Public Land Vs Private Land

I am curious who all hunts private land and who all hunts public land?  How many acres do you hunt on?  Do you do hunt both, stay on private land, or stay on public land, or possibly a combination of the both when your property backs up to public land?

Is it possible more deer are registered now than before? I know perfectly honest hunters who in the past did not register their deer if it was not easy or close by to do so. Either they did not want to drive one hour to the closest open station, or they did not want to buy ice and would rather cut up their deer immediately to preserve the meat if it was hot out. 

Some good comments here and certainly different perspectives on the situation.  I haven’t seen anyone address the falsely registering of deer that haven’t been harvested.  Essentially calling in a harvest that didn’t occur to artificially inflate kill data thinking the state and CDACs won’t recommend issuing a billion doe harvest tags for your area.  

My point was having a laminated tag that is provided for you, where you need to cut out the date of kill, and immediately place on deer before as much as moving it, along with having to have it on the deer through the entire transport, would make non registration less.  Unless you live where you hunt you risk a lot transporting an un tagged deer, making it less likely to do so.  Make the tags bright yellow or orange like before so any passing deer you can see if it's tagged.  Don't need backtags just tags.    Now unless you're checked it's out of sight out of mind I'll save tag for another deer.  You have to take no steps to validate the kill all the way to registration, and if it's already home or cut up what is the incentive to do so?  I'm usually not for too many rules, but tagging rules of a limited resource need to be strict and need to be enforced.  Can't enforce without actually having to tag a deer.  Tagging a deer will also allow others to tip of violators, making it more enforceable.  

I've been hunting public National Forest land in NE Wisconsin since 1965.

First, we slaughtered the deer herd with the merciless and unjustifiable issuance of antlerless tags. I remember when 1000s of antlerless tags were issued for DMU 45 and 49A. Then, whooops, we slaughtered way too many antlerless deer, and now we can't shoot any. OK, fine. But it created a pervasive culture of "if it's brown it's down".

Now we have these public land / private land tags. Nobody can tell by looking at that deer whether it was shot on public or private land. People shoot antlerless deer "wherever" and then attach whatever tag they have in their pocket. Phone it in. Nobody will ever check, nobody will ever know.

I sat all nine days of the 2020 gun deer hunting season. Yes, I sat, in the same old spot I've sat since 1965. And I only hunt mornings now, since I'm older than dirt. And I hunt alone 100% of the time.

This year I saw 19 deer while on-stand, all antlerless and yearlings. Day by day, I saw 3-3-5-1-0-2-0-5-0 deer while on stand. It's possible I saw the same deer more than once; up by me the deer don't have no numbers on 'em.

So I never pulled the trigger. I could have, and dragged one of those big fat does out and nobody would ever know. Slap my Oconto County Farmland tag on there, phone it in and be done with it. But no, I sit here today deerless and meatless, with no fresh venison in the freezer.

Yesterday I went and scouted some Marinette county land that's open for the 4-day antlerless only hunt. Somebody shot, field dressed, then left a big fat doe to rot in the parking lot. All kinds of traffic and logging activity, detracts from everything I find sacred about deer hunting. So I guess no venison in the freezer for me this winter.

Next year (god willing) I'll go back and sit on the same stump in the Nicolet, where it's peaceful and quiet. In 2020 I saw a grand total of one other hunter by me, and he was dragging out his tree stand on the final Sunday.

Hunting public land is what you make of it.

All-in-all, I had a pretty good 2020 in the Nicolet.

RR  

"Of course online and phone in registration is convenient, that isn’t being disputed. My point is that lack of verification leads to poor data being collected, and management decisions are based off that data. "

I haven't spent enough time crunching the numbers, but my guess is more people may not register their deer.  There were studies conducted when this changed, and they are supposed to be accounted for in the final numbers.  Even so, after a couple of years the numbers "should" work out in the wash I would "think."

However, how can we be told there are record numbers of deer (2019) in the state, and are expected to take it seriously?  In the 1980s everyone saw more deer, but we were told the numbers were far fewer then.  Since then, here is what changed:

1) Muzzleloader season - added, later addition of allowing scopes, better technology

2) Improved technology of bows, and more popular

3) Addition of crossbows to archery season

4) Extension of archery season (most areas now from early September through end of January, and addition of the whole week prior to rifle season which was previously banned)

5) December antlerless hunt (now up to a total 23 days straight of gun season vs. 9, not even including the holiday hunt)

6) Holiday hunts

7) Youth hunts

8) Free antlerless tags with every license purchase

9) Bonus tags

10) Addition of wolves

11) More bears, bobcats, and coyotes (bear seasons started, fur prices dropped, etc.)

