GUN DEER SEASON TOTALS - Percentages improve locally at end of the hunt, but still below average

GUN DEER SEASON TOTALS

While deer numbers on the landscape were projected to be up over last year, the latest starting date possible on the calendar to the nine-day gun deer season was expected to be a drawback to this year’s harvest.

The release Tuesday by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources of the preliminary harvest numbers for the season, which ended Sunday, shows those factors created a wash, so to speak, when compared to 2023.

Historically, a Nov. 23 start to the season has resulted in about a 10% drop in statewide harvests compared to the previous year, but this year Wisconsin deer hunters registered 189,622 deer, up 5.2% over last year and up 1.2% over the five-year average with the Central Farmland and Central Forest zones showing the biggest increases.

As for Taylor County and the Northern Forest, the results were mixed.

The 19-county Northern Forest Zone only wound up with a 1.8% percent drop in buck registrations over last year at 17,591 and the antlerless registrations jumped up 8.7% to 11,909 despite reductions in antlerless permits in most counties.

This year’s numbers were still down compared to the five-year averages –– 7.9% for bucks and 7.2% for does. But, considering the percentages were looking to be down significantly in some counties –– Taylor County included –– after opening weekend there was a bit of a rebound in harvest numbers during the second half of the season.

“Weather wise other than it getting a little cold the second half of the season, it was in the hunters’ favor,” said Spencer O’Brien, the DNR’s wildlife biologist for Taylor and Rusk counties. “Going into the season we kind of expected to maybe see less deer movement. Just hearing from hunters and hunter reports that seems to be the trend. They were seeing less deer movement than past gun seasons, but with the deer season being as late as it possibly could be on the calendar and it being so far away from the breeding season it was expected to see a drop in deer movement.”

Taylor County hunters registered 1,394 bucks by the 5 p.m. deadline Monday to register deer shot by season’s end on Sunday. There were 1,172 antlerless deer registered for a total of 2,566. That compares to 1,401 bucks last year, a drop of just seven deer, 1,341 antlerless deer, a drop of 12.6%, and 2,742 total deer, a drop of 6.4%. The county was sitting at a 22% drop in overall harvest after opening weekend.

Compared to the 2019-23 five-year averages, this year’s preliminary numbers in Taylor County are still down 8.8% for bucks, 30.1% for does and 19.9% overall. O’Brien said that’s hard to explain considering neighboring counties to the west and east, Chippewa and Lincoln, wound up being right at or above the average. However, Price County to the north had a noticeable drop in buck harvest, though its doe harvest shot up 23.9% over last year.

“Maybe the northern half of the county being very heavily national forest was a factor that played in it,” O’Brien said. “Maybe the farmland zones did end up doing OK. There’s no way of really knowing since the whole county is in the Northern Forest Zone.”

Looking out further statistically for Taylor County, the preliminary nine-day buck registrations are among the lowest of the past 30 years. There were 1,209 bucks in the preliminary report of 2014, 1,264 in 2019 and 1,373 in 2020. The antlerless numbers are also among the lowest in the DNR’s preliminary report of the last 30 years.

However, the crossbow and archery numbers were up significantly over last year before the start of the nine-day season.

Weather was not seen as a huge factor during the gun season, though cold temperatures and colder wind chills on the second weekend probably reduced hunter effort to some degree.

“It got cold pretty quick,” O’Brien said. “With the mild fall so far, 20s usually aren’t that cold in February but when it starts to be 20 out of nowhere it can feel quite cold and there was a decent amount of wind in the second part of the season. On the second weekend wind chills were getting into single digits. That might have had an effect on some hunters just being able to stay out there and being able to do as many drives or getting all of their people together to be able to do drives.

“As far as access goes, I think the conditions were great,” he added. “We had a little bit of snow that gave hunters the ability to see deer better. But it wasn’t too much snow that it made walking around hard. It was easy to drive in to places. After the first weekend the ground was froze pretty solid and it just kept freezing the rest of the season. I think being able to drive wherever people wanted to or normally can drive to, they definitely had that ability.”

From a statewide perspective, Jeff Pritzl, the DNR’s Deer Program Specialist said the numbers aren’t disappointing.

“In the end, we’re up a little bit from last year overall statewide about 5% and even a little bit ahead of and real close to the five-year average,” Pritzl told statewide media Tuesday morning. “Given the late start of the gun season that we’ve been talking about up to this point, that’s about really as good as I think we could’ve expected to have held our harvest similar to last year and actually saw some increases in a few places. Of course there are a lot of local stories playing out and regionally a lot of variation across Wisconsin in that statewide figure.”

Pritzl said the cooldown during the week likely played a role in the season’s second-half improvement.

“After opening weekend we were running just a hair behind last year and so obviously we caught up and surpassed that a little bit during the week,” Pritzl said. “We got feedback from the field, as we do every year, that was the full spectrum of having great experiences to people that were still struggling. In general the snow that came in some parts of the state on Monday, other parts got some snow on Thanksgiving, certainly helped. With the colder temperatures and windy conditions, there were a lot of comments that that actually got deer moving a little bit better during daylight hours. There was some suspicion that it actually suppressed hunter activity because of those cold wind chills. But those that did go out and persevered and adapted their strategies to the weather seemed to get some additional success mostly because of those colder temperatures I believe with some snow cover on the ground.”

Archery and crossbow seasons continue through Jan. 5. The muzzleloader season is going now and runs through Wednesday, Dec. 11. That will be followed by the four-day statewide antlerless gun hunt. Some southern counties also have a holiday antlerless hunt Dec. 24-Jan. 1.

O’Brien said the local deer carcass dumpsters should remain available to hunters in the area through this month.

One incident

As of Tuesday, just one non-fatal firearm-related hunting incident was reported statewide during the 2024 gun deer season. That occurred late Friday afternoon in Vernon County in Wheatland Township.

This makes 2024 the safest gun deer season in Wisconsin in at least the past 40 years. Last year there were just three nonfatal incidents.

Regarding Friday’s incident, at approximately 4 p.m., a 14-year-old male was sitting in an enclosed tower stand with his father, hunting on private property. The victim’s father heard what sounded like a gunshot in the distance. Shortly after, the victim felt pain in his feet and found that he was shot through both the left and right foot. The victim was transported privately to the hospital and received medical treatment for his injuries. The shooter has been identified, and an investigation is pending.

License sales

Preliminary figures indicate the number of deer hunters in Wisconsin slightly increased compared to 2023. As of 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 1, sales for deer hunting privileges (which include gun, archery, crossbow, conservation patron and sports licenses) reached 791,023, up from 788,697 for the same time period last year. Of those, 553,652 were for gun privileges only, up from 553,479 in 2023.

Deer hunting license and harvest authorization sales will continue throughout the remaining deer hunting seasons. Final license sales figures will be available in January, when DNR staff will perform a thorough analysis and interpretation.