Wow, the WI DNR unable to count deer? Gosh, that' s new!
Same old story...they always seem to be off by about 4 years. I hunt in unit 61, and about 7 or so years ago, does were almost as thick as sparrows. But it practically took an act of God to get a bonus tag. Then a few years later, after all of the crop damage tags had guys shooting does until their gun barrels drooped over, we were in a t-zone.
Nub summed it up pretty well; SAK screws up everything because it is a statistically invalid model. Look at the past year: buck harvest was down across the state. One of the main variables used in SAK to calculate deer population is?...you guessed it!...buck harvest! Therefore, SAK told the DNR that the deer population was down. Of course, the DNR chose to believe that SAK was accurate when it showed a higher population, but now that it is lower, they are selectively choosing when to believe it and when to ignore it. Apparently Woody, in your unit, they have decided to take a flier on it and assume that the population really is down. Here is an example of the selective spindoctoring they do, from the Wisconsin Outdoor News this past February:
Quote:
The DNR has apparently concluded that the main reason the harvest was down in most areas was because of a lack of hunters.
" We think the deer are still there, so we' ve adjusted our buck recovery rate to reflect that," Nagus said. " That' s why we' ll end up with population numbers that have us looking at Zone T seasons in a lot of units."
Brockman-Mederas says poor hunting conditions played a key role in last Fall' s reduced deer harvest, primarily during the archery season.
" We had windy weather and a wet early fall, which limited bow hunting success," she said. " During the gun season there wasn' t much snow. We didin' t have baiting, which also impacted the antlerless harvest by bowhunters."
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Yes our SAK model tells us the population is down, but we' ll choose to believe that the reality is that the population is really higher due to any of the following: weather, no baiting (thought that didn' t matter?!), lower license sales, Packer football, bowhunters watching " American Idol" ...you name it they' ll throw it out there as a reason for the harvest being off.
Anything but blame the beloved SAK model!
Woody, as revolutionary as it may sound, I believe you and your biddies have a better guage on the population in the area than does the WI DNR. Too many governmental bureaucrats trying to play CYA by selectively hiding behind " models" that have a margin of error of +/- 20%.
Wisconsin doe numbers
