What everyone should do is break down the buck and overall deer take on a per county basis in their home state, or state they predominantly hunt and see how well or how poor the harvest was in their favorite hunting locations over the last few years. This would be a better indication of how well an area holds deer and then cross reference that data with P&Y entries during the same period.
Using data from 1908 till the present time is somewhat flawed and here's why I say that. It's too long of a time period to be used to accurately predict your odds of encountering a book buck in the present day due to population growth and urban sprawl combined with loss of habitat over the years
Case in point is my home state of NY.
According to Nutter's spreadsheet, the top two counties of Suffolk and Westchester have produced the most P&Y entries with 170 & 144, leading you to believe thems the places ya gotta be hunting, right? Well back in 1908 I'm sure they were great to hunt because the population was nil and those areas were either uninhabited or farm lands. Present day populations in those counties are greater than some states and public land to hunt there is very limited and heavily used. These are areas where most of the "city folk" and weekend warriors go and they live by the motto "If it's brown it's down". Suffolk produces some big racks but most of that is from either private farms or urban deer that Joe public will never have access to the way locals do.
Last season for example Westchester produced 677 bucks and had an overall deer kill of 1,282, Suffolk was 1,861 and 4,525. Now let's drop down to Otsego County which is #32 on the P&Y list with a paltry 13 buck entries. That county produced 3,088 bucks and 6,424 overall. It has much more public land available with less hunters roaming around, it has a much lower population, and the land is better at holding and growing deer. I know I would rather spend all my time in Otsego than either Suffolk or Westchester.
Now look at the biggest deer producing counties...
#13 Steuben County with 52 P&Y entries produced 6,546 bucks and 15,452 total
#11 Chautauqua County with 58 P&Y entries produced 4,164 bucks and 10,894 total
#18 Allegany County with just 42 P&Y entries produced 4,201 bucks and 10,385 total
These have populations between seven to thirty two times less than Westchester and Suffolk which has to have some correlation as to the amount of hunters actually hunting these areas but I haven't found that info yet.
Like Nutter said, his list is a starting point for those looking to improve their game. Nothing is perfect and there's never a guarantee but putting yourself in a good area will certainly raise the odds of that special moment taking place.
Great job Mr. Nutter Buster!
Excellent way of thinking about the data. A few points.
Typically there have been more P&Y entries submitted each year. NY has 1730 typicals on record as a state since 1908. 65% of those have been submitted in the last 20 years. So 65% of the data comes from the most recent 18% of the years.
Specifically, for Suffolk and Westchester counties, 48% and 28% of the data comes from the last 20 years. So you ARE correct in that there is some impact from urbanization in those areas. Quite a bit in Westchester, actually.
But, the reason I took time to include population and square mileage is because I believe that in sprawling woods (my state) you're better to look at density per mile and in urban areas (your state) you're better to look at deer per capita. If you reorganize the spreadsheet trying to find the area with the most deer relative to the county population (and a FYI for anybody who may not know, you can sort the data by any column you please) and take the top third of those results, Otsego, Steuben, Chautauga, and Allegheny Counties all show up as potential good hunting. Suffolk and Westchester fall to the middle third. Far enough down the list I don't think anybody would be tempted to call them a good spot to start looking.
If I was going to drive to New York state with the intent of killing deer, I'd take the top 25/30% of counties as ranked for total P&Y entries, entries/mile, and entries/capita. I'd prioritize entries/capita due to the large human population. Any county that made 2 or especially all 3 of those rankings would be prioritized as well.
I would 100% also bother to include see if the harvest records are recorded, and luckily it seems they are. Into the data soup it goes!
I'd go 1 step further and request the data from the New York State Big Buck Club, which seems to be the local record keeping org. It looks like it's only available in physical form (boo) but I'd email and ask if he had a spreadsheet or at worst pony up $25. Since it's physical and would be a beeyotch to go through and pull the data it's quite possible I'd only use it to narrow down the top 15-20 states. But at this point, I'm getting a pretty dang good feel for New York for an Alabama boy who would be lucky to be able to point at it on a map.
By then I'm hoping to have 5-10 counties isolated out of 63. I'd then take those areas and look at:
- A light pollution map to identify concentrated human populations
- Soil map to identify good dirt
- Aerials of the whole county to identify cities, farm acreage, and big woods
- If I found substantial ag, I'd pull the USDA crop production maps to see if it was feasibly corn, soybeans, peanuts, or some other high/value whitetail food or junk like a sod plantation
- the available public land acreage
Once that's been considered I'd assume I'd have a fairly small list of public lands that interested me. They may not be the absolute best, but I'm almost 100% positive that I'd be hunting what any local would acknowledge as at least one of the top-producing areas in the state.
So maybe that's the explanation the naysayers need to hear. Don't just take P&Y numbers and pick a county. Use the data to compare units within a larger region. IE, if travel distance isn't an issue, use it to identify that the midwest is (duh) the place to be. If you're stuck in say, Georgia, but can feasibly hit Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and S/N Carolina, use it to figure out which state and counties have the best odds of a mature buck sighting. If you're stuck hunting in New York, use it to identify the best place in New York.
As you hone in, the need for more data to make a good decision increases. But for those of us who don't have a taxidermist in New York, the data can be found in a matter of say, 3 or 4 beers on a Saturday?