Kimberly Beesley of Oulu knows what it takes to shoot a buck during Wisconsin's gun deer season, which opened Saturday.
"You gotta paint your toenails orange. That's the trick," Beesley said late Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Kro Bar in Brule. "Two years in a row now, it's worked."
She took a heavy 11-point buck just 15 minutes after she reached her deer stand Saturday morning, when temperatures hung in the single digits and a dusting of fresh snow covered the ground.
Overall, registration of deer was down across Northwestern Wisconsin, according to a sampling of registration stations.
By mid-afternoon Saturday, the C-Store in Iron River had registered 58 deer.
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"That was more than we expected for this year but not as much as last year," said Jesse Ehlers of the C-Store.
Most hunters said they were seeing few deer, hearing few shots and getting cold fast, according to reports.
"It's down," said Gary Bergman of Jim's Bait in Barnes at mid-afternoon Saturday. "We don't know the exact percentage. We've only got 26 deer. I'm guessing we're down 50 percent from last year."
Charlie's Riverside in South Range had registered 19 deer by Saturday afternoon.
"Last year on opening Saturday, we registered 64 deer total," said Stephanie Abrahamzon. "Within the last couple years, it's dropped a lot."
A total of 18 deer had been registered by mid-afternoon Saturday at the Holiday station in Washburn, said Dave Lindsley, a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife technician.
"I'd say this is very quiet," Lindsley said. "Most hunters are saying that it was cold and they didn't hear much shooting. In the cold, it's really hard to sit, so people don't spend as much time out."
He also said the antlerless harvest is likely to be down because the DNR issued fewer permits for antlerless deer. The DNR did that, he said, due to the prolonged and late winter of 2012-13 in hopes that a more limited harvest will offer greater potential for improving the deer population.
