TAYLOR COUNTY CDAC - Deer council tackles new unit boundaries in proposing 2025 numbers

TAYLOR COUNTY CDAC

Taylor County’s Citizen Deer Advisory Council entered a new era on April 23, proposing hard antlerless quota and permit numbers for this fall in three of the five deer management units that now include the county and offering suggestions for the other two that lie primarily in other counties.

The group’s annual meeting, which lasted three hours and was held at Medford Area Senior High, featured plenty of newness with Mike Nicholson and Steve Suchomel taking over as the council’s chairman and alternate chair and Spencer O’Brien leading his first CDAC meeting since filling the Wisconsin DNR’s wildlife biologist position for Rusk and Taylor counties in October.

Nothing was more new, however, than planning for the fall season by looking at several units rather than an entire county, which the CDAC had done since its formation in 2014. This is a result of DNR and Natural Resources Board action from this winter that returned deer management in the state’s Northern Forest Zone to a unit-based process to try to target specific habitat types rather than a county-based process.

One of those newly-created units is a Central Farmland unit in Taylor County that includes all land south of Hwy 64. This was the first time a Taylor County council has dealt with the rules that come with a farmland designation.

With the changes comes a loss of statistical harvest data from the last 11 seasons and how it relates to each specific unit coming into the 2025 season making the CDAC proposals this year a bit of a guess and a baseline start to build from moving forward.

Unit 114

Much of the discussion centered on Unit 114, which covers the center of the county, much like previous Unit 26 did before the county-based system was implemented. The unit goes from Hwy 64 to Hwys D, 13 and 102 south to north and Hwy C to Hwy 73 east to west. About 63% of the territory is owned privately, while about 37% is public land with most of that being the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Over the past five years, it’s estimated 0.88 deer were harvested per square mile on public land in Taylor County and 3.08 deer were harvested on private land. To get the discussion started, O’Brien threw out numbers showing that with a success rate of 20% on antlerless permits, a harvest quota of 145 with 700 permits on public land could be offered and with a success rate of 24% on permits, a harvest quota of 850 with 3,550 permits on private land would be an option.

Hunt/conservation club representative Brian Bucki led off by maintaining his stance in recent years of offering very few, if any, antlerless permits on public land in that part of Taylor County. He cited the extremely low numbers of reported harvest on the county’s private land last year of 299 bucks, 88 antlerless deer and 52 of 252 tags issued last year being filled.

“With this group based on scientific data that we have last year the public land on buck kill was the worst ever at 299,” Bucki said. “The year before I remember saying it was the worst ever at 319. It just keeps going down. This group is supposed to be be increasing on public land and the buck kill keeps going down. I just can’t see giving out 700 tags… Our public land is hurting and I just can’t see killing any more does on it.”

O’Brien said while he understood why a zero-quota could be viewed as a publicland option, he advised against it.

“Going into this year of uncertainty, we have to get a baseline,” he said. “In the future that could be a great option, but in these first few years we’re going to have to get some kind of baseline. If we don’t establish a baseline of how many antlerless deer get shot in this 114 and we don’t get that baseline, down the road, maybe five years later and we do want antlerless harvest, we’re still not going to have that number. I highly recommend we at least have some antlerless tags out there.”

From there, the debate centered on what is the true herd size on public land, balancing herd protection and potential growth with giving people the opportunity to hunt antlerless deer on that land.

“You’ve had two nice winters,” urban representative Jim Livingston said. “You have less hunters. If those deer do not have to move because nobody is putting any pressure on them, they’re not going to move. They’re not going anywhere. I don’t care if it’s a doe or a buck. If you don’t make tags available, people are just going to stop hunting… I think in some cases they’re there. We’re just not moving them. People are waiting for deer to come to them.”

Tourism representative Allan Koffler noted that while he agreed with a low number of public-land tags, there should be enough tags for a Managed Forest Land owner to be able to harvest a doe on his or her land, which is on the books as public land.

“In my eyes this group should, if we’re responsible and going according to our data, be very low or at zero,” Bucki said.

DNR conservation warden Kurt Haas noted the end of Taylor County’s threeyear baiting and feeding ban, set for July 28, could also affect harvest numbers this fall.

“This year is going to be a little different too because what I’ve noticed the last four years, there are less and less hunters in the Chequamegon because you can’t bait,” Haas said. “If you bait, you’re going to get caught there. This year baiting is coming back more than likely and I can guarantee you everyone and their brother is going to have a bait pile. If you’re hunting the Chequamegon, especially archery, you’re going to have a bait pile. I would say 90%. So maybe that adds into the weight of success rates. It might bring some deer from the private back into the public.”

