Saturday, Nov. 15 High 35, ….
Saturday, Nov. 15 High 35, low 21 Today was the first day that you could walk in most parts of The Necedah National Wildlife Refuge and scout for deer. The NNWR is closed except for the seven days prior to the gun deer opener in most sections and with no ATVs allowed during the hunt, this is truly wilderness hunting.
I have touched on two subjects that are basically out of the hands for man to change and I really saw it on my 5-mile hike today, and that is water. The water table is so high that for an old timer like me who was walking in here in 1971, it is almost unbelievable. Dry marshes are lakes and forests are flooded like in the south.
The other reality, and I saw it bear baiting this summer and fall, and today it really home is the immense amount of wolf sign. The number one form is wolf scat with deer hair in it and where I hunted with Selina today it was snow covered, there was almost zero deer sign. The whitetail deer in the areas of Wisconsin’s central forest that are bordering pack country are being eliminated.
No matter what side of the fence you are on for this conversation, can you imagine how depressing it must be for the remaining deer in dense wolf country? What if every hunting camp vanished and all that property was sold to become houses or farm fields?
Roughly 580,000 people hunt during the 9-day gun season, what if this was cut in half due in part to a lack of deer in our wolf country, the public land is not getting used enough and that started getting sold?
We have to manage our turkey, deer, fish, and ducks, why is the wolf exempt when they are three times over the population goal?
If you think that I am some kind of wolf hater, I ask you to look back at the columns that I wrote back in the early to mid 1990s while working with WDNR biologists. I was 100 percent behind the recovery program and the management goal of roughly 385 animals. I was given a ton of flack but stuck to my guns. Now with roughly 1,200 wolves in Wisconsin I say let biologists with the WDNR section off the state and pick management numbers to be harvested each year.
Sunset
