Page 35 - September/October Outdoor Oklahoma Magazine

Table 4: Elk Harvest by County, Sex, and Method
Archery Gun Muzzleloader
County Cow Bull Cow Bull Cow Bull Total
Adair 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Beckham 0 0 0 2 0 2 4
Caddo 0 2 6 7 0 0 15
Carter 0 2 0 0 0 0 2
Cherokee 1 1 6 0 0 1 9
Choctaw 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Cimarron 1 4 11 5 0 4 25
Coal 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
Comanche 23 30 252 159 5 6 475
Dewey 0 3 0 0 0 0 3
Greer 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Hughes 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
Kiowa 0 5 23 31 0 0 59
Murray 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
Muskogee 0 2 3 0 0 0 5
Okfuskee 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Texas 0 0 0 2 1 0 3
Grand Total 26 51 303 208 6 13 607
ulation occurring in
the Special Southwest
Zone of Caddo, LARRY E. SMITH/FLICKR CC-BY2
Kiowa, and Comanche
counties. Private-land
hunting with written
landowner permission
during the state’s elk
seasons and a draw
hunt via ODWC’s con-
trolled hunts program
were the two main
avenues for taking
an elk. Hunters took 607 elk during the 2021-22 Texas County yielded a total of 43 prong-
season, 272 of which were bulls. A breakdown by horns. Archery hunters bagged eight prong-
county, sex, and method is found in Table 4. horns (7 bucks and a doe), while gun hunters
took 35 pronghorns (10 bucks and 25 does).
Pronghorn Table 5 shows a breakdown of harvest by
Pronghorn roam the short-grass prairie in county, sex, and method of take.
the western part of Oklahoma’s Panhandle.
Pronghorn numbers are relatively small in the Deer Age Structure
state, but populations continue to support Every year, the Wildlife Department enlists
limited hunting. Opportunity lies in over-the- various sources to gather data from the state’s
counter archery licenses, once-in-a-lifetime deer harvest. Those sources include Deer
controlled hunt permits, and landowner per- Management Assistance Program (DMAP)
mits. Hunters took 152 pronghorns from the cooperative landowners, local meat proces-
open hunting zone, which includes Cimarron sors, taxidermists, and our online Age My
County and that part of Texas County west of Deer program. The age data provide us with
State Highway 136. key information relating to the structure and
Those hunting in Cimarron County took 109 health of Oklahoma’s deer herd. Figures 11
pronghorns. Archery hunters took 13 bucks, and 12 represent the ages at harvest for ant-
while gun hunters took 39 bucks and 57 does lered and antlerless deer this past season. It’s
during the combined gun seasons. apparent how the state hunters have taken

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 33