

Totals favor big counties, and the rate favors counties where hunters registered many deer on little ground. Our comparison of total leaders and per-square-mile leaders runs that test across five states, and Coshocton is the one county in it that tops both lists.

Fayette County registered 412 deer in an average season, which is 1.01 per square mile and the lowest rate among Ohio's 88 counties. Coshocton's rate is 13.1 times Fayette's. The ten lowest run from Cuyahoga and Clinton at 1.97 down to Fayette, and every one of them sits under half the state median of 4.66 (half is 2.33).

Three of the ten, Franklin, Cuyahoga and Montgomery, are the counties of Columbus, Cleveland and Dayton, where much of the land is developed. The other seven, Wood, Clinton, Van Wert, Pickaway, Darke, Madison and Fayette, are farm counties. The city counties also sit at the bow-heavy end of Ohio's harvest, a pattern we describe in Ohio's Bow Counties.

The counts are registered deer by county from the Ohio Division of Wildlife, averaged over the 2020 to 2024 seasons for all 88 counties, and land area is the mapped county area in the Cropland Data Layer. The Division describes its harvest numbers as raw data that depend on population levels, hunter participation and regulations, and a rate built from them inherits all three. We did not measure hunter numbers or land access, and both differ from one county to the next.

The Division also says it has set deer population goals for most counties from farmer and hunter surveys and works toward them through harvest management. A county's harvest therefore reflects the goal set for it as well as the deer on the ground. None of this is a population estimate. When we say Coshocton ranks first, we mean hunters registered more deer per square mile there, and the data cannot say whether more deer live there or whether hunters simply take more of them. The rates compare Ohio counties with one another, and other states count harvest under other rules.

We believe a county's rate says more about where to hunt than its total does, so shortlist from the per-square-mile table and use totals only as a second check. Start with the eight counties that led in every season. Then rank them by how much ground you can hunt, because a high rate tells you hunters registered many deer on that ground, and permission, public acreage and the number of hunters sharing the county decide whether you will be among them.

If two counties look alike, take the one with the higher rate over the one with the higher total. If the top eight are out of reach for you, the ninth through twentieth rows of the table still sit well above the state median: Muskingum (8.49), Noble (8.35) and Richland (8.34) are each about 1.8 times the 4.66 median. Expect a lower count in any bottom-ten county, and go there for other reasons.