A hunter asked about deer density in the state forest they use will usually shrug and say nobody publishes that figure. The assumption makes sense, but it is wrong. Our layer identifies 4,867 state parks, federal installations, refuges and wildlife-management areas. Just 874 (18%) have any figures for effort, harvest or herds; 281 have herd data. When agencies document their deer knowledge, including density, success in controlled hunts and aerial tallies, those facts often appear in sentences buried in lengthy management plans or plans for individual areas. Hunters accustomed to tidy county tables have to read through that prose instead. We located no deer figures for most properties. Available numbers usually describe hunting effort or harvest rather than density. The finding describes how much information is available and how it is recorded; it offers no ranking.
KEY FINDINGS
- The public-land layer covers 4,867 properties listed by name, including state parks, wildlife-management areas, forests, refuges and federal installations. Of those properties, 874 have figures attached. The layer contains 18,017 figures overall.
- The layer contains 8,987 rows for effort, 6,972 for harvest and 2,058 for herds. Those totals give a misleading impression. At a single Nebraska area, daily tallies of hunters using waterfowl blinds account for 5,210 effort rows. Another 2,431 record hunter trips for all species at sites in Illinois. Within the herd category, 762 rows tally birds and 265 give property sizes. Looking at individual properties, 380 have figures for harvested deer, while 121 have deer-related herd information, including disease testing, collisions, surveys and density. A numerical deer total, population estimate or density appears for 26 properties; 14 report deer density per square mile.
- Clear figures come from particular places. In Wisconsin, the plan for Flambeau River State Forest reports forest and regional densities of 23 to 31 deer for each square mile but gives no method. At Minnesota's Camp Ripley installation, reports provide hunter totals for individual days and success percentages for every archery hunt.
- The main warning is that a density goal differs from a measured density. Many numbers in plans are management targets rather than measured densities. OCR can mistake a cross-reference in a long plan, such as “Map 2.23”, for a number. The charts show only measured values reviewed by hand.
ITHE DATA EXISTS
Listed holdings: 4,867; holdings with data: 874
The tally challenges the starting assumption. Our layer for public ground includes 4,867 properties identified by name. Wisconsin accounts for over 1,600; Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan and federal holdings each supply hundreds more. Just 874 properties (18%) have figures, mostly describing hunting effort and harvest rather than deer density. We located no deer figures for most places listed. When an agency does publish a deer figure, it seldom resembles the harvest tables familiar to hunters. Illinois alone provides tidy totals of hunter trips for individual sites across hundreds of public areas, including 331 in this layer. In every other state, at most 14 sites have any tally of hunters; federal holdings account for 20. Deer information elsewhere does exist, but finding it means reading the management plan.
IIBUT IT'S THE WRONG SHAPE
Hunting effort and take dominate; densities seldom appear
Grouping the published data by its subject shows the gap right away. The layer contains 8,987 rows for effort, 6,972 for harvest and 2,058 for herds. Those row totals give a misleading impression: a single Nebraska area supplies 5,210 daily tallies of hunters using waterfowl blinds, and sites in Illinois supply another 2,431 hunter-trip records covering all species. The herd category also contains 762 bird tallies and 265 property sizes. At the property level, 380 places listed have figures for harvested deer. Deer-related herd data appears for 121 properties, including disease testing, collisions, surveys and density. A numerical deer total, population estimate or density is available for only 26 properties. Just 14 report deer density per square mile. Permit records and check stations produce tidy totals, making effort and harvest straightforward to publish. Estimating density takes a survey. When a property produces that estimate, the number tends to be written into a plan's prose instead of occupying a table cell. That leaves hunters' most wanted figure as the rarest, stored in the least convenient form.
Only 14 properties among the listed 4,867 give public-land hunters the figure they most want: deer density per square mile.
IIIWHAT CLEAN LOOKS LIKE
A few places with observations in print
Usable numbers are spelled out in some plans. The Flambeau River State Forest plan from 2010, in Wisconsin, reports forest and regional densities of 23 to 31 deer for each square mile but gives no method. A federal military installation in Minnesota, Camp Ripley, hosts archery hunts for deer, usually two per fall. Its reports detail issued permits and daily hunter tallies. Hunter counts on individual hunt days ranged from about 1,040 up to 2,210 during 2005 to 2015, compared with 518 to 1,953 during 2020 to 2022. Published success percentages range from 4% to 16% for the 19 hunts conducted during 2005 to 2022. For reports through 2015, success is calculated by dividing harvested deer by hunters counted on the opening day. Starting in 2020, they divide hunters who succeeded by participating hunters. These figures describe observations rather than desired outcomes or forecasts. Each can be quoted because its source provides an unambiguous value. The table that follows gathers a small selection.
