Walker to budget $2 million for deer management...

[Dan Salmon]

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/outdoors/walker-to-budget-2-million-for-deer-management-to8n626-190484471.html

I guess we'll have to wait and see what this all means, but at least there is now some additional funding outside of tag fees.

[bullwinkle]

I just don't understand how DMAP will work in Wis. I can get all the doe tags I want now. Pulling jaw bones, weighing deer to get their live weight and having the DNR mandate how many does you need to shoot does not sound attractive to me. If I could get more buck tags as a reward that would be different

The other items cited seem trivial. Is Walker just doing this as a policial move? Doing something to show that the Czar was not just a waste of tax payer money?

Very disappointing

[Dan Salmon]

I agree with your take on the DMAP idea short of areas like Buffalo County and the southern region where there are larger landholdings and cooperatives set up. In the North, there is just no way that I see this happening in any meaningful way outside of large leases in timber company lands. Deer Camps in Wisconsin are not set up like they are in the south with 100 guys banding together and leasing land. There are very few in this state that will pay for access to land having grown up with all the state and county land that is and has been open to hunting for years. I predict you'll see a very large drop in hunter numbers if the cost is increased a significant amount and land access becomes a pay to play game more so than it already is.

Which is funny, because this is a slap in the face to the mentored hunter and hunter recruitment laws passed in the recent past.

I can see and laud the expense for updating the digital imaging used by the Dept.. The DNR is currently using early 90's GIS information to establish conclusions for certain areas.

I don't know about you, but there have been lots of changes in the habitat in the areas that I hunt in the last 20 years. Enough so that age structures of the forest would be counted on for producing and carrying more deer than the current 20 year older forest can. This would make it much easier for the DNR to over emphasize harvest quotas and get problems in return from hunters who are not seeing deer because what was considered a good harvest goal was actually an over harvest sanctioned by the Dept.

[bullwinkle]

I was part of a DMAP lease down south about 10 years ago. The DNR would come in and tell you how many does to shoot to get the right population balance. They gave you free tags for the does and had you weigh each deer live weight and cut out the jaw bone for aging. We got nice data tracking the age and body health of our deer.

The club was in it for the data. Club rules were so tight on bucks we never approached the limit. They wanted as many bucks as possible and the help from the DNR to manage the property - 4000 acres. Does weights really helped determine the carrying capacity of the property. If our doe weights dropped, we got more tags the following year and threatened to be pulled from the program if we didnt shoot our quota.

We never could shoot enough does. Each year the leadership threatened that we would be kicked out if we dont meet our doe quota. We never got kicked out but the pressure was always on.

I can see this has the potential to back fire in Wisconsin. So you join the DMAP program. The DNR comes in and tells you to gather all this data and that you are not shooting enough does. How do you think the response to this will be? That is what they will tell me if I join

They need to make it easier to manage the deer not more difficult. My neighbors get on me for shooting does and frankly the DNR has already offered me as many crop damage tags as I want. I dont take them because it is such a pain in the tail to shoot them. Registering them, taking them to the donation site, etc.

I would be more interested in quit registering does, unlimited doe tags on over populated counties and give an extra buck tag for every 3 does harvested. Carrot instead of a stick

This will be very interesting. I plan on sitting back and watching this. My neighbors are torqued at me now for shooting does, so I quit.

[X Factor]

I like the updating of deer range though who knows what they'll find with all the changes due to development in the past 20 years. There are a lot of new tree plantings around in my area though so maybe that helps balance it out.

DMAP? Seems like a waste to me. I just can't see a lot of guys paying to sign on to something like that. The guys who'll shoot does always will shoot does. Those who don't like to won't. And so much depends on your hunt area. If you're not seeing deer, even deer that you know are there from your cameras or deer spotlighting, you can't shoot them. And if you see one finally and it's a doe, even though you have many more on the cameras you might not shoot her either. It's so much a perception deal.

Wisconsin has spent dollars a lot worse ways though so at least it's something. I do agree this does little to nothing for recruitment. They'd do better buying $2 million more in a few 200 acre parcels of wetlands-upland-farmlands mix for good hunting somewhere near a few different metro areas down south.

[hot tamale]

From the way I understand it, the state agencies are divided up into their own little organizations. From what I was told a while back, and i might have this wrong or confused, but the DNR, some dept. of agriculture and some other dept. all have money for satellite imagery and even though they use the same imagery or that they could share the information, they dont. does this sound familiar to anyone?

Of course I cant remember the 3 agencies now when i am writing about it, but there were 3 that i remember that: if they shared their resources, they would be able to afford the updated imagery and save lots of state funded dollars. I want to say it was brought up on the news about 5 years ago.

Anyone, sound familiar???