Methodology

What the Lab holds

Chart packs

Charts for 43 states, each with a caption you can paste, a PNG, an SVG and a cite line. Invitation only.

County harvest

County harvest totals by season for 24 states, as the state publishes them. The other states in the Lab carry the Buck Index and its rank by county, without totals.

County table

One row per county, season and measure for 25 states, with how the state produced each figure and where it came from, and a download of exactly the rows you filtered. Invitation only.

Rut dates

Deer breeding and rut timing for 6 states, as each state's own source gives it, with what kind of date each one is (a conception estimate from doe samples, a model or study mean, or collision timing), how the source derived it, and a county filter where the source names counties. Sources: FWC White-Tailed Deer Breeding Chronology in Florida, June 2018 regional model; Georgia DNR / UGA, Peak Deer Movement in Georgia; Indiana DNR, Annual Average Peak Rut county layer; Missouri MDC, adult female regional mean conception dates, Table 17 / Figure 22; NCWRC, Estimated Peak Conception Dates, updated 2025; Pennsylvania Game Commission, When is the Rut in Pennsylvania?. Invitation only.

Open data files

94 plain CSV files covering 49 states. Each file names its license in its header. Anyone can use them by URL.

State deer scoreboard

State-level antlered harvest, age structure, antlerless harvest and deer hunters for 48 states, as each state wildlife agency reported them to the National Deer Association. The sortable table is by invitation. The CSV is open. A blank in the scoreboard means the state did not report that figure.

Releases

1 release so far. Each states its findings, shows the figures behind them and links an open CSV. See the releases.

County cards and embeds

A shareable image and a live chart for each county. Both are open by URL and carry one visible credit line.

Open to everyone: this methodology page, the releases and the press page, the scoreboard CSV, the county card images and embeds, and the open data files by URL. By invitation: the chart packs, the county table, the rut dates, the scoreboard table and the affiliate kit. Writers and publications can ask for a login on the press page.

Instruments

An instrument is how a state produced a figure. The county table names it on every row.

County harvest published by the state wildlife agency

The county total the state wildlife agency published or reported for the season, carried as a whole number of deer. The basis column repeats how the state put it.

Archival county record

A county figure kept in the state's archival records, shown as it was published at the time.

Crash records

Crash reports from the state, divided by the miles driven in the county, so the figure measures traffic exposure and not deer density.

Disease surveillance

Chronic wasting disease sampling and test results that the state reports by county.

Mandatory harvest report

Hunters were required to report each harvest, so the figure is the count of reports the state received.

Registered harvest

Every harvested deer was registered or checked in with the state, so the figure is a count of those records.

Survey estimate

The state estimated the figure from a hunter survey, so it carries sampling error and is not a count.

Measures

Sources

Each line below is a source line exactly as it appears in the data. Agency names appear here and nowhere else in the Lab.

Scoreboard

• National Deer Association, Deer Report 2026: state wildlife agency figures for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons, as each agency reported them to the NDARetrieved Oct 24, 2026.

County table

• Alabama county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyAlabama
• Arkansas county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyArkansas
• Delaware county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyDelaware
• Florida county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyFlorida
• Georgia county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyGeorgia
• Illinois Department of Natural Resources CWD annual reportsIllinois
• Illinois Department of Natural Resources Hunt Illinois county harvest recordsIllinois
• Indiana DNR White-tailed Deer Report county crash table (from INDOT) over INDOT vehicle milesIndiana
• Indiana Department of Natural Resources county deer harvest dataIndiana
• Iowa Department of Natural Resources deer harvest reports by county (registration since 2006; mail-survey estimates 2001 to 2005)Iowa
• Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks yearly accident totals (from KDOT) over KDOT vehicle milesKansas
• Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Antler Alert county list (KSP crash data) over KYTC vehicle milesKentucky
• Kentucky county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyKentucky
• Maryland county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyMaryland
• Michigan Department of Natural Resources deer harvest survey (2011 to 2024) and eLicense mandatory harvest reports (2022 on)Michigan
• Missouri Department of Conservation Telecheck county harvest totalsMissouri
• New Hampshire county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyNew Hampshire
• New Jersey county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyNew Jersey
• New York county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyNew York
• North Carolina county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyNorth Carolina
• Ohio Division of Wildlife county deer harvest summariesOhio
• Oklahoma Highway Safety Office crash facts county table, animal-involved crashes (not deer-specific), over state vehicle milesOklahoma
• Oklahoma county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyOklahoma
• South Carolina county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencySouth Carolina
• Tennessee county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyTennessee
• Vermont county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyVermont
• Virginia DOT crash records, deer collision type, over VDOT vehicle milesVirginia
• Virginia county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyVirginia
• West Virginia county deer harvest published by the state wildlife agencyWest Virginia
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources CWD sampling and results by countyWisconsin
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources county deer harvest reports; archival county records before 1960Wisconsin

Open data file headers

• Illinois DNR / IDOT public records. Aggregated by Fully Drawn Research (fullydrawnresearch.ai). Free to use with attribution. A link back is requested, not required. Excludes proprietary and licensed datasets.2 files
• Illinois DNR Hunt Illinois harvest records (huntillinois.org, pulled 2026-09-27 and re-verified 2026-09-30). Aggregated by Fully Drawn Research (fullydrawnresearch.ai). Free to use with attribution. A link back is requested, not required. total = all seasons (matches IDNR's statewide totals); firearm = all gun seasons (firearm_season + muzzleloader + youth + late_winter); archery + firearm + cwd = total. Corrected 2026-09-30: earlier versions counted only archery + firearm season + CWD.1 file
• North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) measured county deer totals, 2025-26. Aggregated by Fully Drawn Research (fullydrawnresearch.ai).1 file
• Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) measured private-land deer totals, 2025-26. Aggregated by Fully Drawn Research (fullydrawnresearch.ai).1 file
• South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) adjusted deer estimates, 2024. Aggregated by Fully Drawn Research (fullydrawnresearch.ai).1 file

Our indexes

We publish what each index measures, what it compares against, its scale, its input classes and its limits. We do not publish component weights, normalization, thresholds or source record lists.

Limits

• Five survey states (Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska and South Dakota) estimate harvest from a hunter survey organized by management unit, so no county harvest figure exists for them and the Lab shows ranks only there.
• Michigan carries two instruments and they are never mixed.
• A state's own definitions of antlered and antlerless apply.
• The scoreboard is state level, as reported to the National Deer Association, and a blank means the state did not report.
• The Lab's county harvest window is the seasons each state has published. The first and last season the county table holds for each state are below.

Update cadence

County files

Newest Oct 20, 2026

County table

Newest Oct 24, 2026

Open data files

Newest change Oct 22, 2026

Scoreboard

Newest Oct 24, 2026

We add a season when the state publishes it, and the changelog on the county table page lists every change.

How to credit