Pace set first weekend remains; bucks up, does down in county

9-DAY DEER SEASON TOTALS

Not much changed in Taylor County from opening weekend through Sunday’s end of the nine-day gun deer hunting season.

The preliminary registration count released by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Tuesday showed Taylor County hunters registered 1,544 bucks by 5 p.m. on Monday, up 11.4% over last year’s final count of 1,386, while the antlerless registrations dropped 10.7% from last year’s 1,858 to 1,659 despite an abundance of available permits on private lands. The 3,203 total deer registered was down 1.3% from last year’s 3,244.

After opening weekend, the county was on pace for a 9.4% buck increase, an 8.5% antlerless decrease and a 0.7% overall increase. Those percentages moved slightly in the final seven days of the season.

“It’s been variable with some people seeing plenty of deer and lots of movement and then there’s other people where it’s been quiet,” said Emma Doden, the DNR’s new wildlife biologist for Taylor and Rusk counties. “That’s typical. It’s going to vary depending on the habitat you’re in.”

The buck harvest numbers would typically indicate a stable or growing herd. Antlerless numbers are less reliable as they are dependent on numbers of tags made available.

Other than a strong cold front moving through Wisconsin on the second day of the season, Nov. 21, that produced gusty winds close to 40 mph that afternoon, weather conditions should have allowed most hunters to stay in the field as long as they wanted.

“Of course it’d be nice to have more snow, but I think it was generally good overall,” Doden said. “There were some windy periods. We had another mild winter last year, so I think in general we have a pretty strong deer population this year. We had a good growing season this year so those bucks were able to put in some energy into growing some nice antlers too. Fawn survival coming out of that winter was pretty good.”

Doden said it’s possible hunters were able to take advantage of some late-rutting bucks, helping to boost that total.

“We’re trending toward getting earlier and earlier now so we’re getting closer to the rut,” she said. “This wasn’t as close as we can get to the rut, but that also could be a reason why we saw a little bit higher buck harvest this year than last year because we were a little bit closer to the rut and catching the tail end of that.”

This is the first year for Taylor County as a CWDaffected county. While several results are still outstanding, Doden said there has been no word of any new positive tests from samples collected at the county’s seven self-service sampling kiosks yet this fall. Doden said the dumpsters in Medford and Rib Lake will be removed sometime between Dec. 8-15. The kiosks will remain out for a few more weeks, weather permitting.

“We probably have at least 60 samples for Taylor County, which compared to the last few years is pretty on par,” Doden said. “We have another batch that we’re doing (Wednesday) and we’ll probably get a few more trickling in. It’s not as high as we would like. We’re always looking for 150 or more samples, but I’m happy that we’re on par with last year. As far as we know, everything so far has been negative, so that’s good news.”

For what it’s worth in comparing this year’s numbers to the five-year average 2016-20, the 2021 preliminary buck kill is 5.6% below that mark of 1,636 animals and 14.2% above that mark of 1,453 for antlerless deer, though there were some low permit levels at the start of the five-year period.

The downward trend of antlerless harvests is affecting the vast majority of counties in the state, though there were some upward spikes in the Northern Forest Zone. In fact, the Northern Forest Zone was the only one in the state to see a harvest increase this year. The buck kill was up 14.9% from 17,065 deer to 19,602 deer, while the antlerless count went up 1.7% from 12,382 to 12,595 and the overall count was up 9.3% from 29,447 to 32,197.

“We still have plenty of antlerless tags available for private land, so that means there can be plenty of those antlerless deer harvested without impacting the population and keep our population objective what we want,” Doden said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 2,192 private-land antlerless authorizations were still available for the remaining hunting seasons, which includes the muzzleloader hunt that goes through Dec. 8, the four-day antlerless season Dec. 9-12 and the archery/crossbow season that runs through Jan. 9.

State perspective

Preliminary figures show that hunters registered 175,667 deer during the nine-day deer hunt, including 84,952 antlered and 90,715 antlerless deer. Since archery seasons opened Sept. 18, hunters have registered 270,046 deer statewide, showing the growing influence of earlier seasons on cumulative harvest.

Compared to 2020, the total firearm deer harvest was down 7.9% statewide, with buck harvest down 1.3% and antlerless harvest down 13.2%.

Adams County’s Central Farmland unit led the state with over nine deer registered per square mile. Vernon County led the Southern Farmland Zone with almost six deer registered per square mile. Oneida County registered the most per square mile in the Northern Forest Zone at 4.5, and Eau Claire’s Central Forest unit registered almost 3.5 deer per square mile.

While opening weekend saw mild temperatures throughout the state with some snow in the north, DNR staff across the state reported good weather throughout the season. Snow cover and frozen wetlands would have improved visibility and access for hunters.

“We’re seeing a shift and a trend in hunter effort and harvest coming outside of the nine-day gun deer season,” DNR deer program specialist Jeffrey Pritzl said during a briefing with statewide media Tuesday morning. “This year is no exception to that. We’re seeing changes in choices and how people are hunting. Although there’s a lot of interest in trying to interpret the numbers within the nine-day, as we’ve been saying the last few years it’s really important to wait and just take stock after all of the seasons have concluded and how those numbers are added up. There will be plenty of opportunities in the near future for continued harvest and we saw good harvest participation, especially on the buck side of things, prior to the nine-day.”

Pritzl, however, did say the drop in antlerless harvests, especially in the Central and Southern Farmland zones, will be a topic of conversation in the department.

“The short answer is we don’t know,” he said. “It’s too early to speculate. If you asked 10 deer hunters over their experience this past week and what influenced how hard they hunted, how often and whether they decided to take a deer or not you’d probably get 10 different answers. It is eye-catching that especially the antlerless harvest has dropped off relative to last year. I’m looking forward to follow-up discussions with our hunting and human dimensions folks statistically to interpret it. There’s human nature and sociology involved in here as well as biology. It’s probably more complicated than making a presumption right now that there was one particular thing that was going on.”

Three more accidents

In addition to three opening-weekend hunting accidents, three more were reported during the rest of the season bringing the total to six with one of them being fatal. The three latest reports include:

_ On Monday, Nov. 22 at approximately 4 p.m. in the Town of Seven Mile Creek in Juneau County, a 57-year-old male was the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the leg. The victim had a loaded firearm, and it discharged in the proximity of his ATV. The victim drove to the hospital and was treated.

_ On Tuesday, Nov. 23 at approximately 4:28 p.m. in the Town of Saxon in Iron County, a 65-year-old male was the victim of a gunshot wound to the chest. A second 65-year-old male shooter was moving and knocked over his firearm, causing the firearm to hit the ground and fire. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

_ On Friday, Nov. 26 at approximately 5:15 a.m. in the Town of Rib Falls in Marathon County, a 65-yearold male suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The victim was loading a pistol when his finger slipped off the hammer, causing the gun to fire and strike him in the ankle. The victim was transported to the hospital for treatment.

Sales remained strong

According to DNR Wildlife Management Program director Eric Lobner, 808,244 licenses that included gun deer hunting privileges were sold through 11:59 p.m. on Sunday night, down just 1.5% from last year’s 823,527. Of those licenses, 564,440 were specific to gun deer hunting, compared to 569,203 last year.

Conservation patron licenses jumped by 5,456 this year and non-resident licenses jumped by 3,717 to a total of 55,727.