While Kentucky hunters have taken over 100,000 deer so far this season, the opening weekend harvest count was down by about 400 deer compared to the last three modern gun deer seasons.

In November, hunters harvested 5,000 fewer deer than average based on the past three years.

Warm weather is to blame for the slow season, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources officials say.

"We would have to see more than one year of lower harvest before we'd be alarmed," Tina Brunjes, big game program coordinator for the department, said.  "One reason I think this year's harvest may be down, from my own hunting and from what I've heard from other hunters out there, is the warm weather during gun season."

State biologists say that despite the low harvest numbers, deer populations are still following a stair-step pattern that has been observed for several years now.

?"Season harvest seems to go up, down, up, down, each year in recent years," David Yancy, deer biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife, said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see it down a bit this year, and we end up with a total around 113,000 or 115,000 deer, and next year we're back up to 120,000."

While biologists don’t have a definitive answer for the pattern, Yancy suspects it may be caused by harvest fluctuations every other season or Kentucky’s deer population has simply reached maximum capacity.

Deer numbers peaked in 2004, and then began to decline. The current estimation stands at one million deer, according to a report on the Outdoor Wire.

Yancy pointed out though that a declining herd is not always a bad thing.

So far, 60 percent of the deer harvested during the modern gun season have been bucks thanks to the rut peaking in the middle of the season. 

Hunters have voiced concerns about the small number of deer seen and harvested, but, according to Yancy, seasons go up or down in a cycle that’s hard to predict.

Hunters in Kentucky have still got it pretty good though with 100,000 harvests.

"We're hunting a wild animal," Yancy said. "Part of the allure is that you can't control it. Part of it is that you're thankful to get to go and have quarry to pursue."