Season dates: Saturday to Nov. 26
Number of hunters expected: About 650,000
Status of deer population: High, at 1.5 to 1.7 million
Bag limit: One buck and one antlerless deer on a regular gun license; more with unlimited $2 Herd Control Unit antlerless tags
New this fall: The October Zone T antlerless deer hunt was eliminated and replaced with a four-day December hunt (Dec. 7-10) for antlerless deer statewide.
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Wisconsin's deer hunters will have a couple of factors working in their favor when their nine-day gun deer season opens Saturday.
"It should be a good season, in that we'll have a new moon, so it'll be dark at night," said Greg Kessler, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager at Brule. "That correlates to better daytime activity. And we'll be catching the tail end of the rut (deer mating season). This is the second-earliest possible opening date for deer season. The first couple days, given decent weather, should be a good harvest."
The gun season opens Saturday and continues through Nov. 26. The state has changed the structure of deer season again this year, doing away with the October "T Zone" hunts for antlerless deer and replacing them with a statewide, four-day anterless seaon Dec. 7-10.
Most hunters understand the new season structure and the tags they need for various hunting options, Kessler said.
The deer are there, as anyone who drives Wisconsin highways can tell you. Most deer management units in northwestern Wisconsin are designated as Herd Control Units, meaning the deer population is somewhat higher than wildlife managers would like. Some hunters don't agree, saying the populations are much lower on public lands than on private lands, even in those Herd Control Units.
But recent years have been good for most Wisconsin hunters. Last year, hunters took more than 467,000 deer statewide, the sixth-best season in the state's hunting history. The state's highest harvest occurred in 2000, when hunters took 618,000 deer. That's tops for a single year among all states, according to the DNR.
Despite high harvests, the state's deer herd is estimated at 1.5 million to 1.7 million animals going into this fall's hunt. The state's archery season opened Sept. 16 and has gone well.
"Archery season has certainly been good," said Carolyn Swartz of Anglers All in Ashland. "We've seen a number of bucks that rough-scored between 150 and 160 [on the Pope and Young scoring system], so people are going to be enthusiastic about going out. I'm sure it'd be nice if we had snow on the ground."
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The DNR has created a database that shows when most bucks in the state are harvested in the gun season. Forty percent of all bucks are shot the first day of the season, and 20 percent the second day, Kessler said. Antlerless deer harvest increases as the week goes on, he said.
The December antlerless hunt has been controversial. In the northern part of the state, some residents fear it will conflict with snowmobile season if snow comes early. This year's December season will be a one-year trial, Kessler said.
"We have to report back [to the legislature] about its success and whether there's conflict with other users," he said. "We'll decide whether it's worth trying again. We'll have to match what we did in the October hunt. If we don't we'll be going back to that October hunt."
Bowhunters appreciated not having firearms hunters in the woods during October, Swartz said. But she isn't sure how many firearms hunters will hunt the December season.
"I don't think we ever see tremendous participation in those late hunts," she said. "They do the nine-day season, and they're ready to move on."
