Wisconsin’s deer season 2012: a good season
By Gary Engberg
Gary Engberg Outdoors
The nine-day deer gun hunting season is now history. This past season was the 161st official deer hunting season in Wisconsin. This season, 633,460 licenses were sold to gun hunt deer. Deer hunting is still extremely popular despite the aging of a large portion of the hunting public, hunters are losing land that they’ve hunted on for years, and, unfortunately, many of their hunting buddies are passing away. But the Wisconsin DNR has done a great job of promoting hunting and the outdoors by the use of many of the newer social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to attract new hunters. Wisconsin has had regular website postings and videos throughout the season which attracted many new faces. There are more young hunters in the second year of Mentor hunting, which allows 10 and 11 year-old children to legally hunt as long as they are within an arm’s length of their mentor.
I worked registering deer and helping DNR biologists and technicians during the season at the Wilderness Fish and Game store in Sauk City, Wisconsin. I had the chance to talk to many hunters, young and old, during the gun season. I saw many more women and younger girls taking to the woods with their husbands, boyfriends, and girlfriends. If the opening weekend and the following week were any indication of the popularity of deer hunting, it’s still extremely popular and is keeping the hunting tradition going in the Badger State.
The opening weekend was hardly deer hunting weather with sunny skies and temperatures in the 50s. The DNR is still taking CWD (chronic wasting disease) samples and will for years to come as the deadly disease is slowly spreading and increasing in some Midwestern states. During the fall bow season, a deer tested positive in northern Washburn County. In the past ten years CWD has been concentrated in southwest Wisconsin. CWD has spread to northern Illinois and southeast Wisconsin, so testing is done around the state’s 600 registration stations. Hunters have learned to live with CWD and most don’t even worry about it and will gladly let you take the lymph nodes for testing. Eating venison is fine and in all these years, I have never heard of any problems with a properly cleaned and cared for CWD deer. Many hunters want their deer to be checked to see if the disease has spread to their hunting locations.
While working this season, I tried to talk to as many hunters as possible for their opinions on the hunt. Like I said, the weather was more like early fall with a little early morning fog. Living next to public hunting grounds, I was amazed at the large number of hunters out as I went to work before first light. I’ve worked deer season for over two decades and this was the most vehicles that I’ve ever seen on opening day! Wisconsin has thousands and thousands of acres of public hunting land throughout the state, and those who say they have nowhere to hunt are mistaken. Some of the largest bucks that I registered came off public lands. The great DNR website (dnr.wi.gov) gives a hunter all the information that they could possibly want or need.
Opening weekend hunters were in great moods with the unseasonable weather and the deer in rut. We registered more bucks than antlerless deer by a 55 percent to percent margin. Most hunters reported seeing many deer, but some hunters saw few because the 1.4 million deer are scattered around the lower two-thirds of the state. Over 60 to 65 percent of the season’s total deer harvest is taken opening weekend. After the opening flurry of gunfire, deer know where they can go and be safe from hunters. Land where the owners don’t hunt is a favorite hiding spot during the season or even inside city limits. Hunters overall were happy that the Earn-A-Buck regulation was eliminated, allowing hunters to shoot a buck without first harvesting an antlerless deer. The early October CWD Hunt was also eliminated with the state moving toward the old traditional nine-day hunt, which most hunters seem to prefer.
We registered over 500 deer in Sauk City opening weekend with slightly more bucks than antlerless deer. The main reason hunting was so good was that the rut was still in progress and bucks were running wild trying to breed as many females as possible. During rut, bucks seem to forget many of their natural defenses that they have during the year. Instead of being cautious of their surroundings and spooky, all that is on their minds is breeding, and this leads to many of them being harvested. Throughout the following week, bucks were still rutting and many smaller and less dominant bucks were also looking for a doe to breed.
One thing that I noticed was that the nature of deer hunting has changed from the deer camps of northern Wisconsin in the 1960s and before to the present hunting growth in the agricultural areas of the lower half of Wisconsin. Now hunters are staying closer to home and hunting when they can, be it a day or two and even for a few hours, close to home.
The opening weekend was a good one with the nice weather and a decent population of deer which included many trophy bucks. I’m not sure if Quality Deer Management is responsible for the large number of trophy bucks, but the size of deer has increased over the years. What was once considered a good buck is now only average with Wisconsin leading the country in trophy bucks harvested and recorded. There were 134,772 deer harvested opening weekend with numbers up in most, if not all, areas. The weather kept hunters in the woods longer and may account for the large number of hunters. After the opener, hunter numbers seemed to dwindle. The weather cooled, but it still was great hunting weather except for the lack of snow.
The DNR should be happy with the harvest numbers and the fine job that they did in using the social media to promote the sport. Here are some statistics that look promising:
- The number of licenses sold was up 3% from 2011.
- Resident licenses sold (568,831) were up 2%.
- Nonresident deer licenses (32,554) were up 2%.
- 10/11 year Mentored Gun Deer licenses (13,050) were up 10 %, which makes up for some of the loss of older hunters.
- Females now represent almost 10 % of all hunters.
- Youth accounted for 13% (78,604) of the hunters.
- Senior citizens (65+) were 10% (61,276) of the hunters.
- First Time Buyers bought 25,703 licenses, and of that, 35%—or 9,001—hunters were youth.
The statistics that look good are the number of women now hunting and the number of young hunters now participating in the deer hunting tradition. There also were 66 First Time Buyers who were 80 years old and older. The involvement of many generations of hunters speaks wonders for the continued hunting heritage in Wisconsin! The total number of deer harvested was 243,739 deer, of which 114,822 were bucks (up 12% from 2011) and 128,739 antlerless deer were harvested (up 4%). Sadly, there was one hunting fatality, but considering the number of hunters in the woods, this is not a startling figure.
There still is the muzzleloader season, a statewide antlerless hunt, and a Holiday Hunt. It’s no wonder that hunters come from all 50 states and many foreign countries to hunt here. I also talked to several hunters who were donating extra deer and venison to the local food pantries, which again shows that hunters care about other people and are the country’s true conservationists!