Outdoors Weekly News Archive

December 8, 2006

Gun deer-hunting season begins with hope of a big harvest

DNR: Hunters killed 336,211 deer during nine-day season

By Robert Imrie
Associated Press Writer
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) – Hunters killed 336,211 whitetail deer during Wisconsin’s popular nine-day gun season, up 7 percent from a year ago based on preliminary counts, the state Department of Natural Resources reported Nov. 28.
But wildlife experts said it was too soon to say whether the effort was sufficient to make sure that an October hunt that was scrapped this year on a trial basis won’t get revived next year.
Keith Warnke, a DNR deer ecologist, said hunters killed 206,562 antlerless deer during the gun season – up 18 percent from a year ago – and the key to checking the growth of an overpopulated herd estimated at up to 1.7 million deer.
But the increase was expected, given that there was no four-day October hunt this fall for the first time since 1996 in areas of the state with too many deer. It left more of those deer in the fields and woods for the traditional hunt.
One of the tragedies of the nine-day hunt was solved.
An autopsy determined 36-year-old David L. MacArthur of Spencer died of a heart attack while deer hunting in Taylor County, Sheriff Jack Kay said. Hunting companions found MacArthur, the boys basketball coach in Colby, dead in his tree stand just hours into the hunt Nov. 18.
There were 10 shooting accidents during the season with one fatality.
Last year, hunters killed 325,630 deer during the nine-day gun season based on the final count and about 31,000 during the October season, or roughly three-fourths of the deer killed by gun and archery hunters in all seasons. It was the sixth-best harvest.
The record is 618,275 deer in 2000.
The DNR’s goal is to have a herd of 1.1 million deer at the start of fall hunting because of the problems a larger herd causes – the loss of farmers crops, too many car-deer collisions and an unbalanced ecosystem.
Ed Harvey, a Sheboygan area deer hunter and chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, an influential group of hunters and anglers, said Tuesday he’s heard from many hunters who were disappointed, blaming the warm, unseasonable weather for a “very poor hunt.”
“My party of eight shot zero (deer),” he said, adding that his 12-year-old granddaughter participated in her first hunt and never saw a deer.
“If people killed more deer than they did last year, they are not talking to me,” he said.
Harvey said if the weather turns colder – what he called more traditional hunting conditions with subfreezing temperatures – hunters will return to the fields and woods for the December hunt, hoping deer will move around more instead of just sitting as might have occurred during the nine-day hunt.
The Wild Eagle Corner Store in Eagle River registered 941 deer, down 37 from a year ago, and 55 percent of them were does or juvenile bucks, general manager Bill Cashman said.
“We heard mixed reports as far as people saying they didn’t see a thing and others saying they didn’t have any problems seeing deer,” he said.
The December hunt was being talked about, Cashman said, and he expects 75 percent of the hunters to come back for it.
At Sunset County Store near Wausau, hunters registered 1,003 deer, down 60 from a year ago, co-owner Joanne Woodrich said. “We had more does because it was earn-a-buck. We had like 700 does,” she said.
The earn-a-buck regulation requires hunters to shoot an antlerless deer to qualify to shoot the more coveted bucks, a requirement hunters dislike. This year, 21 of the state’s roughly 130 deer management units had that designation.
According to Woodrich, hunters complained about the lack of snow for tracking and believed the warm weather hindered deer movement.
Ledlow’s Country Store near Pardeeville registered 421 deer, about the same as a year ago, and some were “nice bucks that came in with pretty big racks,” co-owner Deb Ledlow said.
But she agreed the weather was too nice for most hunters.
“I have been registering for 10 years. They seem like they are more into it when it is colder,” she said.

BETTER HUNT:
Hunters killed 336,211 whitetail deer during the nine-day gun season, up 7 percent from a year ago based on preliminary counts, the state Department of Natural Resources said.

TOO SOON:
But wildlife experts said it’s too early to say whether the effort was sufficient to make sure that an October hunt that was scrapped this year on a trial basis won’t get revived next year.

OVERPOPULATION:
Problems caused by the overpopulated herd include the loss of farmers crops, too many car-deer collisions and an unbalanced ecosystem.