Swipe table to see every column
| Property | State | What the plan reports | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flambeau River State Forest | WI | Deer densities of 23 to 31 per sq mi on the forest and in the region, as the 2010 master plan states them (no method given) | Plan statement |
| Camp Ripley installation | MN | Archery hunts: 1,041 to 2,208 hunters afield on a single hunt day (2005 to 2015); printed success rates of 4% to 16% (2005 to 2022) | Measured |
| City of Maple Grove | MN | Late-winter aerial counts of 50 to 145 deer in the areas surveyed (2013 to 2022, six counts) | Measured survey |
IVWHY IT LOOKS LIKE NOTHING
Targets, paragraph text and OCR mistakes
Why can public ground seem so short on data when genuine figures exist? Management targets, paragraph text and extraction mistakes all need attention. An intended outcome differs from an observation. Plans contain many desired densities, describing the deer numbers managers are working toward. Treating such a target as a measured result is the most common mistake about an individual property. Goals marked in the layer are left out of our published examples. The next difficulty is paragraph text. A density is tucked into a discussion of oak regrowth or nesting songbirds instead of a table, and ordinary searches never bring it up. The most deceptive problem is mistaken OCR. Text extraction across hundreds of lengthy PDFs can read a cross-reference such as “Map 2.23” and capture “2.23” as though it described deer density. Plotting the unreviewed herd rows would therefore be misleading. Among the 2,058 rows, most describe something other than deer density: 762 tally birds, 265 give property size in square miles, and just 67 use deer density per square mile. Text in 42 (2.0%) requires manual review, while 17 (0.8%) are marked as management targets. This finding describes the information available and the checking needed to distinguish measured results from goals or misread map references. It provides no ordering of public properties by deer density.
VWHAT IT MEANS FOR PUBLIC LAND
How the data is stored can be fixed
The distinction matters: “the data doesn't exist” requires the opposite response from “the data is buried”. We regard locating figures within plans and checking them as engineering work. Deer information is documented for a minority of public properties. Among the layer's 4,867 properties, 874 (18%) have any figures for effort, harvest or herds. Herd data appears for 281 (5.8%), and 121 (2.5%) have deer-related herd figures rather than bird tallies or property sizes. Available figures must be located within the relevant plan, confirmed as observations instead of targets, and cleared of errors introduced during automated extraction. Careful review defines what the available record can tell us about agencies' knowledge of deer herds on public ground. Plotting all extracted values or treating targets as measurements can create false claims. In our view, this sparse, difficult record earns trust only through manual checking of every figure.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- The layer contains 4,867 records with 4,267 distinct names counted separately within each state. Of those records, 874 (18%) link to at least one metric row. The rows include 8,987 for effort, 6,972 for harvest and 2,058 for herd, totaling 18,017. That total includes 232 rows unconnected to a listed property. Figure 1 tallies records linked to at least one row of each kind. Its deer count, estimate or density bars sort herd rows using metric names and leave out management objectives, since the layer's goal flag marks just 17 Wisconsin rows while 15 federal and other objective rows lack that flag. The layer has no deer counts for individual Illinois sites. Herd figures are the fewest and the messiest of the kinds.
- The examples were reviewed against the original documents. For Flambeau River State Forest (WI), the 2010 master plan gives deer densities of 23 to 31 per square mile for the forest and surrounding region without describing a measurement method. For Camp Ripley (MN), MN DNR archery hunt summaries provide single-day hunter totals and success rates. For City of Maple Grove (MN), the city's 2022 Deer Population Status Report provides aerial deer counts taken in late winter. These examples omit management targets and numbers produced by OCR mistakes or by cross-references being read as values during extraction.
- Only Illinois publishes total hunter trips for each site across all species for the 331 public areas included in this layer. This text does not list those individual-site values. The layer also omits deer tallies for individual sites, which the same Illinois documents publish for about 250 areas.
- Limits: figures in management plans use different methods, years and definitions, so they cannot be compared across properties. A density reported in one plan uses a different measurement basis from a density reported in another. Density goals occur throughout these plans, and we never show them as observed densities. We make no claim to rank public lands or provide a leaderboard.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. Figures are drawn from public state and federal land-management and area plans, analyzed independently by FDR. Herd figures are limited to hand-verified measured observations; management goals and automated-extraction artifacts are excluded and never presented as observed density. FDR is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency or land-management agency. Figures current to the 2026-07 corpus.
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