Koffler first suggested going with a public land quota of 25 meaning 125 tags based on a 20% success rate. Forestry rep Peter Anderson later countered with sticking to what the CDAC did for the entire county last year with a quota of 50 and 250 tags. That vote initially resulted in a 3-3 tie. Nicholson broke the tie by voting for Anderson’s motion.

“I can confidently say that we’re not going to get it right this first year,” O’Brien said. “We’re not going to get it perfect. You can’t. Every single DMU that’s new is not going to get it perfectly accurate. But I can confidently say that we’re going to have a nice average that is not going to have a lasting effect on the deer herd five years from now. We’re starting with averages so even if we did accidentally shoot high, we’re not having an effect. If we shot low, we’re not having too much of an effect as far as hunter demand.”

As for the private land vote, the council unanimously stuck with O’Brien’s initial quota of 850 with 3,550 tags based on a 24% success rate.

DNR metrics for Taylor County show a post-hunt deer population estimate of 32,803 deer, well up from 25,967 last year with a second straight mild winter being a driving force behind the increase.

Farmland unit

Moving land south of Hwy 64 into the state’s Central Farmland Zone finally gives Taylor County a chance to specifically target the higher deer populations in those 268 square miles of private land in the county’s southern third. There is one square mile of public land in the unit, which the council did not even address.

Being the first time, setting a quota and permit numbers was viewed basically as a guess. But O’Brien noted, based on what neighboring counties such as Chippewa and Clark have done, the important thing is to make sure the demand for tags is met and hunters will basically determine what that number is.

“Usually the amount of tags on the landscape does not get filled by the public,” O’Brien said. “You’re usually pigeon-holed by the amount of hunters on the landscape. You can give them five tags but everyone is not going to shoot five deer. They’re going to shoot their one deer or two deer and then be done. We’re trying to be able to meet the demand for these hunters.”

The main tool used in farmland units is free antlerless tags with each license bought by a hunter. The options are zero through three. The council unanimously settled on one free tag per license sold. That means hunters who buy licenses for both the archery/crossbow or guns seasons could obtain two free farmland tags, which actually are not weaponspecific. Those, along with the 2,000 bonus tags the council proposed making available for purchase, may give Taylor County citizens some initial sticker shock by the sheer number of antlerless tags available.

But the general consensus was the harvest is going to be limited by what hunters and land owners want to kill and by the complete lack of public access. O’Brien said the DNR has found that 90% of the antlerless tag demand in a farmland unit is typically met by offering one free tag. He said statistics from other farmland counties have shown one to two free tags does increase the doe-to-buck harvest ratio. But going higher than that has no additional effect and offering zero free tags doesn’t give hunters as much incentive to shoot more does because they have to pay $12 for each antlerless tag.

The antlerless quota was set at 3,000, but that is another guess until the number of licenses sold and the harvest numbers from 2025 come in.

“In reality, we’re shooting from the hip on this year and we’re going to see what number actually sticks this year and we’ll actually have hard data next year,” Koffler said. “I wouldn’t say this quota doesn’t matter,” O’Brien said. “It’s still important to have a number out there for the public to see and have an idea of what we’re trying to do, but this first year it will be a guessing game. We need some data behind it to actually see what we’re doing. Next year we’ll have a much better idea.”

The council unanimously voted against having a holiday hunt in Taylor County’s farmland unit this year.

Other units

The other new units that touch Taylor County are 119, 115 and 110.

The vast majority of Unit 119 is in Lincoln County, but it does include a fairly productive area on Taylor County’s eastern side. The council agreed on 750 public land tags and 4,500 private land tags and will pass that recommendation on to Lincoln County’s council, which meets tonight, Thursday. Just over 12% of that unit is in Taylor County. Those permit levels are slightly lower than what Lincoln County offered overall in 2024.

About 13% of Unit 110 includes the northwest corner of Taylor County. About 48% of it is in Rusk County and 39% is in Chippewa County. The council agreed to publicly state it would like to see lower permit levels than last year in that until while having no opinion on the private land tags. Rusk County’s council met April 30.

Unit 115 covers most of Price County but also includes the northern edge of Taylor County. The council did the same there, noting it would like to see fewer public land tags in that unit but not formally proposing any numbers.

Mark Walters has this uncovered bear bait stump loaded with granola, cookies and about a pound of peanut butter.