As promised, here's the letter I e-mailed to Bill Mytton regarding his remarks in the Wisconsin Outdoor News. Also, I will paste in entirety his response, if and when I get one:

Mr. Mytton,

I read with interest the recent article in the Wisconsin Outdoor News regarding your feeling that you were being...is targeted the right phrase?...as a result of the recent deer season. That is, your statements that the recent "brown" season that was so disappointing to many deer hunters, has similarities to other "Brown" seasons. Those similarities being...if I am interpreting your comments correctly...as being a lower deer harvest.

This year had a gun season which had a much lower than anticipated gun harvest. I don't believe that issue is in dispute. However, assuming that the story contains correct quotes and also, correct emphasis, I am confused by a few things. First, let me review the first few paragraphs of the article:

"During each of the 'brown' years of 1960, 1990 and this past deer season, we got a lot of calls and letters telling us there are no deer out there," Mytton told the Natural Resources Board at its December meeting in Madison.

Those years had no snow on the ground during the gun deer season. Mytton said he now felt like he was in Afganistan, because of the amount of "scud missiles" (in the form of hunter complaints) that were coming at him. Yet, he told the board taht when looking at all 2001 deer seasons together, the harvest may be adequate, and raks fairly well with previous years.

Preliminary registrations, which won't be final until March 2002, totalled 291,563 deer during the nine-day gun season (compared to 433,511 in 2000).

One of the years you mention is 1990. So imagine my suprise when I went back and did a little checking of the harvest records. In 1990, there were a total of 350,040 deer harvested during the gun season. Mr. Mytton, not only did that blow the snot out of what we had for a total this year (by 20-some percent!), but it was also a record harvest at that time!! So what am I missing?? If that was indeed a 'brown' year, how did we set a record for harvest during gun season? Now I do realize that the population entering the 2001 season was estimated to be about 8% lower than the population entering the 2000 season. But we had a harvest during the deer gun season that was 30%+ lower than the same harvest last year? Are there some stats to explain this discrepancy? Certainly weather conditions played a part. But again, during the last "Brown" year, we still managed to set a record for deer harvest during the gun season.

Further, the following is stated:

Mytton said that following the 1960 and 1990 seasons the DNR became too conservative in deer quotas, because of hunter concerns over not seeing deer. He said it took years to recover from inadequate harvests following 'brown' seasons.

....so I do a little more research, and what do I find? The 1991 harvest...apparently one of the subsequent harvests where the DNR was getting too "conservative"?...ANOTHER RECORD !! In fact, 352,520 taken that year during gun season, not to mention a jump of about 18,000 more taken during bow season that same year.

As stated previously, it is certainly possible that the confusion that this article generates is caused by editing or misquoting. If so, I would appreciate some clarification on the matter. Certainly, given the recent surveys taken by the DNR and others that show, at best, a mistrust of the DNR's population estimates by hunters, I am sure that you will agree that giving information in the proper context is very important.

Yet myself and many others are confused by the apparent discrepancies created by your comments when compared with the DNR's own statistics for the years noted above.

Please feel free to e-mail me your comments at your earliest convenience.