2009 Wisconsin Hunting

[cschauf]

All I know is that every single person I talked to from several different DMUs say the same thing. Very dissapointing season and will only get worse if the DNR keeps it up. Most hunters I know are intelligent people and understand that we cannot go back to the numbers of old but most will agree, we can sustain a higher number of healthy deer, and habitat, than the DNR is telling us. A lot of the hunters I talked to are farmers. Everyone of them I talked to would like to see more deer and would sacrifice some of their crops for it too. Before long the hunting tradition that WI is known for and the one I grew up expierencing and am trying to instill in the kids I mentor will be gone. I guess I dont it to go down without a fight.

[berudd]

So, it's just not clear to me. How can the DNR increase the deer population? Reduced tags for those areas? From what you say, no one is killing deer anyway because they are not there to kill. If tags are going unfilled how far do they have to be reduced before that has an affect? I don't live up there so obviously I don't know anything about the situation. I am just trying to understand.

Where I live in NC there are areas that are crazy think with deer. And then there are areas not that far away that have very few. Is it not conceivable that your area just does not hold deer very well?

[wack]

 I was visiting the DNR website the other day and stumbled upon a DNR survey that EVERY ONE OF YOU should fill out DAILY! I too have been deer hunting in Wisconsin all of my life. I am now 44 and I have never seen the deer herd so low as the past couple years. I was at the EAB hearing in Madison last April and have heard all the excuses and seen all the finger pointing I can stand. The DNR's system for counting deer, wolves, bears and other wildlife for many reasons has not been working correctly. While they are trying to figure out what went wrong, what's working, what's not, someone finally came up with a way for hunters to document what they are seeing. The more hunters we can get to fill out the daily surveys for each day they've hunted, the better we can document in black and white what we've been trying to tell the DNR and lawmakers for the past few years. Not only can this help with our current deer crisis, but the survey also covers more of the big picture by adding other wildlife sightings such as wolf, bear and coyote.

 This is the intor page for the survey
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/harvest/survey.htm
 
This is the actual survey:
http://doa.wi.gov/DNRSurveys/TakeSurvey ... ID=n2M0m52
 
and this is the link for the preliminary results:
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wil ... dhsurv.pdf


Fill it out for every day you hunt!

[wack]

So, it's just not clear to me. How can the DNR increase the deer population? Reduced tags for those areas? From what you say, no one is killing deer anyway because they are not there to kill. If tags are going unfilled how far do they have to be reduced before that has an affect? I don't live up there so obviously I don't know anything about the situation. I am just trying to understand.

Where I live in NC there are areas that are crazy think with deer. And then there are areas not that far away that have very few. Is it not conceivable that your area just does not hold deer very well?

Berudd it's difficult to explain the situation in Wisconsin because there's really at least 3 situations going on in this state. In the south we have CWD zone. In short this is a zone that the DNR wanted every deer wiped out but CWD scared most hunters away and they fell very short of there goal.

 Mid Wisconsin is mostly farm land where the Dept of Agriculture has waged war upon the deer herd in the name of agriculture. Northern Wisconsin is the northwoods where we keep our wolves and black bears....Our wolf population past the DNR population goals several years ago but the DNR's hands are tied by the Endanger Species Act and the anti hunters like The Humane Society of the United States who want to stop hunting by using wolves to kill off all of the game animals. Our DNR has worked hard to rebuild our bear population and have actually done a little too good when they announced a year ago that we don't have 13,000 bears, we have over 40,000 bears. Just a little error.... Our DNR also had a plan to bring elk back to help the deer feed the bears and wolves, started with 25 elk in 1995. Those 25 have multiplied to about 160 this year and are still fighting the Dept of Ag to turn the "TEST HERD" into a "REINTRODUCTION HERD" so that program is 10 years behind schedule while at the same time bear and wolf populations have exploded in the northwoods over the past few years, and the human hunter trend since CWD found down south in 2002, hunters who normally hunted in the south drove north for CWD free deer, and our deer herd up there has all but collapsed.

 Inshort, northern Wisconsin has very few deer for its reasons, central Wisconsin has few deer for different reasons, and the southern CWD zone has the most deer, but even there it's about 1/10th of what it was in 2000.

