Quality Deer Management in Wisconsin

Brock Tetzlaff

 

 

Quality deer management has always been a hot topic with deer hunters in Wisconsin and across the nation. People all over have many different opinions on how Wisconsin’s deer population should be managed. I recently skimmed over the Quality Deer Management Association’s (QDMA) 2012 annual report. Within that report it detailed how many antlered and antlerless deer were harvested from 2008 through 2010. Using those numbers, the report also detailed percent changes in how many of each sex were harvested from 2009 to 2010 as well as calculated how many bucks and does were harvested per square mile for every state. In this blog, I will strictly use only the numbers for Wisconsin and maybe other Midwestern states to give you an idea to compare them to.

            Wisconsin was the number two state for the most bucks harvested from 2008 to 2010, second only to Michigan. The following are the years and amount of harvested bucks in Wisconsin: 2008 harvested 138,507; 2009 harvested 134,696; and 2010 harvested 148,378. Michigan harvested 248,350, 215,120, and 212,341 respectively. For Wisconsin, that was an increase of 10% from 2009 to 2010. Based on those numbers, the QDMA calculated that out to 4.4 bucks per square mile in 2010. That is the highest of any Midwestern state while the lowest was 0.4 bucks per square mile in North Dakota. On top of that, 53% of bucks shot in Wisconsin were 2 ½ years or older. Concluding the buck harvest totals, Wisconsin was in the top five (fourth) for 2010 antlered buck harvest as well as top five (third) for 2010 buck harvest per square mile for all U.S states.

In continuing with harvesting numbers, the total antlerless harvest in Wisconsin was 313,378 in 2008, 192,557 in 2009, and 185,211 in 2010. That calculates out to a percent change of negative 4% from 2009 to 2010. The 2010 number for does per square mile was 5.4. Those numbers put Wisconsin in second for total harvest for all three years and antlerless deer per square mile in the Midwest.

With that as background information, I will now explain my dilemma that I have with the way the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is currently managing the deer management units (DMU). This summer I went and bought my 2012 gun deer license for the nine day gun deer season in November. When they went on sale on August 18, 2012 at 10am, I bought a bonus antlerless permit for twelve dollars. The bonus permits were permits that could be bought on top of the antlerless permit that comes with your original license for herd control and CWD units. Before I went to by the bonus permit for the DMU I hunt in, I researched to find out how many permits were available for all units. I found that my unit only had 450 bonus permits for sale, while the unit to the east (across a two lane street) had over 3800 permits for sale and the unit to the west (across a two lane highway) had 3500 permits for sale. Now this is where I wonder how this is logical. What the DNR is saying is that deer (antlered or antlerless) do not cross over roads/highways to exit one unit and enter another unit. How is it you can sell a combined 7300+ permits for the two units on either side of one unit in the middle, and only sell 450 permits to that unit? This makes absolutely no sense to me. I suppose I would be much more upset if I did not get a bonus permit, but it is still irritating to me that I could have gone hunting without that bonus permit. Needless to say, the 450 permits were sold out in nine minutes. Luckily, my dad and I had a new dealer location that just had the licensing machine installed the day before so we were able to get our bonus permits.

I would like to find out, read, or be told by a DNR official how they determine and decide how many bonus permits are allotted for each DMU because we all know that deer can and do cross major streets and highways and move between deer management units. The past few deer seasons I have not seen many does where I hunt. This may be the reason for lack of bonus permits but it shouldn’t affect only one DMU. I would like to see some logical proof, whether it is from the Wisconsin DNR or the QDMA, that specifically explains which DMU get bonus tags and how many they get. I understand land cover can change deer habitat and the preference of the deer, but it should not influence deer populations astronomically from one unit to the next.

            In conclusion, the numbers for harvested antlered deer increased as of late, and the number of harvested antlerless deer has decreased for the past five years. With that in mind, the number of bonus permits all over the state should be decreasing down to 500-1000 for each deer management unit. It should not fluctuate so much between units that have the same border.

 

 

Works Cited:

QDMA’s Whitetail Report 2012. 18 September 2012.

Antlerless deer (bonus) carcass tags availability for 2012. http://dnr.wi.gov. 18 September 2012