Wisconsin Big Game Survey Available
June 30th, 2005 by Administrator
2004 Wisconsin Big Game Survey Available
From the Wisconsin DNR
The second highest white-tailed deer harvest on record and increases in the bear and spring turkey harvests are among the statistics available in 2004 Wisconsin Big Game Hunting Summary. The annual summary is now available online on the Department of Natural Resources Web site and in hard copy. The summary carries results and statistics for the deer, black bear and turkey hunting seasons and a summary of hunting incidents.
WHITE-TAILED DEER
In 2004, hunters registered 519,388 deer — the second highest harvest ever. Archers registered 103,572 and gun hunters 413,794. Wisconsin tribes harvested 2,022 deer.
State wildlife officials, using these harvest totals and age data collected from a sample of the registered harvest, estimated the 2004 prehunt white-tailed deer population in Wisconsin was 1.64 million animals
Together, archers and gun hunters registered 351,343 antlerless deer. The early Zone T gun deer hunt (Oct. 28-31) yielded 72,358 deer and the late Zone T gun hunt (Dec. 9-12) produced 14,324 deer.
Archers set a new harvest record at 103,572 breaking the previous record of 95,607 set in 2003. Archers registered 93,427 during the early archery season and 10,145 in the late season.
Officials in the DNR Customer Service and Licensing bureau report that state residents purchased 616,453 gun deer hunting licenses and 244,728 archery hunting licenses in 2004. This represents a 1 percent increase in gun license sales and a 2 percent increase in archery license sales over 2003. In 2004, all types of deer license purchases, including resident and non-resident, gun and archery, totaled 907,414.
“The harvest of over 350,000 antlerless deer last year was a tremendous effort by hunters and is great progress toward getting a handle on high deer populations across the state,” said Keith Warnke, DNR deer and bear ecologist. “Effort like this is what is needed to reduce the need for non traditional seasons like Zone T, reduce agricultural damages and get back to the traditional archery, nine-day and muzzleloader seasons nearly everyone would like to see.
“We don’t have numbers for the pre-hunt 2005 populations at this time but I think once again there will be great deer hunting opportunities in Wisconsin this fall.”
Other informational items from the 2004 Deer Hunt:
* fawn production during summer 2004 was at or below the statewide long-term mean, especially in the northern third of the state;
* 48 deer management units were designated Zone T;
* 26 deer management units were designated Earn-a-Buck;
* more than 1 million antlerless deer permits were issued in 2004;
* 8,352 deer were killed under the Agricultural Damage Program;
* there were two deer hunting related fatalities — the second safest season in the past 20 years.
BLACK BEAR
Hunters registered 3,063 black bear during the 2004 season. This was 5 percent higher than the 2003 registration of 2,905.
Almost 62,000 people applied for the 4,741 available black bear harvest permits in 2004. The overall success rate for black bear hunters was 65 percent in 2004.
A total of 1,278 black bear complaints were filed from April to October 2004. This was down 5 percent from the number of complaints filed in 2003. In response to these complaints, 592 black bear were captured and relocated from problem areas. Five nuisance bear kill permits were issued during the fall of 2004 a total of five bear were killed under this permit system, all in Langlade County.
Wildlife officials have announced that 4,730 permits will be available for the fall 2005 black bear season.
WILD TURKEY
Hunters registered 44,470 turkeys during the spring 2004 wild turkey hunt. This was a new harvest record. The success rate is calculated at 25 percent based on 186,608 permits issued. Hunter success rates were 20 percent or better in all but 6 of Wisconsin’s 56 turkey management zones including 12 state parks open to spring turkey hunting and Ft. McCoy.
The number of permits issued grew by 9 percent over 2003 (186,608 in 2004, 169,277 in 2003). A total of 173,743 applications were received; 27,010 received second permits and 17,023 applications did not get a permit. Applicants who did not receive a permit had applied for a zone or time period for which there were more applicants than permits available. Seventeen zones were over-subscribed in spring 2004.
There were three incidents during the 2004 spring turkey season involving firearm injuries. Two were due to a failure of the shooter to properly identify their target the third was self inflicted.
The much lower key fall wild turkey season saw 79,178 permitted hunters register 10,362 birds for a 13 percent success rate. This was a drop in success rate from the previous year when hunters had a nearly 16 percent success rate. The number of permits was up slightly from 2003’s 78,831.
Total registrations in fall 2004 dropped 17 percent from the 2003 harvest of 12,554 birds. The percentage of adults in the ‘04 fall harvest was up to 66 percent from ’03’s 58 percent. Biologists think the increase was possibly a result of a decrease in turkey production in the very wet spring of 2004.
There were two non-fatal turkey hunting incidents in fall 2004. Both were attributed to the shooter’s failure to properly identify the target.