WON article questioning new reg accuracy
Wisconsin
Have to love a good conspiracy. Bring back in-person registration for the gun deer season and put an end to the questions. That said, you can't generalize the entire north by the experience of a handful of businesses. While I'm sure there are areas really hurting or had few hunters, I also know of camps that saw more deer this year than they have in quite some time. It's all about the habitat, and the hunters.
While I am not totally buying into the "conspiracy". There are quite a few people in the north that feel this way. Not just a few paranoid "barstool biologists" as the DNR loves to call hunters. It could be possible in this instance that where there's smoke...
This year I heard the same story over and over here in the north country. No deer sightings, only a couple seen during the season or not much for tracks. Sure there are some areas where there are more deer, I'm assuming it's ag properties. Here's a link from a pro wolf person mentioning the high deer kill. Like RutnStrut said where's there's smoke .... I just love how the DNR can sway stats - For instance the doe kill is up 21% from the year before does not mean there's a huge deer increase in the doe population as they never mention that the year before most of the entire north was antlerless. They've done this in the past I see no reason for them to stop as it's all beneficial to them.
I noticed the link didn't work, so here's an excerpt from the article------------More stats
The following statistics come directly from the WI DNR website. Based on the 2015 over-winter deer numbers by county, there were approximately 1.2 million deer in the state in 2016. The WI DNR estimates that a single wolf kills approximately 20 whitetail deer per year for food. Even if one uses the current estimate of 900 wolves in the state (which I believe is higher than what it is, due to their elusive nature and poaching), wolves then account for 18,000 deer kills. The 2016 deer kill totals for the gun (196,785), archery (43,832), cross bow (35,337), muzzle loader (4,144), and youth (8,799) hunts totaled just under 298,000 deer taken killed by humans. In doing some simple math, wolves were responsible for only killing 1.5% of the total deer population, while human hunting alone (not counting deaths from deer-car collisions) accounted for killing over 24% of the total deer population.
One very interesting statistic from the 2016 Wisconsin deer hunt was that in the Northern Forest Zone (where most Wisconsin wolves reside) there was a 30% increase in antlered and a 21% increase in antlerless deer killed by hunters compared to 2015. These statistics resoundingly refute the claim that wolves are decimating the deer herds.
I hunt N Forest Co and Florence Co, and the 30 percent increase did not surprise me, since, it did not take that many deer, to reach that goal, compared to where we were at........
For the record, during gun and ml season, I saw over 20 deer...... all does except for 3 bucks, a spike, a 3 pointer, and a basket rack,,,, made no sense to kill them, if trying to rebuild the herd......
all of my time with the gun, was on foot and on the move, and taking up different spots at times,,,,,,,,,,
I did hear a fair amount of shooting, I ran into a tremendous amount of bait in some areas, but for the most part, when you get into nasty country, you seldom see anyone,,,,, I did see no trespass signs on public land, that was reported, some guys will trying anything,,,,,,,,
Hoot, I think you are looking at those stats the wrong way by using statewide numbers. Most of the state has few to no wolfs. So to get an accurate picture the only wolf/deer related stats that would be meaningful would be if all the numbers used were from wolf inhabited areas of the state. (north third? maybe a little more)
Jeff - Everything below where I wrote more stats were from an article from a pro wolf advocate. Sorry for the confusion. I live in wolf country and it would be great to get an accurate picture the only wolf/deer related stats. I asked the head carnivore idiot on how many does do they think a wolf takes over the winter and if they add in a % of fetuses. He told me we don't count fetuses, but I said you do every time you issue an antlerless tag as you want that deer killed with no chance of giving birth.
"30 percent increase did not surprise me, since, it did not take that many deer, to reach that goal, compared to where we were at........"
Exactly!!!! So even if the kill numbers are accurate, which they more than likely are, 30% more than crap is still pretty crappy. BUT, it has to start somewhere to get better, and I believe it is going in the right direction. Now if they could get a handle on the predators and eliminate baiting. Things would really improve.
