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.
Big Game Hunting
2021 Deer season
Displaying 31 to 45 of 169 posts
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.!
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.
LakeShiner, as much as I would like to see the gun season earlier up north, I have to admit the CWD theory does not make sense. I also have seen a big difference starting 10 yrs ago. I was amazed that on Monday afternoon of opening gun season that the bars were closed going into Phillips. About 30 yrs ago it would be going pretty good. Even on Sunday , there was not much going on. It is amazing how little it is hunted west of Phillips and into Sawyer county. When I bought my land in 1989 there were 37 cars parked along a loop that is called the Georgetown loop that goes around a good 20,000 ac. of Price co. land. I drove through one side on gun season eve and there was not a single car parked and not one tent camp. Years back it was downright crowded. If they would ban bait there I see the buck numbers decline 50%.
I agree about the tag sales mudbucket. If the DNR wanted to maintain their revenue, they'd have to make a substantial hike if they went to 1 buck per year. Money talks after all. I'm sure it would have some sort of economic impacts too if less people gun hunt. Less gas, less travel, less splurging on food, etc. Saw that in the northwoods already, many places by us closed or at least close during deer season now, which never happened. Places used to be packed but now its not worth their time. Many of the once a year weekend warrior hunters shifted south.
For those of you talking about moving gun season to the rut, people are literally printing articles that talk about how shooting more rutting bucks reduces the spread of CWD. You know how the DNR and legislators like to chase those CWD fixes....
Unless party tagging rule is changed the one buck per person doesn't make any sense. I would be all for it but I don't see it happening. It would cause less licences to be sold. Lots of gun tags are sold to people that have no intention of filling them. They are camp tags to help " fill the freezers".
I was unintentionally part of that group this year. Registered 2 deer and never took the safety off or hooked the release to the string of the bow. Couldn't get into the harvesting part this year. My cousin shot a 4 pointer and a doe bow hunting. Then shot a spike opening morning. ? I was leaving early Sunday and he wanted to shoot a big buck later in the week? Told my son to go ahead and take a doe Sunday morning before we left. I had a doe tag.
On the opposite side of that argument. Last year seen some really nice bucks on cameras and in the fields. Had a week off for the rut. Second morning 2 smaller bucks walk past. 1 really struggling. 10 minutes later the smaller of the 2 limps back through I decide to take the 5 point. Hunting season over or watch him die? No one came through looking for him.He had what looked like a grim reaper in him that didn't open. Still had a doe tag so I could sit in the tree and shake my fist as bigger bucks walked and ran past. Helped my dad with his deer, that made last years season for me. He always lived by the 1 buck rule. So others had a opportunity. He would use his tag first during rifle season if he filled his archery tag. So he would sometimes be registered as harvesting 2 bucks, but never shot 2 in the same year the 32 years I hunted with him.
Not sure what the right answer is. I do like the fact, up by us, not as many drives are taking place anymore. I think it's a reason we don't see as many as we used to. I'm ok with that. We would always do drives on Sunday, but as guys got older just stopped doing them. We also don't find as many dead deer on the property... Good luck to the guys still hunting..
On our 40 in waupaca this season we've taken 6 deer 5 antlerless and 1 buck I got with the crossbow, I will most likely go next weekend with my nephew and if 2 doe come out we will try for 2, if not I will most likely bow hunt a bit til end and if given the opportunity would harvest a doe. Next year when I head out to start bow hunting late october I will see the same ammount of deer both bucks and doe that i have for the last 15 years out there. Agreeing with lakeshiner, it all depends on were you are and what your land sustains. Give or take by me I know we will always see deer and can harvest and manage how we see fit.
The other side of that is, if he is able to shoot 4 deer, year after year, the deer must be there. If they weren't he wouldn't be able to fill his tags.
I've seen that kind of thing a number of times throughout my life as I hunted different areas of the state. Even if you shot off every deer from public land every season, by the next deer season there will be deer there again. I had private lands in the past that got driven out every day of the season. By the end it would snow and you couldn't find a track, everything got shot or driven out, they shot everything. But next year the deer density was the same as the previous season. Archery would be decent and by gun season it was worse due to all the pressure from archery. Rinse and repeat every year. Quite a bit of public land is the same way, by gun season its already pressured from archery. Its not going to be as good.
The other part is that there will always be private land that isn't hunted. Those places hold deer, like safe havens. Deer will move to habitat that is favorable over the course of a year. Fawns will disperse, etc. These places that get shot up during the season will see deer again next fall as deer come back to them when things calm down.
Just my take anyways from what I've seen. Different opinion if we are talking northwoods public as that is bigger and quite a bit different than farmland public lands.
I had an interesting conversation with a biologist for SW Wisconsin last spring. I was questioning him on the number of doe tags he was recommending to the CDACS. He showed me the data from years past. The number tags included with each license varied from 2/yr, 3/yr or 4/yr and the leftover bonus tags also varied. The doe harvest was consistent regardless of how many tags were given out. His point was it doesn't really matter, guys will shoot what they want to shoot.
He also told me he tries to harvest 4 deer per year off of public land to feed his family. Talk about a conflict of interest when he is the one who recommended to increase the public land bonus tags when not one public comment was in support of it.
Displaying 31 to 45 of 169 posts
