Ohio's Bow Counties: Where Archery Takes Most of the Deer

Ohio reports every county's registered deer by implement, and in 2024 crossbow and longbow together took 45.8% of the statewide harvest. That average hides a spread from 95.4% in Cuyahoga to 23.6% in Wyandot, with 26 of the state's 88 counties above half. The high end belongs to counties in Ohio's big-city metropolitan areas, and the pattern held in 2025 to within 4.9 points in the twenty counties we tabulate. The data record which implement took the registered deer and say nothing about why hunters chose it, so this paper stops at what a hunter can use.

Ohio's weekly deer harvest report splits each county's registered deer by implement. The archery column counts crossbow and longbow together, the gun column counts rifle, shotgun, muzzleloader and handgun, and the total column counts all implements. Archery share is the archery column divided by the total. We use the 2024-25 report, harvest reported through February 2, 2025, which we call 2024 here. The Ohio Division of Wildlife posts these reports on its deer harvest summary page.

Because crossbows sit in the archery column, a "bow county" in this paper is a crossbow-and-longbow county, and the report cannot separate the two.

Cuyahoga leads at 95.4%. Of its 806 deer, 769 came by archery, which leaves 37 for every gun implement combined. Hamilton (84.1%) and Summit (83.8%) follow, then Lucas (74.0%), Lake (73.3%), Montgomery (66.0%), Franklin (64.7%), Butler (62.7%), Delaware (61.2%) and Clermont (61.1%). Warren (58.9%) and Clark (58.6%) come next in the figure.

The names track geography. Six of the ten have a big city as their county seat: Cleveland in Cuyahoga, Cincinnati in Hamilton, Akron in Summit, Toledo in Lucas, Dayton in Montgomery and Columbus in Franklin. The other four, Lake, Butler, Clermont and Delaware, sit in the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus metropolitan areas. The report records which implement took each deer and does not record why hunters in a county choose it, so we describe the pattern and leave the reason open.

Illinois has the same shape. Illinois Has Two Deer Seasons found a metro northeast that is almost entirely bow and a rural south and west that is still firearm country.

Wyandot has the lowest share, 23.6%, with 529 archery deer against 1,709 by gun. The other nine counties in the bottom ten sit between 32.5% and 36.9%. Four counties in all fell below a third: Paulding, Hardin, Marion and Wyandot. Even in Wyandot, hunters registered 529 deer by archery, so no county in these data is a gun-only county.

A share describes a county's mix, not how many deer bowhunters registered. Huron sits in the bottom ten at 36.4%, yet its 1,205 archery deer exceeded Hamilton's 1,033, and Hamilton has the second-highest share in the state. Monroe (1,085) and Seneca (1,062) also out-registered Hamilton by archery. Among the top ten, Clermont registered the most archery deer, 1,635, followed by Summit with 1,527.

A high share can sit on a small total. Franklin is a bow county at 64.7%, and its 2024 total was 638 deer. Clermont is at 61.1% on a total of 2,675.

The shares cover 88 counties. Ohio's 2025 weekly and final county totals differ in 52 of 88 counties by a combined 85 deer, so 2025 totals are not fully reconciled and we treat 2024 as the headline year. The 2025 column is a consistency check. Across the twenty counties in the tables, no share moved more than 4.9 points from 2024, and the largest moves were Defiance (33.6% to 38.5%) and Paulding (33.1% to 37.6%).

A share of harvest describes deer, and we have no count of hunters. We cannot say how many people bowhunt a county or whether they prefer it, only which implement took the deer that got registered. Harvest is also not population, so an archery share says nothing about how many deer a county holds. The counties are compared on one season, and we did not test earlier years.

Start with the implement. If you hunt with a crossbow or longbow, the 26 counties above half are the ones where archery already accounts for most of the registered deer. Hamilton (1,033), Summit (1,527), Delaware (1,112) and Clermont (1,635) pair a high share with the four largest archery totals among the top ten. If you hunt with a gun, the share is the wrong number to read. Subtract the archery figure from the total to get the gun figure, which is 37 deer for every gun implement combined in Cuyahoga and 1,709 in Wyandot. Wyandot, Marion, Hardin and Paulding are the counties where archery took under a third.

Then read the total. A share tells you where the mix leans, and the total tells you how many deer were registered at all. Franklin's high share sits on a small total, and Huron's modest share sits on a large one. Neither number covers access or hunting pressure, so check those before you commit to a county.

For the week-by-week shape of the same reports, Watching the Rut Happen plots Ohio's weekly harvest through the season.