Hunters in Harford County defied their counterparts statewide, killing about 7 percent more deer in 2010 than they did the previous season while hunters statewide killed 2 percent fewer deer.
Brian Eyler, deer project leader for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said Harford had a harvest of 3,819 deer for the year, which is 7.6 percent more than the 2009 total of 3,550.
Harford hunters killed about 9 percent more antlered deer in 2010, and 7 percent more antlerless deer.
There were 1,200 antlered deer killed and 2,619 antlerless deer killed.
Eyler said 1,617 of the deer were killed with firearms, 1,375 were killed by a bow and 827 were killed with a muzzleloader.
Hunters on Aberdeen Proving Ground also killed 505 deer in 2010, roughly the same number as the previous year.
That leaves Harford with about the same deer harvest numbers as several nearby counties, including Cecil.
Baltimore County had about twice as many deer harvested, which bucked the statewide trend, which saw a slight decrease in deer harvests.
The statewide harvest was down 2 percent from the previous year’s record harvest of 100,663 deer, according to a DNR press release.
Eyler said the department does not track the number of hunters by county, but he does not expect the number of deer hunters in Harford has changed in recent years.
“It generally has been stable over the last five or six years, so I would expect Harford County to be the same,” he said of the statewide hunter population.