With three weekends of deer hunting under their collective belts, Tennessee archery hunters are seeing the deer harvest deficit continue to grow.

Midway through the first segment of archery season, the deficit over last year's harvest of the same period has ballooned to 32%. So far, hunters have checked in a total of 7,688 deer, as compared to 11,427 in the same amount of time a year ago.

That figure was as of Sunday evening, at the conclusion of the archery season's third weekend.

Many of Tennessee's 95 counties have yet to reach 100 deer harvested. The lowest, Lake County, has only seen a total of six deer harvested. Lake County is one of several Volunteer State counties with traditionally low deer harvests, but the six deer harvested is still less than half of last year's harvest over the same time period, which was 14.

Of the nearly 7,700 deer harvested so far, 2,433 were antlered bucks and 4,749 were does. Another 506 were antlerless bucks, including 404 button bucks.

The continued decline comes as hunters continue to experience unseasonably warm temperatures. The third weekend of the season was the warmest thus far, with many places setting or nearing record high temperatures on both Saturday and Sunday. Even in some of the higher elevations of East Tennessee and eastern Middle Tennessee, highs neared 90 degrees on Saturday afternoon.

A change in temperatures is expected by mid-week, however, as a cold front is expected to bring temperatures down to normal across the state.

Hunters have also questioned whether epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) might be responsible for the declined harvest, though TWRA officials have said that they don't expect much of an impact from the disease, which has caused deer die-offs across the state, reaching significant proportions in some isolated areas.

"The number of reports of hunters finding EHD that are coming in via e-mail to TnHunting.Com have declined drastically since the season opened," TnHunting.Com Publisher Ben Garrett said. "However, there were several hunters who said they weren't going back, at least until gun season opens, so EHD could have more of an impact than anyone anticipated."

Most hunters asked about the harvest decrease opine that a variety of factors, centered around the hot temperatures, are to blame for the decrease early in the season.