I hunt unit 61. We've been told it's basically a done deal.
The most frustrating aspect is that the population in our unit has not increased in 10 years, but the overwinter targets for population per square mile have been decreased twice. So WOOLAH!...just like that the unit is deemed to be overpopulated. This despite the fact that the percent of harvest that was antlerless was the highest outside of the CWD zones.
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Whitetail Nirvana
The West Central Wisconsin Hunting Resource
I believe that every unit in WI is overpopulated, and the best thing for WI is earn a buck. BUT, I believe that it should have been reciprocal. You should have to shoot a doe this year to earn a buck tag next year. That way everybody wins! You don't have to pass up a buck and you bring the doe population down.IMO.
I own land in zone 61. The deer population veries greatly from one area to the next. As an example my farm and my neighbors farm has corn, soy beans and alfalfa year after year. Other properties close to me are in CRP programs. The owners of these properties dont see much during hunting season, while myself and my neighbor have most of the deer in the area living on our properties. In this area most of the farms have been bought up for hunting or are leased for hunting. This means less hunters are going to be hunting. In my opinion earn a buck will not work. I think the DNR should consider having a late rifle antlerless season in January in areas that have a high deer population.
Mammaboy, that's a pretty broad statement you made. In my area up near Lake Superior, there is defintely not an overpopulation of deer. Again, there can be areas that have more than others fairly close by, but with lake effect snow and wolf predation, MOther Nature does a good job of keeping the herd in check. In some areas in central and southern WI there are deer running around like rabbits...no doubt there needs to be some thinning out in those areas.
I am from Ashland and hunt up there every year. I realize the sightings are not nearly as common as down here but there is still an over population of deer, even up north. I don't mean to be "bold", just my opinion.
I know Earn-a-buck is in effect for my unit...Which is 63a...I hunt just south of Shawano outside a small village called Navarino...I have hunted there since I was 12 (20 right now)...The EAB wont effect me much for I am a meat hunter...I see 5 times more doe then I see buck..I have only downed 5 deer, with only 2 being bucks..(8 and a 3 pointer)..Lately the deer I have been seing has been down, Except for last year....We'll see how this year goes and hopefully EAB will be dropped and it will go back to the normal T-zone like it has been for the past few years
"Overpopulation of deer" is at it's heart a subjective statement. Again, in the unit I hunt, the overall population is virtually unchanged from several years ago. It is the OVERWINTER TARGET for population that has been reduced, so therefore the unit is now considered "overpopulated".
SCHL44 made a great point in that depending on where you are in a particular unit, you could have plenty of deer or very few. I do know this: crop damage claims have declined over the past 7 years, so how the DNR now considers the unit overpopulated is rather curious. Is it more car-deer collisions? Seems like that is the result of more cars, not more deer. I think at the heart of the problem is the SAK model they use for calculating deer population. Too many flaws, too many subjective variables added.
Having said that, I tagged two does last year...the only deer I had the opportunity to shoot due to limited time. This year we plan on harvesting more does, since in our little area, the antlerless population is a little ahead of where we want it to be. But EAB will do one thing: dissuade a large number of the non-hardcore hunters who otherwise might venture into the woods to at least shoot A deer. So unless the rest of us are gonna shoot three or four, I don't see how EAB will cut the population in an area that already has an antlerless harvest of over 65% of the total.
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Whitetail Nirvana
The West Central Wisconsin Hunting Resource
Earn A Buck?
