By TNHUNTING.COM STAFF

What started beneath the muggy temperatures of late September will end under unusually mild temperatures of early January for Tennessee's deer hunters this weekend.

Deer season in most of the state will conclude — for adult hunters, at least — on Sunday. In East Tennessee's Unit B counties, the season ended yesterday. There will be a youth hunt on January 13-14 statewide (open for youths ages 6-16 with a bag limit of two deer in Units A and L and one deer in Unit B) before the season is officially over for good.

But for the most part, Volunteer State hunters have just three days remaining after today in which to fill their tags.

When the season concludes at 30 minutes past sunset Sunday evening, the wraps will be put on an unusual deer season that started off with severe thunderstorms on the opening day of archery season, saw normal temperatures through the muzzleloader season and much of the first gun season, and then mostly mild temperatures beginning on Thanksgiving weekend, with a few bone-chilling days thrown in in early December.

Overall, the 2006 harvest has been a good one, as TnHunting.Com and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency had predicted it might be.

As of 9:30 a.m. this morning, hunters across the state (statewide hunts and WMA hunts) had bagged a grand total of 171,205. That's already nearly 5,000 above last year's total harvest of 166,379. The record harvest is 179,542, set in 2004.

Of the 171,000 deer harvested so far, 87,582 were antlered bucks, 71,384 were does, 9,438 were button bucks and 2,801 were antlerless bucks.

Email the author | Discuss it on our forums | More hunting news