Lanse couche couche

Your permits are somewhat lower than what I would have to pay to hunt my own land in Illinois. When you have folks paying $400+ for a NR archery permit to hunt Illinois, they are probably not that interested in shooting a doe. But the states love getting those high fees even if it is getting spent on lots of thngs besides DNR stuff.

teedub31

So do you shoot the first deer you see? Or do you pass on does (if you don't have EAB)in hopes of getting a buck latter.

Everyone here has totally misconstrued my original statements. I am not against taking adoe to EAB. I am against paying for a license to do something state officials want and need to have done to keep the resources in check. If it were not for hunters the state would have tohire people to cull deer. With hunters, they get the best of both worlds, getting paid for something that they would otherwise have to pay for.

Lanse couche couche

When i do deer hunt i am a meat hunter. I prefer to take a medium sized doe, and that's what i have done the last three years i hunted. Might take a young buck, but would prefer to leave any good sized ones alone so my neighbors can have a chance at them.

Northport buckslayr

I didnt mean literally destruction, I know that the dnr doesn't want to completely remove deer from the state. However, every hunter in my area as well as those in other areas, including some on this forum, have had the population in their area sink to an all time low. All the older hunters I talk to claim they have never had this few deer around. If wisconsin had such a large herd in the 80s and 70s without such huge negative consequences why does the dnr fell the need to put it at an all time low now? Having a large healthy (and yes I do mean healthy, even at previously large herd densities we were nowhere near carrying capacity) is a large part of why WI has such a strong deer hunting tradition.

i know some will say that there can never be big bucks unless you shoot does. I agree some does need to be shot. The only reason to shoot does is to keep the herd below carrying capacity, and make sure there is enough food to go around, and all the does are bred in one intense rut. Even at the huge herd numbers of ten years ago WI had %100 recruitment of does during the rut(according to Keith McCafferty former dnr head big game biologist) and in the majority of the states sprawling agricultural areas (lower 2/3 of the state) there is more than enough food supply for a large herd. The only thing I can figure is the herd reduction impetus is crop damage and car accidents.

dvalliere

Teedub31,

Your numbers regarding fees and your clarifications are very informative and I appreciate you taking the time to share them. Your state does seem expensive, though you are buying a lot of various tags (am I right in reading your #s when it looks like the base price to hunt deer is $44, more to add archery and additional deer)?

Here in WI, it's $24 for a gun license which comes with a buck tag and a doe tag. Additional antlerless tags are $2 each--that's a major difference between our states. (In EAB zones, the buck tag is not valid until an EAB sticker is attached OR you have a tagged doe in possession which will earn the sticker--e.g. shoot the doe and then shoot the buck in the same outing.) I think my license actually came with a second antlerless tag good for archery but I don't have it with me at the moment to check and I didn't pay close attention because I didn't get out for archery hunting this year.

dvalliere

No offense, but this sounds suspect. Can you point me to a link that indicates this? How could this possibly be documented--100%? From what I've read, some doe fawns come into estrous after the first rut. If that's true, the 100% claim isn't true. (This is claiming that all of the does were bred during the first rut, correct?)

Aren't those very legitimate reasons to keep the herd size lower than maximum carrying capacity?

Bone_Collector

I hunt in Tennessee and the unit I hunt in we are allowed to shoot 3 does per day form the opening day of archery until the closing day of rifle. However a lot of people do not take advantage of this. instead, when you talk to them they will say "I don't shoot does," but then they do shoot the first 1 year old buck that has visible antlers on it's head as if that is tougher than shooting a doe. I think this would be a good idea for my unit in the state of TN. If everybody had to shoot 3 does in order to harvest their 3 bucks our harvest #'s would most likely double, which would not hurt. I do not see what the problem is with shooting does. If you are eating what you kill the meat is better in my opinion.

Lanse couche couche

Probably a bit of a conflict of interest here. Even at an alltime low, in terms of recent history, folks can still probably get a deer if they put the effort into it. If not, well that's why they call it hunting. I know that when the deer numbers in my part of Illinois were very low compared to the present, you rarely had accidents involving deer, there was virtually no crop damage, and folks did not have to turn their gardens intocompounds with 8 foot fences to keep their sweet corn safe. Now, there are plenty of deer but also plenty of problems for the folks living out in the country. So, for them, an all time low would look pretty good. Not so good for folks who are gonna be disappointed if they don't see deer everytime they go to their stand.

Northport buckslayr

http://www.whitetailsunlimited.com/i/p/bk_traditionaldm.pdf

on the fourth page of this PDF document is the statement "virtually all adult does in the state are bred and most will produce twin fawns" this statement was made in 2001 when the author was still the dnr big game biologist and EAB had only been used once in 1996, not four out of the last five years.

yes crop damage and auto collision are good reasons to control the herd but control and sink to all time low levels are very different things.

vabyrd

One thing to remember is that guys don't hunt like they used to, hence the lack of success. People sit in porta pottys, and send text messages while waiting for something that looks like it came off the cover of a Cabela's catalog. It ain't going to happen. Guys who bitch that there "aint no deer" need to get out and get with it. You cant make chicken salad out of chicken chit.... My opinion is either shoot monster bucks or does. Let the small ones go.