State harvest reports cover an entire state, combining estimates or telecheck records into one row for each county in each year. Military installations make a different tradeoff. A base restricts access to its property, has a fixed roster of hunters, requires a stop at a check station, and employs a wildlife biologist. Its records contain much more detail than a statewide county table. Minnesota's Camp Ripley reports hunter participation and deer harvest day by day, with deer separated into six groups by sex and age. Indiana's Camp Atterbury publishes antler measurements. Wisconsin's Fort McCoy summarizes disease monitoring on one property. The paper focuses on data quality rather than ranking hunting locations.
KEY FINDINGS
- Daily totals are published by Camp Ripley (MN). For October 31, 2020, the base documented 1,254 hunters in the field; that day's deer harvest totaled 153. None of the statewide harvest reports we reviewed provide that daily resolution in their annual county or management-unit tables.
- Deer harvest is sorted into six age-and-sex groups. Camp Ripley classified the 273 deer harvested during its 2021 archery hunt as adults, yearlings, or fawns within each sex (including 102 adult bucks, 66 adult does, 37 yearling bucks, 31 doe fawns, and the remaining groups). Statewide harvest composition is generally estimated through surveys or sampling. Kansas uses a hunter survey after the season to estimate harvest by age and sex in each of its 19 management units.
- Antler dimensions appear in Camp Atterbury (IN) records. The installation's natural-resources office publishes average maximum inside spreads of 12.8 inches among bucks aged 2.5 years and 14.3 inches among those aged 3.5 years. The corresponding main-beam measurements are 17.3 inches and 19.4 inches.
- Disease monitoring at Fort McCoy (WI) is reported within the property's boundaries. During 2024, the base's records show 241 samples collected for CWD testing, 1 positive result, and 10 deer fatalities attributed to EHD. That report covers surveillance on this single property.
IWHY A BASE MEASURES BETTER
Restricted property access, set hunter roster, required check
The structure of military installations leads them to produce more detailed deer data. A state agency estimates harvest over millions of acres and many thousands of hunters. The statewide tables we review usually show one annual figure per county or management unit. A base has a very different setup. It is a property with controlled access, a known acreage, and a hunter roster capped through that installation's permit system. Hunters enter through gates, and the natural-resources office is responsible in part for operating the hunt and managing the herd. At Camp Ripley, every harvested deer must be registered at the state wildlife agency's check station, giving staff the opportunity to record it. Procedures for checking in, checking out, and sampling vary from one installation to another. Together, these arrangements yield a detailed tally of harvested deer. States estimate across a county; a base measures within a single morning.
IICAMP RIPLEY
Daily detail in deer reporting
At Camp Ripley, a National Guard training center in central Minnesota, the controlled archery hunt is among the best documented in the country. Our source collection contains about 320 published measurements from these hunts. The depth of reporting sets it apart. State reports give a total for the season; Camp Ripley's reports break the harvest down day by day. On October 31, 2020, 1,254 hunters killed 153 deer. The following day, 1,079 hunters killed 80. The reports also count permits issued (about 2,500 in a typical recent year), hunters who actually took part, and hunters who were successful. Season success rates for recent archery hunts have ranged from 11 to 16%. Deer are counted in six groups: adults, yearlings, and fawns, separated by sex. The 2021 hunt produced 273 deer: 102 adult bucks, 37 yearling bucks, 18 buck fawns, 66 adult does, 19 yearling does, and 31 doe fawns. Those age and sex counts provide the basic data that wildlife biology depends on.
For a single day in October, Camp Ripley's records show 1,254 participating hunters in the field, with a harvest totaling 153 deer.
IIIATTERBURY AND FORT McCOY
Indiana antler measurements and Wisconsin disease monitoring
The measurements each installation publishes fit its management goals. In central Indiana, Camp Atterbury runs a hunt managed for deer quality and publishes related antler measurements. The average greatest inside spread is 12.8 inches for bucks aged 2.5 years and 14.3 inches for bucks aged 3.5 years. Main-beam lengths for those age groups are 17.3 and 19.4 inches, respectively. A published antler standard sets a 15-inch minimum inside spread, shaping which deer hunters may harvest. State harvest tables organized by county generally lack this level of property-specific antler measurement. In western Wisconsin, Fort McCoy reports on another priority: herd health. Recent records show that chronic wasting disease (CWD) sampling covered 59% of the harvest in 2023. In 2024, 241 CWD samples produced a single positive result, and 10 deer deaths were attributed to an epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) outbreak that year. Controlled-hunt harvest totals provide context: 464 deer in 2022, 426 in 2023, and 385 in 2024. Together, the sample counts, positive results, and outbreak deaths summarize disease surveillance on one property.
