Too Many Deer in Wisconsin?

Gary_C · August 04, 2006, 12:52:23 AM

I just saw a news story about race car driver Da Matta who was seriously injured when his car struck a deer on the race track in Elkahart Lake, Wisconsin. You are not safe from deer anywhere in Wisconsin. :

I have driven on some of those northern Wisconsin roads in the early evening and all you see is eyes looking at you from both sides of the roads. Kind of like running a gauntlet.

Not to really pick on Wisconsin, but there were a couple good jokes in a recent logger magazine.

A group of Wisconsin friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night, one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of an eight-point buck.
Where's Henry? the others asked.
Henry had a stroke of some kind. He's a couple of miles back up the trail," the sucessful hunter replied.
"You left Henry laying out there and carried the deer back?" they inquired.
"A tough call," nodded the hunter. "But I figured no one is going to steal Henry!"

News Flash! - Wisconsin's worst air disaster!
A small two-seater Cessna 150 plane, piloted by two University of Wisconsin students, crashed into a cemetery earlier today. Search and Rescue workers have recovered 300 bodies so far and expect the number to climb as digging continues into the evening. The pilot and copilot survived and are helping in the recovery efforts.

:D :D I do like Wisconsin, but they have more deer than trees.

Patty · August 04, 2006, 07:41:12 AM

:D :D Good one Gary!

Wisconsin is beautiful, but just like Iowa, there are way too many deer. :

Norm · August 04, 2006, 07:46:52 AM

Gary that's funny, the first one reminds me of my deer hunting buddies. The second one reminds me of the football rivalry jokes you hear between Iowa and Minnesota.... the names have been changed to protect the innocent. :D

PineNut · August 04, 2006, 03:52:43 PM

Names changed to protect the innocent or the guilty?

Max sawdust · August 05, 2006, 08:28:13 AM

OK,
Not going to have your Minnesota, folks tell-en Wisconsin Jokes ;) (Even though they were real funny.)

We may have a lot of deer, at least we can count accurately :D Ya see Minnesota says they have 10,000 lakes, but they really have more

Just look at the intelligence difference, us Wisconsin people can count deer that move around Minnesotans can not even count lakes that just sit there :D :D

We may have a lot of deer, but we are apprehensive to go hunting, cause hunters from Minnesota may be in woods shooting at us instead of deer. :'( (OK guess I should not joke about that tragedy.)

Yes we do have a lot of deer in some area's the numbers vary from county to county. It is a tough balance for the DNR. People want to be able to walk out in the woods stinking like the city and making noise and expect to shoot a deer opening morning. It takes a whole lot of deer around to make that happen ;) Like, Iowa we reconize deer hunting is big $ stuff for local buisness, and hunters are not happy without deer to shoot.

All in fun ;D
Max

Norwiscutter · September 19, 2006, 09:58:31 PM

There aint near as many around here as there were 8-10 years ago. the t- zone hunts I think really brought the herd down. I supose too much or too little is a matter of opinion. The transplants from down south like the deer till they eat the flowers or step in front of the Cady. Then they don't mind the warzone it turns into around here during rifle season. I pretty much only bow hunt then hide in my basement with my family until the end of rifle season. :(

tinkerin · September 19, 2006, 10:34:19 PM

Penns Woods has quite the deer controversy going on now. Careers have been ended over deer in PA.

Here's an interesting article regarding deer in Wisconsin and the lack of hunters taking advantage of opportunity. This is being reported in a Pennyslvania publication as it relates to our upcoming bout with CWD. We've managed to darn near eradicate our deer herd already here, though, so I'm not sure how bad the spread of it might be given the lower density we appear to have in most of the state.

Wisconsiners don't shoot enough deer

beenthere · September 19, 2006, 11:29:22 PM

As a long time deer hunter in Wisconsin, your cited article about the CWD dilema raises some hair on the back o the neck.
Yes, they found CWD. The resulting influx of State and Federal money just happened to come when the WI DNR was broke. Hmmm?
The "professionals" thought that the deer hunters were so blood thirsty that all they had to do was say "go gettum" and all the deer would be eradicated. They were totally wrong. Deer hunters are for the most part interested in a good, but real, hunt, and just slaughtering deer for the heck of it wasn't of interest (certainly for me and apparently to other hunters as well). I and friends would spend every weekend we could and then some scouting, scheming, planning, and finally waiting (like Jeff is doing for bar) for the moment. There were rules - no night hunting, no rifles in populated areas, no shooting from vehicles - the normal safety rules that go with hunting most everywhere.

