Are Earn a Buck restrictions actually a good thing?
 

I think someone logged on as me and posted this... sorry...

well wasn't the plan all along to decimate the herd? ie only leave healthy animals to breed, really though for that to work I think you'd have to just about kill every deer and let healthy deer come back in.

if you want more deer, earn a buck wouldn't produce more deer, not allowing does to be harvested would...

so buck only tags would probably help more than earn a buck.

but who knows, good luck!

It all depends what the objectives are of a management plan. If it is to reduce herds drastically the only way to force hunters into shooting does is by implamenting eab. However when eab is used for too long of a time in areas where they just want to reduce the herd by some and not drastically it has negative effects. Here is why. WI management is done by the SAK system or what I like to refer to it as the nut sak system cuz it is totally worthless once eab is thrown into the system. The SAK was designed with a model for normal management not manangement with eab and extra doe seasons. The model is almost totally based off the buck fawn and yearling buck harvest each year. When you force eab on hunters they naturally want to get that buck tag so they can hunt the big buck they care about so what do they do? They shoot the first antlerless deer to step out of the woods and whats the dumbest deer in the woods? Nubby. So in the sak system with eab there is a higher number of buck fawns harvested compaired to normal which actually gives an estimated population of the herd to be alot higher than it actually is. Continue this for many years and you have compounding effects negatively destroying a deer herd. Its all a system of numbers and eab has no place in the SAK system. So there ya have it in a quick version. The only thing eab is good for is driving herd numbers down by alot. It really has no other purpose and imho it can be a good tool but shouldnt be allowed to be a regulation in a given unit 3 years in a row. Biggest issue I see is how the dnr hasnt upped the amount of habitat classified as deer habitat by much in the past 60 years and we all know how many wetlands have dried up, crop land is out of production, and small patches of woods not big enough to be classified as deer habitat actually hold alot of healthy deer year round due to the amount of food availability in most of WI. Good thing is we wont see eab anymore int he state of wi except for cwd units and even that is looking like it may get axed finally. We shall see.

I think the earn a Buck thing is just an insentive to get Hunters to harvest more Doe's where they are in more abundance....that way the Doe's can be a closer ratio to the Bucks other wise You have too many Hunters harvesting Bucks instead of thinning out Doe's where needed?We don't have that here in Missouri and in my area most Hunters would just as soon get a Doe for the meat...sure its nice to get a Big Ol Buck but after a while it can get pretty expensive having all those Bucks mounted at the Taxidermist. ;)

EAB has it's place. It's an effective management tool when the deer population gets out of control. As it had in a large majority of Wisconsin.

The problem was that the DNR didn't repeal the more aggressive hunting measures soon enough in some regions. Nor did the DNR account for the explosion in the wolf population and the effect it would have on the deer herd.

In some places the deer herd has gotten to be low of enough population to make hunters to actually have to work for their animals. I hunt zone 8 in the far NE part of the state. You have to do the work prior to the gun season to set yourself up, and then you have to be patient. If you wait long enough in a well chosen place you should get your buck.

You don't see the deer we used to when I first began hunting there 17 years ago. There are still deer there though. The common thought up where I hunt is that the wolves are keeping the numbers down far more than the effect of the hunters. There are a lot of wolves up there now. 17 years ago there were few, if any, of them at all.

Let's face it, the number of coyotes is far less up there now, and wolves are better predators than coyotes. A pack of wolves has to take down more animals to survive than the same number of coyotes in an area.