The first deer hunt in Wisconsin was held in 1851 and the great tradition of deer hunting is still going strong 161 years later! The 2012 Wisconsin Gun Deer hunt was a successful hunting season with most if not all numbers up throughout the state. I haven’t gotten the final numbers of the deer harvest from the DNR which should be out either today or tomorrow. If I get it while I’m writing this column, I’ll be sure to include the figures. Many hunters wait and look forward to the deer gun hunt all year long for the nine-day gun hunting season. That’s a long wait for a little over a week of hunting. If you can take the time and hunt every day, which few people can now do with their work, families, and busy schedules your hunting time is limited. As I said in last week’s column, few hunters go north to the “deer camps” of the old days, much of the state’s deer herd has shifted to the southern agricultural areas and these days most hunter’s hunt locally when they can, be it a day here and there or even just a few hours when they have the time to get away.
I worked the opening weekend, Thanksgiving, and this past weekend till the season closed on Sunday. Opening weekend, the DNR had biologists and technicians both working registering deer and taking lymph nodes from deer in the CWD zones to check for CWD or chronic wasting disease. I helped register the opening weekend when over 500 deer were registered at my registration station at the Wilderness Fish and Game store in Sauk City, Wisconsin. The DNR also took over 100 samples from deer that we registered in the CWD zones for testing. I also worked on Thanksgiving and this last weekend and tried to talk to as many hunters as possible for their views and opinions. As I’ve mentioned before, hunters are not worried about CWD after living with it for a decade. The state is still testing for CWD at registration stations throughout the state to see if the disease is spreading, particularly after a deer in Washburn County tested positive for the disease. The initial core area for CWD was southwest Wisconsin, but the disease has continued to slowly expand its area of infection in Wisconsin. This is why the state in continuing to test deer for CWD in all regions of the state. As of February 2012, 172,000 whitetail deer have been tested for CWD and 1,800 have tested positive for the disease. Initially, there were two main locations where CWD was first discovered. One is western Dane County and eastern Iowa County and the other infected location is in northern Illinois and extends into south-east Wisconsin. There have been 336 deer that tested positive in Illinois since 2002. There are two things that have shown to be common in the CWD testing; older deer are more susceptible to CWD and the disease shows up in male deer twice as much as in female deer. CWD has been in Colorado and western states since the 1960’s and Wisconsin realizes that the CWD fight will continue for many years to come and cost much more money for testing and research.
There were 134,772 deer harvested on opening weekend which was based on the reports from the state’s many registration stations. Weather varied around the state, but overall the weather was unseasonably warm with temperatures in the 50’s. Hunters in the southern part of the state missed having snow on the ground, but later in the week parts of northern Wisconsin had a foot of snow which always helps for tracking. The warmer and dry weather opening weekend kept hunters out in the woods for more hours of hunting. The weather during the week after the opening weekend was good and favorable to hunting with the exception of Friday which had high winds. The weather cooled down for the closing weekend, but the sky was still sunny with little wind and temperatures in the 20’s and 30’s which is still nice for deer hunting. The number of deer harvested declined during the week and in my registration weekend there were far fewer hunters in the woods than expected after the first weekend. The many hunters that I talked to thought that weather conditions were fine for hunting though the deer numbers hunter’s reported seeing was down from the opening weekend. Something else to remember is that 60% or more of the total deer harvest is taken the opening weekend. Many hunters told me that they liked the new deer hunting format that is much like the older “traditional hunt” which Wisconsin had before the deer number explosion and the finding of CWD.
Encouraging things for the DNR included the overall statewide harvest up 19% from 2011 and early harvest numbers were up in all regions of the state with bucks up by 24% over 2011. Here are some other facts and figures that also are encouraging for the DNR and the overall hunting tradition that so many people have been working to maintain and grow with the addition of more women, younger children, and first-time hunters (and hunters that haven’t bought a hunting license in 10 years or more). These interesting facts include;
• 614,453 licenses were sold for the Deer Gun season which is up 2% from 2011.
• Resident deer licenses (568,831) were up 1.5%.
• Nonresident deer licenses (32,554) up 2%.
• 10/11 year old Mentored Gun Deer licenses (13,050) were up 10% which is great news after losing many “baby-boomers.”
• 60% of the licenses sold were in the month of November
• Females now represent 9.5% of total gun deer hunters.
• Youth (under age 18) accounted for 13% (78,604) of the hunters.
• Senior citizens (65 and older) accounted for 10% (61,276) of the hunting public.
• Hunters come to the Badger state from all 50 states and numerous foreign countries.
• First Time Buyers Licenses sold (25,703) which included 13,511 resident gun deer licenses, 8,976 resident junior licenses, and 3,216 nonresident gun deer licenses.
• 9,001, or 35% of the First Time Buyers were youth (17 years and younger.)
These are early statistics from the DNR and I’m sure that they will change some of these numbers in their final report.
According to DNR Secretary, Cathy Stepp, “I find this statistic (32% of First Time Buyers were women) particularly exciting. If we get women involved in hunting, we get the family involved. It is so important to be getting youth out there in the tree stand. We will be looking to them to keep our wonderful hunting heritage alive. But, I also want to recognize that 66 first time licenses were sold to hunters 80 years and older. The involvement of so many generations in the deer hunt truly illustrates how deep the deer hunting tradition runs in Wisconsin.”
After a few years without any deaths during the Deer Gun season, there have been a few this season and one was from a hunter falling out of a tree and another was self-inflicted. Many deer hunting accidents happen during deer drives where hunters are not where they are supposed to be or shooters did not have a safe backstop for their shot or they should not have been shooting.
Local hunters have a few more chances to harvest a deer or another deer for donation to the local food pantries. The bow season is open till January 6, 2013, the muzzleloader season opens today and runs till December 5, there is a state-wide antlerless season from December 6-9, and there is a Holiday Deer Hunt in CWD Zones from December 24-January 6, 2013. There are many more deer left in the outdoors and after a few days and weeks of not being pressured it’s possible to pattern deer again while looking for feeding and bedding locations. If you have any questions contact the DNR at their website. Stay safe!
www.garyengbergoutdoors.com
www.dnr.wi.gov.com