There are so many upsetting and misguided ideas that have come, and keep coming, from these professionals (and they are not hunters either) that want to look important in the CWD problem so they can advance their profession (the guy that now goes to PA to talk about how WI is trying to solve the problem) and pocket some of the Fed Grant monies. The only thing that they've accomplished because it was just something tangible that they could do to show that they are "doing something" was to get legislation passed to ban feeding deer. An 80 year grandmother arrested for having a bird feeder hanging too low that the deer could reach, is but one minute example (result) of that law. So many laws are for the same thinly veiled reasons, but "Hey look at us, we did something".

This fall season, the rules have drifted back a bit towards the traditional 9 day season where it was a big build-up in excitement and 90 percent (thereabouts) of the deer were taken the first weekend and 600,000 hunters were in the deer camps and gathered to hunt deer. Spread that out over several months (my season last fall was October 26 continually to March 31) and the camaraderie, the excitement of planning, the deer camps, and all fell by the wayside. I am sure they will never come back as they were.

I hunt for the deer I eat, and one or two now that our kids are out of the house is plenty for a year. I won't go out and just shoot deer to see them drop. That minute part of the hunt is NOT the most exciting part. The "professionals" thought it was, but they were dead wrong.

Have these "professionals" been told over and over by the hunters how to get their deer kill up? Yes they have. By re-instating a bounty of a few dollars for every deer killed and dragged in to the DNR. But that is distasteful to the professionals. They will spend $200-300 per deer to hire professionals to night hunt with night lights, night vision, from vehicles, and with rifles but they won't think of spending a dime on bounties for deer. Most hunters I've heard from will turn the 'killing' into a sport for a bounty. Used to have a bounty 40 years ago for coyote (buck an ear) and for rattlesnakes (buck a head). Had a lot of hunters out for those two sports. But remove the bounty, and very few even bother looking for either one. And no one will get rich making bounty money off deer either, but they would go out and hunt them.

Now I will stop and think about something else for awhile to cool down.

Sorry for the rant.

Max sawdust · September 20, 2006, 07:06:58 AM

Beenthere,
Well said ;)

I still had to pay $60 for a archery license, gun deer license and one additional either choice tag for the gun. Lets say I end up with 150# of meat. That is $.40 cents a pound >:(
Not including my time, cost for guns, ammo, bows, arrows and other hunting supplies, meat grinder and paper to wrap it in.

If the DNR wants to reduce the deer heard why don't they give me a free license? Oh ya that is what pays their wage :D :D
max

tinkerin · September 20, 2006, 09:32:15 AM

Beenthere, sorry to have posted something that caused angst.
Deer hunting is emotional. It's not about killing deer for most sportsman. Or should I say 'just' killing deer. It is about the camaraderie, tradition, respect and appreciation of nature, the hunt itself- trying to outsmart a big old buck on his terms can be very rewarding or very humbling, and the opportunity to eat some very good meat, and so much more as you well stated.

The controversy has raged here for quite a while now. A Sportsmans group is suing the PA Game Commission because there aren't enough deer to keep hunters happy. State politicians getting involved for both sides- the hunters and the foresters. The converse side of the problem in PA is that the whole northern tier of the state has been overbrowsed by deer so the hardwood forest regeneration has been badly hurt and of course timber is a big, big business in PA.

I have no expertise in any area of these arguments. I simply enjoy getting out to hunt what is now a few days a year. What I do know is that 5 years ago and back, I would see herds of 10-50 deer all day long. At night we'd spot for a couple of hours and lose count of deer after a couple of hundred. I've seen 80-100 deer in one 30 acre field- that would usually be our final field for the night 'cause we could wow the kids with a seemingly unending sea of eyes. It simply makes sense to this layman that so many deer in one concentrated area would be hard on food sources over time.

