2023 gun season

dc…I live just down the road in Gb. Family from Kewaunee County. Very familiar with where you are at. Have chased em in the Brussels area. I doubted that you were in northern WI. A very strange year up there going back to late October. A heavy predator load and more fall bears than I could have imagined have had an impact. I’m a cedar swamp guy. Always have been.
I’d be in the stand until the last minute of the last day like you if I were fortunate to be where you are. Congratulations again. I like people who hunt and look for reasons to be out there giving it a go 

My gun season lasted 2 hours, I was done by 8:30 opening morning! Shot a nice basket buck 2 minutes in, then shot two big does a little while later. I also got a doe and a nice 10 pointer during bow season. Freezer is full!!!

We ended up with 1 doe that my son shot.  I saw deer just about every day but nothing I wanted to shoot. Couple small bucks and some does/fawns.  Had a spike at 30 yards yesterday.  

Opening day I had deer running past me in the dark, only to have someone on a neighboring property come walking in late.  Chased everything away.  Glad I got in there so early.  A few days ago he also got down early in the evening and chased deer away from me.  Gotta love gun season....

Going to let it rest a few days and then go hit muzzleloader season.  Should be the only one in the woods hopefully.  I may be less picky, sort of want to shoot the muzzleloader.

Welp thats a wrap!    a less than stellar season for the most part, hunted both waupaca and fond du lac counties private land and hunted 7 of the 9 days and seen 4 deer.
a buddy shot a a half rack 3 pt opener afternoon and that was it for waupaca.
Friday thru yesterday I hunted by inlaws in Mt Cavalry and saw 0  but my nephew got his first deer ever a huge swamp doe at about a 200yd shot and dropped her, a few minutes later another guy in our group shot a 4 ptr, great to be out and help my nephew find the deer he got and help him field dress it, was a cool experience.  Definitely a  slower season than most but I cant base anything on one bad season. 

goodhuntin all! 

madforlabs I now know how far that shot is to the end of the roadway where some of the deer come out.  I'll save it for rifle season from now on! I had cited my crossbow in to 50 yards the day before and it was 2 inches low at 50 yards, so I felt pretty good shooting out to that far.  But I'm more comfortable at 40 yards or less!

I hunt my own private land but the little public land that’s available gets hit pretty hard from what I hear especially opening weekend. After opener much less pressure.

DC cady, my sons friend hunts in Door co . He sais the hunting pressure is very light, even on public land. Do you agree with that? I ask cause I am only 140 mi. to Syurgeon Bay..  Also , i fished Little Sturgeon this fall and was quite happy.

Thanks Inukshuk , I have 60 acres of mostly cedar swamp in Door County north of Sturgeon Bay. It was unbelievable when he came walking through. I will remember this one for a long time.

A sincere congratulations dc. For the buck but even more so because your persistence was rewarded. The buck is a beauty. Where in the state do you hunt? The memory of this buck will ensure that you will be on stand every last day from now on.

I guess persistence pays off. I pulled the trigger on this mature cedar swamper with less than 2 minutes left in the season. He was the only deer I saw all day.

River Chaser, I know where Pennington rd is , I think , and 30 yrs. ago there are way way more deer then. There is about 1/3 the deer there now days.  Fishsqueezer, you are likely right about the cabins coming down, and I have a hunch very few know there is a bait ban in Sawyer co. cause it just went into effect Oct. 5th. 

Might want to rethink a 63 yd shot at last light. You were indeed lucky. Chances are you won't be next time. 

Gun season was very un productive at the camp I attend.  A few of the guys only hunt the opening weekend, and a couple of us went a few extra days.  I hunted opening weekend, Monday morning, and yesterday (Saturday) both morning and evening.  I saw at least two deer at all of the sits but they were all in thick brush or were does or youngins.   I honor the land owner's rule of only one doe per year and I took the doe during bow season two weekends before gun season (my first with a bow and was a very lucky shot at 63 yards away at the last minutes of hunting hours).  Anyhow, as of last night just one nub buck and one spike had been shot.  There are a LOT of does on the property and my cameras show that.  I started seeing the same deer multiple times and could recognize them.  Some bucks I had on camera since August when they still had velvet and others popped up the second week of November for the first time. So many places to hunt on the property, I tried to play the wind yet sometimes I could tell I still got busted from the east when there was a west wind or the west when there was an east wind! The deer know we're there!  Oh well, I still had fun!

Good season for my group of 6. We took 6 does and 0 bucks. Didn't seen anything of size all season,  just a bunch of 1.5 year Olds. All six does came off 120 acres and we saw a bunch of deer this year. I had days of 22, 14, 15 deer seen. We are in a very doe rich area. Will take 1 more doe hopefully. 
As far as what I noticed,  Seems like nobody is hunting anymore.  Opening day couldn't hunt, but was driving around and didn't see many vehicles in woods, not like 20 years ago, one by every driveway. No different all week.  Very little pressure to make deer move anymore. 

I doubt many of the bait hunters give up the practice or hunt in a different area once a ban goes into effect. All the local gas stations we’re still selling corn. Hunter numbers have been trending down up there since 2013 when the 50 year cabin leases on county forest land weren’t renewed. Many of those camps were very large in size, once the cabins had to come down it seemed many of these groups still continued to hunt but slowly and surely they began dwindling down to where we are now. There are still a spiderweb of now grown over ATV trails emanating from the former cabin sites. Things got much better for everyone not fortunate enough to have had a county forest cabin lease when that happened.