Swipe table to see every column
| Installation | State | What it publishes | Example measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camp Ripley | Minnesota | Per-day hunter & harvest counts; six-way sex/age split; permits, participation, success rate | Oct 31, 2020: 1,254 hunters, 153 deer taken |
| Camp Atterbury | Indiana | Antler morphometrics by age class; antler-standard rule; density-survey effort | 2.5-yr buck avg inside spread 12.8″; 3.5-yr 14.3″ |
| Fort McCoy | Wisconsin | CWD/EHD surveillance by animal; controlled-hunt harvest | 2024: 241 CWD samples, 1 positive; 10 EHD deaths |
| Fort Riley | Kansas | Managed acreage & habitat; permit and hunter-density caps by maneuver area | ≈71,000 acres managed; ≈700 acres food plots/yr |
IVTHE KANSAS IRONY
More reporting detail within a base than across its state
Fort Riley offers the clearest example of this difference in reporting detail. Its home state, Kansas, relies on hunter surveys and provides no harvest figure tied to the county where a deer was taken. Instead, it estimates the take using a survey conducted after the season and stratified by management unit. The state's deer estimates cover management units (19 of them), without county breakdowns, so Kansas supplies no county-of-harvest value. Within that same state, Fort Riley publishes acreage devoted to management: about 71,000 acres managed for wildlife and roughly 700 acres planted annually as food plots. Hunt controls also set hunter-density ceilings for individual maneuver areas. Fort Riley reports its property's managed acreage and limits on hunter density; Kansas estimates deer take across management units. Properties with controlled hunting can maintain detailed hunt and harvest records.
VREADING IT HONESTLY
Fine detail from a military property may not reflect hunting on neighboring land.
This reporting detail needs two cautions. First, management targets differ from observed results. Installation reports place density targets, preferred sex ratios, and antler rules beside measured findings. Those categories must never be treated as interchangeable. At Camp Atterbury, the 25-deer-per-square-mile value expresses an objective; it does not report observed density. Its average antler spread of 12.8 inches, however, was measured. We include management objectives in this paper and keep them separate from measured findings. Second, the surrounding county differs from the installation. Hunting under controlled conditions on a managed base will not reproduce conditions in the neighboring public forest or leased farm. Read its records as a detailed view of one managed deer population rather than a substitute for regional conditions. Our suggestion is to treat installation reporting as a benchmark for data quality instead of advice on where to hunt. These records demonstrate how detailed harvest reporting can be.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- Public records covering Minnesota controlled hunts and Camp Ripley's bowhunt supply the daily participation and deer totals, issued permits, actual hunter participation, success rates, and harvest composition across six age-and-sex groups. Our collection contains about 320 published measurements. We use only measured observations suitable for publication, excluding management objectives.
- The Atterbury-Muscatatuck natural-resources office published Camp Atterbury's antler measurements, including average maximum inside spread and main-beam length for each age group, together with its antler rule requiring a minimum inside spread of 15 inches. The value of 25 deer per square mile expresses a management target rather than an observed density.
- Fort McCoy's natural-resources office published the CWD and EHD monitoring values: the sampling percentage for 2023, plus the sample collection, positive results, and fatalities attributed to EHD for 2024. The controlled-hunt deer totals also come from that office's published records.
- Published installation records supply Fort Riley's managed acreage, food-plot acreage, and hunter-density values. Kansas estimates statewide deer take through a hunter survey after the season, with results organized by management unit. That reporting structure provides no county-of-harvest value. Consult this series' data map showing its two reporting tiers.
- Limits: these values apply to individual installations. They cannot support comparisons between bases or generalizations about nearby publicly or privately owned land. Management objectives remain separate from measured observations, with both identified throughout. The figures reflect a particular point in time and are current to the most recent published hunt season included in our source collection.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency or the Department of Defense. Installation figures are public natural-resources records analyzed independently by FDR and are presented as a data-quality illustration, not as hunting access guidance or a comparison of installations. Access to any military installation hunt is governed by that installation; management objectives are distinguished from measured observations throughout.
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