At the same time, it's more urgent than ever that we get our kids out young to hunt, and they have to see something to keep their attention. With organized sports starting at a very young age, and the preponderance of electronic toys that give INSTANT gratification it's harder than ever to get them interested. I know from sad personal experience that I have lost my son to the sport of hunting. I have no one to blame but myself. I didn't recognize the sea of change soon enough to spend more time with him in the woods at an earlier age than I had begun. Concurrently my own hunting days had gone from 'hunting' to 'let's go in the woods and shoot at deer'. A lethal combination I'll forever regret. But the point is that if we still had enough deer to keep his attention I might have a chance. Two years ago, his first, after days of hunting in areas where we would previously see many dozens of deer per day, we saw three and he was unable to get a shot at any of them. Last year we hunted a different area and saw one deer. He did get it

. It was his first deer and the only deer we saw in the wild last year. I'm not contradicting myself though it sounds that way. He did go with me to hunt, but only because he knows it means a lot to me for him to go along. He has zero interest of his own to hunt :( This kind of eradication of the deer herd is sure to turn off the youth of today. (loss of hunting ground in PA is a whole 'nother topic- suffice to say that if one isn't fortunate enough to have acreage of their own today, access to huntable property is severely limited outside of state/fed ground, and I've darn near been shot there {city hunters})

I don't envy the PA Game Commission their job. A pretty thankless one to begin with and the pressure from both sides to get the balance right must be immense. But clearly balance is in order. Gotta have forest regrowth and gotta have enough deer to be sporting. Both are big businesses here. God only knows what will happen when CWD gets thrown in the mix. I agree with your assessment of 'professionals'. Seems that most real true sportsmen could get it worked out. They have the right motivation, common sense, and life experience.

Well I think I've babbled on enough and strung enough run-on sentences together to give any english teacher a headache. - Nice 'chattin' with ya!!

beenthere · September 20, 2006, 10:45:40 AM

I am sad to see the traditional deer hunting experience go the way it has in WI. To me, and I'm not always right, the problem is the growth of the DNR 'professionals' who need the fees to spend money on the crazy ideas they get, and to hire more office people, so they have more people to manage, and then get higher salary because they move up......now that is not just a DNR problem, that is the root of most big company, big government problems. A deer license is a tax, and a form of control.

Don't be sorry for causing the angst

Interesting the point about how many deer we used to see vs now. Seems to me, there are as many deer, but the deer get smart REAL fast when getting shot at during the day. They only come out at night. When the shooting starts, they disappear, but the tracks are all around from their movement at night. Neighbor last year complained that we have killed all the deer. Then one night my car lights picked up 6 crossing the road from his alfalfa field, and when turning the lights toward the field, there were 12 more in the field. I haven't seen a deer since a fawn crossed the field three months ago, yet my wife pulled up our drive a few nights ago and said four deer (three were big bucks) crossed in front of her.

The growing practice of not clear cutting timber (not pc) will have a big effect on deer herds. They don't do well living in a dense forest where the browse is beyond reach.

I started hunting in the early 60's, when 600,000 licenses were sold but 75,000 deer were harvested. One had to hunt hard to be successful. Then the deer herd kept growing and moving south (heck in Iowa, seeing a deer was an event that made the newspaper, but look at the size of their herd now), and now the 600,000 hunters take 250,000 deer. Deer hunters now include some of the "me" generation that thinks the Gov't should provide for them, and it includes seeing lots of game when hunting. Nowadays, the anti's have penetrated the ranks of the game managers, and their anti-hunting interests have tainted the decisions (I attended a planning meeting in the early 70's with the young biologists who were part of the future thinking, who had only an interest in protecting, not hunting, Wisconsin deer).

Lots of opinions on this topic. And raising our kids to get "instant gratification" with our planned sports, access to fancy toys, and lack of interest in spending several days in the woods to get a deer (including searching for a good stand, scouting the area for deer sign and travel routes, and waiting countless hours to see a deer, and being fortunate enough to take one home), is indeed a problem.

I'm with you on the problem, and the solution isn't as easy as I might imply. I could rant on and on more, but will not.

I might get started on the gang hunting tactics of the illegals and immigrants that comb the woods during the fall now, with a mission to shoot everything in sight. It's their way of doing things and getting meat is the goal. Any tradition of respecting the hunting stand of another is gone. It's a whole new world out there, unless you have private hunting ground and are successful keeping others off. I don't like to see that happen either.