12) Much more traffic, expanding metros/loss of deer habitat, higher chance for car/deer kills

Back in the 1980s, we were excited to actually be drawn for a hunter's choice permit which allowed someone to use their buck tag on a doe....there were no bonus permits, and I was lucky to get a hunter's choice permit every second year.  With the 12 things changing above, how can DNR with a straight face tell us that we have more deer today than 1980's?  The issue isn't the registration procedure, it is a complete disregard of common sense from our biologists managing the herd.  The deer just aren't there in much of WI anymore.

Regarding registration, I would assume they have a factored in percentage for what is not reported.  Even before they likely had something like that.  I could see it being higher now, but I would hope its there yet.

Why would the transport rule make it harder to hide deer?  Closing a tailgate is pretty easy.  How many people do you know who got pulled over when driving with a deer on their tailgate to get checked for tags?  That is rhetorical because I know its 0.  I don't see the point in that coming back.

The only thing that I think truly made things easier for violaters is probably the printed tags since you can make as many as you want.  Validating the old tags meant you didn't have it anymore.  You could get duplicates but it cost money and they could track that if you were requesting them a lot.  Even that though, I have to assume the number of people doing that is small.  Everyone already complains about so many tags, so its likely people have the tags available.  And lets not pretend people didn't just shoot deer and leave them lay in the past, while they went to find someone with a tag.

"Also the last of our 40's in open MFL is getting changed to closed MFL this year to keep the slob hunters out!! My advice is get off the public land and buy some land or get permission to hunt some farm land, that is what we did and it greatly improved our deer hunting. "

The MFL-Closed program single handedly has ruined hunting in my area.  When the brainiacs in Madison decided to give tax breaks to landowners to be able to run their private deer hunting camps, we have lost thousands of acres in this area that used to be huntable.  MFL-Open is now MFL-Closed.  Guess what happens?  The elderly couple's home next door just gets a tax hike to cover the loss of tax revenue for the township.  Also, it concentrates hunters onto smaller pieces of land.  That is why my personal opinion is the guys that cannot afford land, and the guys who aren't really serious (the opening weekend of rifle guys) are the hunters we are losing fastest - losing places to hunt.

Don't get me wrong, if I had enough land to enroll, I would enroll it in MFL-Closed also since it is legal.  I just don't like that it is legal is all.  I don't think raising taxes on others homes is right when the sole purpose of enrolling the land is to keep people off because of hunting purposes.  I support giving tax breaks to landowners if those paying the extra taxes are able to get some benefit.  I don't support raising my taxes to support loggers and large paper companies.

Of course online and phone in registration is convenient, that isn’t being disputed. My point is that lack of verification leads to poor data being collected, and management decisions are based off that data. 

We just went through an election with a tremendous amount of absentee/ mail in votes.  And as expected, there are problems with many of those votes being verified.  

Sure some people won't register deer whether in person or not in person, but if you're a public land hunter, or any hunter for that matter,  and you physically need to put a tag on the deer and bring it to your truck and then get it home, you will most likely not risk it, where as now you don't even need to tag the deer so if warden checks you you're good, and if they don't and you get home and close garage you're also good.  Heck I brought a buck to the taxidermist this year and they didn't even verify it was tagged and registered (it of course was).    I think they need to bring back tags and strict tag rules.  No transport until tagged. Where they're registered isn't as important as needing a physical tag on deer.  I also think transport rules where deer needs to be visible, as much as anti's hate it, need to be brought bag.  Make it so it's harder to hide deer and then you'll see far less non registration and tags actually being used. 

 The current tag quantities issued are mostly based on success rate and quota.  I've actually done some reading and listened to the CDAC videos quite a bit on this.  It's not that they're expecting every hunter to harvest 6 does, but more tags means more opportunity, means more boots on the ground throughout the season.  Most hunters probably choose not to fill them, but some do, and thus, the general "success rate" is probably quite low.  Whether a buck from a herd is harvested or not, we've all seen how far bucks will travel in the rut... the remaining does will be bred.  This means, regardless whether they bear a male offspring or not, there will be more offspring the following year.  Speaking from a perspective of the southern central farmland zone, where mortality is inherently low and levels of predation are also very low (I honestly think the bigger threat down here is bloat death caused by deer being fed improper foods by the locals or getting into bad agricultural pickings), this means exponential growth for an un-harvested herd.   

