This year’s deer harvest isn’t expected to reach the record highs of the past two seasons but “it’s going to be fair to good,” said the state game biologist for the Wrangell-Petersburg area.
“We had a really good dump of snow this past winter,” said Frank Robbins, the longtime state game biologist in Petersburg. “We lost a good portion of last year’s fawns,” which were unable to forage for enough food in the deep snow.
“We may have lost some older bucks,” he said, though the overall population looks strong.
The general hunting season for Sitka black-tailed opens Saturday, Aug. 1, and runs through Nov. 30. The bag limit is two bucks. No doe harvest is allowed, to help protect the population.
The past few years have been excellent for deer hunters in the Game Management Unit 3, which includes Wrangell and surrounding islands.
“We’ve had record harvests the last two years,” Robbins said.
The take exceeded 1,100 deer in each of the past two years in Unit 3, surpassing the Department of Fish and Game’s harvest objective of 900 bucks.
The harvest totaled more than 900 deer in 2023 before the record years in 2024 and 2025.
“I’m not anticipating a record harvest,” Robbins said for this year, but he still anticipates a good year for hunters.
