By TNHUNTING.COM
TnHunting.Com Staff

It was a whack-and-stack weekend for Tennessee's muzzleloader hunters.

Okay, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement. But Tennessee's opening weekend muzzleloader harvest was drastically ahead of the 2005 opening weekend harvest . . . which should come as no surprise to anyone.

Hunters on Saturday and Sunday bagged a total of 19,201 deer, according to preliminary figures posted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. That figure includes 8,816 antlered deer, 8,877 does, 1,128 button bucks and 380 antlerless bucks.

Hunters surpassed last year's opening weekend kill on Saturday alone, with 12,708 deer checked in at big game checking stations across the state.

Surprisingly, Roane County led the state in county-by-county kill totals, with an incredible 669 deer killed, according to TWRA totals. Hardeman County placed second with 493 deer, followed by Hickman (417), Hawkins (404) and Rhea (392) counties.

Last year, poor weather contributed to a poor opening weekend harvest, as only 11,469 deer were tagged during the first two days of the muzzleloader season.

Hunters killed 15,170 deer in the Monday-Friday portion of the muzzleloader season a year ago, as the weather gradually improved. It remains to be seen whether hunters this year will match that total, though it appears unlikely, with generally poor weather expected for much of the rest of the week. On the muzzleloader Monday last year, better than 3,000 deer were tagged in the fourth-best day of the eight-day hunt. As of 2 p.m. eastern time this afternoon, only 1,940 kill tags had been returned via the state's electronic checking system.

This weekend's total fell short of the 2004 opening weekend harvest, when hunters killed 20,298 deer en route to a total muzzleloader segment harvest of 34,523 deer.

Last year's segment harvest through Friday was 26,639.

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