The inherent problems with a high proportion of buck to doe harvest is obvious.  First, the local ecosystem reaches it's capacity, which is already out of the natural norm because of agriculture.  Malnutrition, starvation and disease set-in.  Secondly, imbreeding is highly probable if third or fourth generation does are not skimmed off the herd, again, leading to disease, and abnormalities in herd genetics.  This philosophy is a spin-off from the diary industry, and one of the reasons why male offspring are steered and the farmer will often rotate bulls to sire their herds every year.

Point being, you're right, not every hunter should go out and harvest 6 does every year, but that's not the expectation of issuing the tags either.  Historical success rates of 20% on late season doe tags means giving every hunter 6 tags will yield an average harvest of 1.2 does per hunter (I'm sure any hunter that shoots three does knows at least 2 hunters that shot only a buck and are done hunting for the season).  The DNR has specific quota of harvest that, in their research, will contribute to a healthy herd without detracting from the wild population, and thus, they use the numbers and scenario above (as an example) to dictate how many tags they're handing out.

The DNR has set quotas to efficiently manage herds, and yes, in some cases wipe out or *reduce* herd populations in sub-urbia.  But that is only the goal in metro-sub units, of which most SNAs or SWAs will fall outside of.  Also, the common opinion that the woods have become completely void of deer is probably part of the reason so many tags have to be issued.... just a thought ; )

I'm a big fan of the new registration system. It is very convenient, especially for early season bow when it is warm out and not all places are open or close by. Or even during gun season alot of places would be closed on Thanksgiving. I'm also glad they got rid of back tags, those were the dumbest thing I've ever seen and were always getting in the way. 

I am pretty sure that online registration has nothing to do with the lack of deer on Public land in Wisconsin. You are always going to have a certain percentage of people that don't register their deer if there is in person registration or if it's online registration. Do you really think the woman at the gas station who used to register your deer really cared where you shot that deer or what you shot ? For our group online registration works great, it was time to modernize things a bit. You can still go to the gas station or bar and register your deer if it bothers you guys that much. When we shoot deer, our group doesn't need to let the locals know what we shot, none of their business. There are a lot of parts of the state where there is an overpopulation of deer and that's what the antlerless permits are for. Unfortunately for many people most of these deer are on private property and many of thelandowners don't want to shoot the does. We shoot enough bucks that we don't need to shoot many does on our land. Also the last of our 40's in open MFL is getting changed to closed MFL this year to keep the slob hunters out!! My advice is get off the public land and buy some land or get permission to hunt some farm land, that is what we did and it greatly improved our deer hunting. 

I think wi deer management credibility took a serious turn for the worse when we stopped having to register deer in person at a registration station, bar, gas station, etc.  When you use the Sex Age Kill (SAK) method to estimate deer herd but your inputs may not be factual, that is a major problem.  When the lack of in person registration took place, some were worried about people not registering a harvest online or by phone and saving a tag for adoption so deer. This does happen, I know that for a fact.  An unforeseen aspect is people have registered deer that were not harvested as well.  When your CDAC recommends you better harvest does heavy this year or the DNR will increase your doe quota and available tags the next year, some have gamed the system by registering deer that don’t exist.  Crazy I know, but this in fact does occur.  As a by product, the state agency is estimating a deer herd on harvest data that may not be accurate.  Garbage in=garbage out.  Believe it or not the WDNR was a model program of whitetail management into the late 1980’s that other states strived to emulate.  Nobody is trying to duplicate our states system now.  Unfortunately, wi deer management is run by politicians and corporations, the boots on the ground scientific data left a long time ago.

When the dnr stops running tv and radio spots that we have too many deer and pushing cdacs into pushing tags then I would agree.  90 perc of the hunters will listen to the “experts.”   When decades went by with zero doe tags, few hunters choice permits, fewer bears, fewer bobcats, no wolves, shorter seasons, no bonus tags, no youth hunts, no crossbows, no muzzleloaders, no antlerless hunts, no holiday hunts, well......where is your argument again?  Oh yeah, we have more deer now according to DNR.  Somehow starting around 2000 deer clone themselves.  Many people will listen to these “experts” and will feel they are doing their part to control the “problem” of too many deer.

99 percent of the blame should be going to those WE pay to manage the population.  Guess what happens if hunters dont shoot them?  They issue more tags.  You will always have a portion of hunters that try to fill every tag they can.  Just limit the tags!

Does any other state give out numerous doe tags like Wisconsin does?