ORIGINAL: outdoorsman4life_103
I agree they are just trying to better themselves. No doubt. And I believe the DNR did screw up. I think i read somewheres they claimed to overestimate teh population by 3 million? thats one heck of a number to overestimate by. Every one of the deer were little yearlings.
BS
No not quite. The estimation before the 2007 season was 1.8 million deer in WI and was beleived to be fairly close with the high harvest that happened in 2007. Before 2008 season I believe the estimation was around 1.6 million deer but after the season started they soon realized there was a bad estimation due to winter kill and the poorly projected bear populations in 2007 which resulted in masive winter and spring fawn kills along with the fawn kills in some lowland areas due to the massive flooding we had last spring in WI. Their new estimate which came half way throughthe gun season (to late at that point) was reduced from 1.6 to 1.2 or somillion but possibly as low as 1.1 million deer.... Thats about a 1/4 to 1/3 decrease in pop and matches up withwhat the harvests dropped throughout the state. WCL