Deer license sales 2018

Does anyone know where to find the number of bow, crossbow and gun license sales so far in Wisconsin?

The 2019 gun deer license sales were down 8,825  licenses.  It is a drop of about 1.5%. The harvest was down 27% on opening weekend. The license sales are is only down about half as much as last year. 

Still no report on deer license sales. They were out last year at this time. Has anyone heard? Its really not that important but I am curious. 

About 44,000 as of  10/29/19. DNR website info by county

Anyone hear if the kill numbers are up or down this year? 

Well there he is.... haven't heard from Long Barrels in a while!

However like I said earlier, the inclusion of patron and upgrades confuses it a bit (see notations 1 and 2 at bottom of table).

Stats are from table 17, page 35 from Wisconsin Big Game and Turkey Summary on DNR website.  Stats go back to 1966.

about 300,000 less licenses sold and wisconsin will finally be getting somewhere.

"At the current rate of change, xbow hunters will be higher in numbers than regular bow in only 2-3 years"

Where is your historical data showing there will be a swing of 37,067 (using your numbers) licenses in 2-3 years. To make that statement you have to have the numbers to extrapolate (guess) at the future number.

Bow license numbers down and xbow licenses up, we'll never know how many are converts and how many are new to the season all together because the DNR doesn't provide us that either.  At some point there will be no more converts and fewer people new to the season and the number will plateau, it's anybodies guess when that may happen.

Fish.. but your license numbers would produce a different % which I prefer.

The percentage is the number of xbow licenses divided by total “archery “ licenses (regular bow +xbow licenses.  For 2018: 171,993 xbow / (171,993 + 208,060 regular bow) = 45% of total is xbow.  At the current rate of change, xbow hunters will be higher in numbers than regular bow in only 2-3 years. Another interesting stat is that total archery kill has risen but only very slightly.  However far more bucks than does are now being killed, meaning in total fewer does are being killed.  This makes managing the heard even more difficult even though kill is slightly up.  You can’t necessaripy say that is completely due to the season structure change though.

"The data I saw indicates 45% xbow 2018, 42.5% 2017, 40% 2016, 37% 2015 and 33% 2014 (the first year). "

These are the numbers that confuse me then....... percentage of what?

Those numbers aren’t kills, they are licensed hunters from the harvest stats.  Last year, the 208,060 “licensed hunters” for archery killed 21,686 antlered and 18,729 baldies for a total of 40,405 kills.  171,993 xbow licenses killed 47,224 in those same stats.  You are right though, very tough to derive useful info without further explanation of the base data.

Your talking kills, I mentioned licenses sold as the DNR reported. You are correct I didn't add Patrons license either. We also do not know how the "upgrades" were added or if they were. Any numbers the DNR has been putting out really don't explain how data was tabulated.

Fish I think you are right.  The data I saw for 2018 with all of those groups included showed 208,060 archery licenses and 171,993 xbow.  Your numbers were far lower so I wonder if yours did not include patron.  That would mean there are 70-80,000 patron license holders.  The data I saw indicates 45% xbow 2018, 42.5% 2017, 40% 2016, 37% 2015 and 33% 2014 (the first year).  A very linear trend that isn’t flattening much.  Yours would be lower percentages xbow which I’d prefer to believe.