By Danielle Kaeding- Wisconsin Public Radio
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources forecasts hunters will likely bag fewer deer during this year’s gun deer season compared to 2022, when snow provided ideal conditions.
DNR Deer Program Specialist Jeff Pritzl said in a virtual briefing Thursday that he would be surprised if hunters matched last year’s harvest.
“I think it’s safe to kind of couch expectations this year that harvest numbers are going to be similar in some parts of the state and possibly running a little bit behind last year,” Pritzl said. “But that’s really going to be contingent on weather conditions.”
The gun-deer season opens on Nov. 18 and runs through Nov. 26.
Last year, hunters registered 203,295 deer over the nine-day season, according to the DNR. The overall harvest was up more than 14 percent from 2021. Pritzl said snow and a lack of standing corn that can hide deer from view helped to improve hunter success.
Hunters killed more deer last year despite the state issuing fewer licenses. The agency sold 1.6 percent fewer licenses during the 2022 gun deer season with 554,898 licenses sold. Pritzl said license sales were running 2 percent behind as of the end of October.
“That’s frankly been the norm for the last number of years,” Pritzl said. “What that is capturing is what has become pretty well known now is that the baby boomer generation, who embrace deer hunting like no other generation before, is simply aging out and retiring from deer hunting.”
Dave Clausen, a former chair of the Natural Resources Board, hunts with his two sons and five grandkids at a deer camp in Polk County. He said he’s debated whether the family should hunt during the archery and crossbow season, so they can take advantage of warmer weather and the rut, or mating season, for deer. He said the decline in hunter participation is a challenge for managing the state’s deer herd.
“I think that is a tough thing, and I fear for that,” Clausen said. “You can talk to biologists, and they will tell you right now that we do not have enough hunters to control the deer population in the farmland zones. It’s grown out of control.”
Pritzl said the deer herd is larger than it should be on southern Wisconsin’s farmland, posing a challenge for the last 20 years. The DNR expects participation in the gun deer season will continue to decline, estimating the state will have about half a million hunters in the next decade. The agency has previously said license sales have been dropping at a rate of about 1.5 percent each year since 2000.
“It’s been a challenge to use hunting harvests to keep that population kind of in balance both biologically with the natural landscape, but also in balance with human interests and the conflicts that can arise,” Pritzl said.
