General Hunting Discussion
Forest County Deer Hunting
I agree that many youth doe tags are filled by family members. Take the kids turkey hunting and leave the does alone for a few years. We really haven't had a rough winter up here for 5 years. I'm a little surprised the deer population hasn't improved at all, at least where I'm at (Hiles).
I saw more deer the fall of 2013 deer hunting then in any season since. The winters of 2013/14 and 2014/15 were brutal. I don't think the deer have recovered.
The Biologist wanted 300 antlerless permits plus all youth license's holders could shoot their doe also, but the CDAC voted to only let the youth hunters shoot a doe but to have a 0 quota for does for the rest of the hunters . Trouble is everyone knows half the youth doe permits filled are shot by an adult.
After listening to the DNR Biologists recommendations for the Forest County CDAC I thought I should take a ride to see all the deer we are supposed to have in our County. Took about a 40 mile UTV ride through the National Forest south of Armstrong Creek and I think I have to disagree with our biologist. We got our snow 6 days ago and I seen maybe 25 sets of deer tracks cross the road, 1 set of bear tracks. The alarming thing is I easily seen over 100 sets of wolf tracks crossing the road in the snow. The freshest set of deer tracks I seen had about 5 sets of wolf tracks hot on its trail so I have a bad feeling for that poor deer. A now retired biologist told me about 5 years ago " you only have maybe 10 deer per square mile after this last bad winter. Now each wolf needs 20 deer to survive, each pack has about 5 wolves in it so do the math and that's why there are no deer left in some areas of the northern Wisconsin "
As an add on to my comments yesterday. Last year our group (of 5) saw 7 deer. 5 doe, 2 fawn and 1 buck. I also saw a group of 3 wolves running over a ridge line and my son's walking in saw a group of 7 wolves run across an old railroad grade. When driving the fire lanes north of Hiles sometimes we see as many wolf tracks as deer tracks after a fresh snow. Yes, the late season and the Wed. night snow storm affected the 2019 hunt, but the number of wolves in the area just adds to the problem.
I've been hunting north of Hiles for 60 yrs now. In the same area for the last 50 yrs. Usually we have 5-6 hunters in camp. This was one of our worst years. We get to our stands in the dark and leave after 4:30 in the late afternoon. This year my youngest son saw a doe with 2 fawns and 2 wolves ,,, all on Monday morning. My oldest son hunted 7 1/2 days and saw no deer. By far one of our worst years. With the Wed. snow storm we were able to see the deer movement thru the area thru Sat. and most moved at night. Very few moved during daylight.
