2021 Deer season

Edit: I meant to say Gun deer season.

I will be in Shawano county. Weather looks really nice. Very excited as usual. I loves me some opening days.

Anyone hunting MN opener? It's gonna be 60*, glad I didn't plan on it. 

I believe hook is referring to skinner creek rd and white birch, that being south of w. Good place to view wolves. 

I Hook- I'm not sure where the Georgetown loop is? I don't deer hunt anymore so I just did some drive arounds to see what was going on. There is a loop off M in Sawyer county that is called Hines grade rd. Saturday morning and Sunday morning there were at least 30-35 trucks and 7-8 camps set up. I grouse hunt that area and know it pretty well. I never see much for deer sign. Some though. I came upon a drive there on Sunday afternoon with 20-25 hunters getting set up. I talked to one of the standers who said this is the most hunters he had seen in that area for 25 years. He also told me they were seeing some does and fawns on their drives and shot a large 10 pt the day before. I see some wolf sign in that area but nothing too much to keep me from grouse hunting it. This would be just west of Price county.

On one of my worst years, the second Saturday I was sitting in a tree stand and counted 17 deer walking a ridge single file. My guess is that something got them moving off of their bedding area. I have also seen  when the small Buck's disappear because the bigger dominant Buck's have been beating them up. That may also explains somewhat why 3 out of the last 4 year's I was able to shoot a small buck on the second weekend of the hunt. The amount of corn and apple's that are dumped in the woods will also alter the deer patterns. And yes the numbers are down since the glory year's of 1999-2000.

We have been hunting Bayfield and Sawyer county fro over 30 years.

This was by far the worst year we had.  Our group had 9 hunters and 5 saw deer.

By Tuesday it was very hard to get motivated to even go out.

For years we hear about locals shooting deer over corn from their homes. Is it true who knows.?

We wish they had zero doe tags for a few years, but have been told that the business owners will never let that happen because it’s bad for business.

Went to local restaurant for Friday night fish fry and walked right in with no wait.!

Hard to spread it if there are no deer there. 

According to this map, CWD is almost non existent in the north. Time to get off that issue and address the real issues.

 Why hunt when you only see a wolf track? I guess there is no reason, except one reason, and sometimes I think that is why I go year after year anyway with extremely low expectations that always get met. Some here imply I'm a whiner. I'm not, I just tell the sorry a$$ facts every year how bad it is up north where I hunt.  I love being in the woods. I guess that is why I go. Hard to believe though that my family has 25 ac. in Shawano co. My cousin ( neighboring land owner) saw 23 deer the first day . Why dont I hunt there? I cant stand so many hunters. My BIL. is on our 25 ac. and hardly hunted this year. I would rather be way back in the woods and see very little for deer and hardly a shot all day (maybe 10 opening day)  and know there are not much for hunters near by. I cant figure myself out without me  trying to explain me for you , but I did try.

"I drove through one side on gun season eve and there was not a single car parked and not one tent camp."

It's happening just that way in a lot of areas north of HWY64.  It goes back to the lack of deer.  When hunters, especially the thousands of gun hunters that don't take hunting that seriously, go year after year and don't see much...this is what happens.  It has nothing to do with baiting, lack of public access in those areas, or any other reason except the lack of deer.  When crews of 8-10 guys make deer drives in fresh snow and don't see a track except for a wolf, why hunt?

lakeshiner....your right.  It wouldn't be at all surprising if WDNR even offered more buck tags to "control" CWD.  You see, we must kill the deer before CWD does.  There has not been anything done from a human/management perspective that has stopped, or even significantly slowed CWD.  Illinois was bragging for awhile that deploying sharpshooters around the state was slowing the spread by killing as many positive and negative CWD deer as possible.  The prevalence rate doubled in 2020.  You don't hear much about that working anymore....  Bait bans have done nothing to slow or stop the spread anywhere in the U.S.  Perhaps the next biggest thing is to kill every buck on the landscape.

CWD cannot be stopped, or even slowed to a degree that means anything.  It will eventually be everywhere.