Crittenden County’s 2022 deer season was a tad better than last season, which saw a 10-year low in the county harvest.
The rifle deer season, when most animals are taken by modern firearms, ended Sunday after 16 days of hunting. It’s the only segment of the deer season when high-powered rifles can be used to take animals. There are other seasons for taking deer including muzzleloader, crossbow and archery. The bow and arrow season goes until Jan. 16.
Hunters took around 1,999 deer with modern firearms during November. That’s slightly above last year’s take of about 1,977. These figures do not include deer taken by other means during the rifle hunting segment, such as bow or blackpowder harvests.
The average modern firearm harvest for the five-year period ending in 2020 was 2,400. In 2019, 2,588 were taken.
Crittenden County has typically been among the top three counties when it comes to deer harvests, but last year it was fifth in overall harvest at the end of all deer seasons and this year the county has slipped even farther down the list to seventh in the state.
