A very good friend of mine lives in Wisconsin and has bemoaned the apparently dwindling deer population in northern Wi for several seasons now. He talked, for two seasons, of seeing more wolves than deer in a week's hunt! Apparently the wolf season did have some impact on wolf numbers and sightings this year, however.

I know from his texts and emails lately that you all are having some rough weather now. I had to just send him a picture of the dusting of snow we just got here this morning in north central Tn. He gets a nice break from your weather in a couple weeks when we go on our annual hog hunt in Georgia. We both really look forward to ending our hunting seasons (big game) by chasing some big Ga boars! :D

If you own the land you control who comes on it and hunts, you can also tell those you let hunt what gets shot and how many. As for outfitters and leasers as far as I an concerned the farmer if he does this in now involved in a commercial enterprise; he should no longer be taxed as ag. land it should be taxed as a business no farmer could afford this. Also land where I live is going for about 10,000 per acre and the county just south on me a piece of ground sold for 11,500 per acre last month.

After buying tractors combines and semi truck you have about 1 million in iron you use 3 mos out of the year. anyone who makes a living farming is not really concerned with someone being ticked off about not seeing deer unless he is in a situation where he can afford the loss.

As for the guys wanting to manage deer pony up and come to an auction with a letter from the bank with a guaranteed line of credit

Yer not a farmer are ya?

***I doubt it since he says farmers that are leasing their land or outfitting for hunting should be taxed as a business instead of as ag land.

Actually yes I am. I am not pleased with the results of land being leased out for hunting, have never done it never will. I really don’t like outfitters telling land owners what to do with my land. I am from Illinois and here it is so bad with waterfowl hunters (outfitters) leasing land, last year one of them sent a letter to the DNR wanting hunting hours shortened so no one could hunt after one pm so the birds would have a refuge.
I really get hot over outsiders telling me what to do with a three generation owned family farm. I really get upset when some guy who is in it for the money tries to tell me that my kids can’t hunt birds when they come home from school. I really get upset when it becomes so expensive for a dad to take his kids hunting (I have ground but I know there are guys who do not take their kids hunting because they cannot afford it) that kids do not hunt.
As far as the taxing goes no one is really in a position that I know of that the money you make from leasing is going to make or break you. But being taxed as a commercial enterprise will break you right now and I really dislike the whole outfitter/leasing thing.

Tnhunter444,

Pick up a P&Y/B&C USA entry map and look for the white. That is Tennessee.

That is also why the Illinois public land parking areas I've been hunting the last 20 years are inundated with Tennessee license plates. They are not alone though. I'd say these state's plates follow in roughly this order...........MI, AL, LA, MS, GA, FL. But TN is undisputed #1 these days by my account. I drive by all the lots so I have a pretty good sample size.

Interesting note.........Missouri & Pennsylvania plates have near completely disappeared from there recently. Not by cooincidence those states instituted antler restrictions a while back.

Sounds like Zim is strictly talking about big bucks, rather than deer numbers, because even in a bad year like it was here in MI this year we still kill a couple hundred thousand or more deer a year and he had it in his "wasteland" comment. We take a number of good bucks down in the southern lower zone 3, but not that many as you go north into zones 2 and 1. It ticked me off when the QDM Association got the DNR to put another 10-12 counties under a 4 point antler restriction up in zone 2 this year where I have property. I can't count points in the areas up there because a lot of it is thick, swampy area awhere you can't see 50 yards, so that restriction is pure BS when it includes private property. I'm lucky to see a buck at all in that heavy cover I hunt and it's not because it's over-hunted. Now they want me to take time to make sure a buck has at least 4 1" points on one side before I pull thetrigger. Of the 40+ bucks we've taken up there since I bought the property way back in 1973 there are probably only a couple spikes that were taken where we knew how many points they had before walking up to them. What really sucks is that now my two deer combo license requires both bucks to have that count on at least one side when in the past a 3" spike qualified. We also haven't had any doe permits up in that area in ages and I have no problem with that because the herd went way down back in the 90s and is still down. If you're a meat hunter, you better go out with your bow up there because that's about the only way you'll put meat in the freezer due to that new regulation.

Funny you should mention this. Not only did we institute antler restictions starting in 2002, we also started a herd reduction plan several years before this. We had this very same fight back then. Meat hunters were p1ssed. Guys used to seeing a lot of deer were disappointed. But, a lot of guys were happy because our bucks got a lot bigger. Where spikes and forks were most of the harvest, now P&Y bucks are common. And we're producing more and more B&C bucks now too. The habitat is improving as a result of less deer. Rattling works like a charm now because bucks are actually fighting over doe. And the coolest thing, we are now seeing tons of 200+ pound bucks and a couple that are 300+ pounds. 20 years ago, bucks were 120-150 pounds.

I saw that article mentioned increasing herd sizes based on the amount of hunters. But, the habitat has to be able to carry them. I realize you have a lot of farms, but that's seasonal food. From October until late spring, this habitat is cut down for humans to use. Deer will be browsing in the woods in the winter months. And, if your land is more farms than forest, that's even less winter food.

I don't know anything about your deer managers but, based on our experience, reducing overall deer numbers is not necessarily a bad thing.

I suppose it's your right to figure a state's worth for deer hunting is found only in the .001% of bucks that score 160+ net. No problem from me. I prefer to see the benefit of being able to enjoy a rifle season that's nearly two full months long and an opportunity harvest as many deer as you'd like to. It's pretty apparent to me that you know little to nothing about deer hunting in Tennessee, believe what you'd like we're doing pretty damn well here.

As for Illinois hunters, my Buddy in Wisconsin has lots to say about the hordes of them that invade Wisconsin every year as well.

LOL I bet he does. He probably gets the Chicago crowd.