Hunters in Callaway County can celebrate a successful season.
The county was the top in the state during the fall archery turkey season and the second overall during deer season.
The Missouri Department of Conservation reported a total of 5,703 deer and 69 turkeys harvested in Callaway County. Both seasons ended Jan. 15.
Franklin County checked 6,248 total deer, while Texas County checked 5,157.
Neighboring Boone and Cole counties checked 3,407 and 1,612 respectively, according to preliminary data.
For the fall archery turkey season, the runners-up were Greene County with 63 turkeys and Franklin County with 62.
Callaway hunters harvested 2,238 antlered bucks, 574 button bucks and 2,891 does.
Though Callaway fell short on antlered and button bucks, more does were harvested in the county than anywhere else in the state.
"That's a good thing - you want to harvest more antler-less deer in an area with a high deer density to keep the population in check," MDC conservation agent Stephen Kistner said Tuesday.
Callaway County regularly has one of the highest deer harvests in the state due to a variety of factors. Not only is it a large county with a high deer density, it also has more than 20,000 acres of public land available for people to hunt, Kistner said.
According to MDC preliminary totals, 4,741 fewer deer were harvested in Missouri this season than in the 2018-19 season, when hunters checked 290,224 deer.
At the same time, archery totals increased this year.
The top deer hunting counties for archery were Jefferson, Franklin and St. Louis counties. Callaway came in fourth with 1,145 deer. Across the state, hunters checked 61,209 during the archery season.