St. Paul - In the end, the archery season wasn't all that different from the deer season as a whole.

Before the firearms season, archery hunters were about on the same pace as last year. Then the gun season opened, and the archery harvest never recovered.

 Bowhunters had killed 19,700 deer, compared with 21,100 at the same time last year.

"The archery kill was right on leading up to the gun season," said Lou Cornicelli, wildlife research manager for the DNR. "We're still hitting about 20,000 archery deer harvested every year. We've done that every year since we went to over-the-counter bonus permits and let people move around the state. Since we've gotten more liberal with the regulations, archers really have benefitted."

Up until the 2003 season, bowhunters never had killed more than 16,000 deer in a season. They have killed 20,000 or more every year since then.

The number of regular archery licenses sold - 87,600 - was down about 3,500 from the year before, Cornicelli said.

However, the total number of deer licenses sold this year - more than 511,000 - is up from last year. But the total harvest is below last year's mark.

Hunters killed about 192,000 deer during the archery, firearms, and muzzleloader seasons, Cornicelli said.

This year's kill is down from the 207,000 deer hunters killed last year, and is the lowest total kill since 1999, when hunters killed just fewer than 181,000. It's the second time in the past three seasons the total kill has been below 200,000.

In recent years, deer hunters in the state have enjoyed record kills. In 2003, they killed more than 290,000 deer, which is the historical high mark. Each year between 2004 and 2007, the total kill exceeded 250,000 animals.

But even at the time, officials said such high harvests weren't sustainable. And during public input meetings in those years, citizens in most parts of the state told the DNR to reduce deer densities.

"The southwest still has lower deer numbers than we want, but by and large, for the rest of the state, populations are where folks told us they want them to be," Cornicelli said.

Last year's tough winter likely resulted in increased predation and mortality, which led to fewer deer available to hunters this fall, but "the bottom line is most of the (state has deer densities in line with) what we were obligated to manage for," he said.

"High deer densities got us into trouble once," Cornicelli added, "and I think now maybe lower deer densities are getting us into trouble."