 The fear of CWD from agriculture on top of claims of deer crop damage, forestry industry claiming deer were hurting our forests, and DNR responding by setting a goal to take our 3 million deer and reduce it to 700,000 was done over the past few years in a somewhat careless way and nobody really knows when we hit that 700,000 mark or how far past it we went. We as hunters trusted that when they handed us 6 tags each, there was a need for it. There is no longer a need for it, but we can't seem to turn the killing machine off. We faught to get rid of EAB to save the herd and now they say we have to chose another method as effective as Earn a buck. There is still a few more days of black powder season, another 3 day doe only gun hunt and all of late season bow hunting to go this year and they're talking about turning our 9 day season to 16 days next year. We tell them there are no deer and they just keep pushing to kill more deer. This gun season kills are down 1/3 from last year. Last year was down 1/3 from the year before. We should be able to finish off the last 1/3 by next year and still have 40,000 hungry bears and wolves to feed. One way or another, whether mother nature or DNR, Wisconsin's war against CWD might be won, as the next few years we'll have to hunt south if you want a prayer of seeing a deer as we will race the bear, wolves and coyote to each and every last one. Even a guy from NC can look at a map and see that wolves and bears only have 1 dirrection to expand to in Wisconsin. A little hint, the blue on the map are very large lakes. There's only one thing left to feed the wolves in central and southern Wisconsin and they're easier for wolves to kill than deer. Fenced in cows and I for one will not defend the cows....

[cschauf]

Well said!


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[buckhunter21]

I agree with all of you...Not one person that I've talked to that has hunted this year is a happy camper.  They have said that this is the worst it has been, and it's been on the decline for years now.  I hunt west-central, WI, where we are supposedly 20-25% above goal, and I'm sure will be in herd control again next year.  Looking at the preliminary gun numbers, we are about 15% below from a year ago, and this number gets worse every year.
 
A smart man told me once that this is more the state forcing the DNR's hand, than it is the DNR, but either way, something needs to happen.  I think they go to vote on next year's season structure on the 8th...That's four days away.  Scary if you ask me!

[dmcianfa]

Couldn't have said it better myself wack[;)]

[cschauf]

We all knew the total numbers would be down because of the reduction of EAB units and Herd Control units. But, I would like to point out that almost every single county was down from the 2008 count on the number of bucks harvested. The percentage varies, but I will try and break it down.

counties with an increase of bucks harvested - 8 (not sure what is going on in Pepin but they were up 18.65 % on bucks)

Counties Down -
0% to 20% - 48
20% to 30% - 15
Over 30% down - 6

Statewide we shot 12,589 fewer bucks than we shot in 2008.

Satewide we shot 38,809 fewer bucks in 2009 than we shot in 2007.
 
Statewide we shot 50,972 fewer bucks in 2009 than we shot in 2006.
 
Interestingly enought too, license sales have remained realitively the same since 2003 - averaging about 644,000 licenses. But, back in 1998 to 2001 we averaged about 680,000 sold.
I suspect because of 9/11 a war in Afghanistan, in 2002 we only sold 618,000 licenses.

I suppose I could keep going but I think most are going to get the picture here. And it no wonder people are upset. That is a lot of back tag soup.

[Dan Salmon]

It has been said before, and I'll say it again, simply buying a tag does not entitle the buyer to harvest a deer.

If you have the time and/or desire, you should go back and look at all seasons number of tags sold vs. number of tags filled. My guess is that it's close to 60/40 or 70/30 unfilled tags on average (Excluding EAB seasons). If that's the only data that you have to document that something is wrong, the number of unfilled tags, I'm afraid you're going into this with a dog that don't hunt.

[lysy75]

Thanks guys for putting your post up. I hunt in the northwoods also. My hunting party & i noticed a decline in deer population since 2007 . On my dads property i would remember years ago on how much deer would be grazing in the fields. Now we are lucky to see 2 to 3 deer. Have noticed more bear & some wolves. Out of the 2009 gun season didn't see one deer at all. Have heard lot of stories on how lots of hunters are disappointed with the season. Lot of parties traveled back home empty handed.