Wisconsin deer harvest down
December 1st, 2005 by Administrator
Local deer harvest down - Hunters killed 312,519 whitetail deer during the nine-day season, up slightly from a year ago as snow in some parts of Wisconsin helped them see and track the animals, the state Department of Natural Resources reported Tuesday. The season ended Sunday.
“A number of factors came together nicely for this year’s hunt making it a memorable one,” said Keith Warnke, a deer expert for the agency in Madison.
Hunters registered 9,357 more deer than a year ago, according to preliminary figures from the DNR.
In Jefferson County, hunters registered 17 percent fewer deer than in 2004. This season hunters bagged 1,881 deer as compared to 2,265 last year. In Dodge County the harvest was down 30.4 percent. In 2004 hunters registered 3,651 deer as opposed to 2,540 this year. In the entire 11-county South Central Region, the harvest was down 11.1 percent.
Locally the big story was the positive test of a deer for Chronic Wasting Disease in Jefferson County. A 3-year-old doe shot between Highway 26 and Lake Koshkonong tested positive.
“We are hoping it is a stray,” Conservation Warden Dave Walz said. “There are still a lot of tests to be conducted and with the mandatory testing in Jefferson County we should get a pretty good idea if there are others.
“The positive test came from a deer that was in a high deer population area which is pretty typical of what we see with CWD. Hopefully landowners will allow a little more hunting to clear out some of the deer.”
Going into fall, the agency estimated up to 1.5 million deer roamed the fields and woods, about 200,000 fewer than a year ago. The state sold 641,771 licenses this season, down about 8,200 from last year.
Hunters have another chance to shoot an antlerless deer during a Dec. 8-11 season in so-called Zone T deer management units located south of Highway 8. Zone T units are those the DNR says are overpopulated with deer and where wildlife managers want more does killed.
The season for hunting with muzzleloaders opened Monday and runs through Dec. 7.
An earlier corn harvest and good weather greeting hunters the opening weekend helped contribute to this season’s deer hunt, Warnke said.
But he said it was too early to judge whether hunters killed enough antlerless deer to avoid the earn-a-buck regulation next season. The regulation, in place last year, requires a hunter to shoot an antlerless deer to qualify to kill a coveted buck.
The earn-a-buck regulation “is a possibility next year in many units statewide,” Warnke said.
In a new twist to hunting, the DNR allowed hunters to qualify to shoot a buck next season by killing an antlerless deer this year in deer management units designated on a “watch list” for earn-a-buck.
Steve Oestreicher, chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which advises the Natural Resources Board on hunting issues, said hunters were generally happy with the nine-day season.
“We had a lot of areas where there was some good buck activity,” he said. “It was nice to once again have some snow. It has been a long time since we have had some snow for the deer season, seven, eight or nine years at least.”
Having snow on the ground makes it easier to see and track deer.
Oestreicher said there are some parts of the state, particularly the Fox Valley in eastern Wisconsin, that are “pretty much a deer factory,” making it more likely that earn-a-buck might have to be used next season.
But hunters dislike the regulation, he said.
“We put the plea out there that they need to harvest antlerless animals,” he said.
The DNR reported Tuesday hunters killed about 14,500 more bucks than a year ago and about 5,100 fewer antlerless deer.
During all of last year’s deer hunting seasons, including archery, hunters registered 518,603 deer, the second-highest total in state history, the DNR said. The record is 618,275 deer in 2000.
The DNR also reported Tuesday that samples from about 18,400 deer heads had been gathered this fall to be tested for chronic wasting disease, a fatal brain ailment.
Testing so far found 20 new cases of the disease, meaning 490 deer have now tested positive for the disease since it was first discovered in deer near Mount Horeb in southern Wisconsin nearly four years ago, the DNR said.
By The Associated Press and the Daily Times Staff