Are you old enough to remember?

in the 1980s you needed to apply for doe tags. were we hunted in black river falls we would get a doe tag every other year most of the time. I was a kid and would have to pass on so many does every year it was ridiculous. Sometimes several dozen just on opening weekend .. Now you might see 1 opening weekend, if your lucky.  But you could have a pocket full of doe tags ... 

goju, We have a few picks of bears before my time in the photo albums from gun seasons.

Luv2Hunt,  your memory is correct.  The deer license was really a big game license and it was legal to shoot a bear.  I remember the party tags also being called camp meat tags.  When I started hunting, the group I was with did not - absolutely NOT - shoot does.  I used to sell my application tag to my shop teacher.  

Course, I'm old enough to remember a friend earning money trapping and used some of it to order a .22 revolver from the Sears catalog.  He was 12 or 13 at the time.  He sent them a check and they sent him the gun.  

I also remember hunting dinosaurs.

Eenie meanie miny mo was a legitimate means of picking teams or rendering decisions in general.

Boy, try that nowadays . . . . .

An old friend's father developed the Bodkin. Hunted with a good number in the 60's & 70's. His brother darned near lost his life to one out at that game farm in Montour IA. A boar ran between him and another hunter. The guy launched an arrow and it went clean through his thigh. Never felt a thing. He darned near bled out.

Tried them again once a place started swaging aluminum shafts circa 1985. Has one of the Baker's as well, but it terrified me because it was so shaky. Don't even think of climbing a poplar tree with that death trap. Had a couple of their 12 foot ladder stands too. Noisy as can be if you shifted your weight. 

Correct actual stands became legal about 1971. You could hunt out of a tree for a while before that you just couldn't use a stand. I still have a dozen of the old green Bear broadheads and some Bodkins. The Bear broad heads go for good money on eBay now. I bought a Baker climbing stand after they became legal and used it for a long time. Now it's scary thinking about how many times that thing slid down while climbing. Fell out of it once about 10 ft up and knocked me silly but didn't break anything.  I still have that Baker and the first Allen compound bow I bought. Not many guys bow hunted in those days. 

Pretty sure that treestands became legal in 1971. I started from the ground with a 66" Colt Arrowmaster, green Bear heads and "Arrows by Raulf". Only drew a 41# bow that first year. Graduated up to a Browning Nomad 54" bow and then to a 48" Bear Super Magnum. Got my first compound, a 55# Indian that used a continuous plastic coated steel cable. It had about 70% letoff actual. Mostly hunted from the ground (to this day) so the law change didn't affect me too much. 

When I first started bow hunting in the late 60s they had recently passed the law that you could hunt out of trees. It was illegal prior to that. I usually hunted public land and sat in the crutch of a tree with my recurve bow. Deer weren't wise to that yet. Guys would see me and come up and tell me that was illegal to do.  After a getting my first couple deer with a bow my dad finally let me go gun hunting with my new red plaid coat and an old .32 special.  Took a few years before I finally got a metal tag on my first gun buck.  This past fall was the first year since then I did not get out bow hunting due to having surgery. I did get out opening day of gun season and passed on a couple smaller bucks but that was it for the year. Planning on making up for it next year!

First year hunting got a either/or tag. No one in camp got one. Everyone was biting at the bit to shoot a doe for me.  I wanted my own chance and tag went unfilled. Very few deer back than.

My first year of deer hunting was 1968. I killed a doe we had a 4 person party tag. Total kill for the state was only about 90,000  deer total. There were  very few deer in the southern part of the state. Hwy 12 went past my parents house was pretty much bumper to bumper the day before season.

Hogmam 

That's exactly what I would have done  

Gone hunting that is

That was 1976.

I remember getting kicked off the JV basketball team by my coach because I went deer hunting instead of practice during the Thanksgiving break.

My first fall to carry a gun was 1981.  Who remembers dad taking you out of school Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday & Friday we had off of school for the Holiday!!  Friday was the travel / sight in the slug-gun day, drop-off cheese, crackers & sausage to the area farmers that let you on their land to hunt, and then talk smart & figure out which farm was the "go-to" spot in the morning.  We could only hunt the first 3-days in Lafayette County(slug gun) and then that county closed for the year, so we'd roadtrip north to Iowa County daily to finish the 9-day season. Dad had the following week off to process the deer we were lucky enough to harvest.  Not so sure he was happy to go back to work or not, :)   !!!  Most of it seems like yesterday......what a blast

As a teenager and old enough to hunt on my own I was allowed to carry the party tag. My father and two of my mother’s cousins and I pooled our 4 licenses to get a party tag for a few years. One of those years I was sitting in a brush pile at the edge of a corn field where it met a marsh and a doe walked up to me and stood there at 15’ away. I brought up my 20 gauge Remington Wingmaster pump and took aim with the iron sights on the slug barrel. When I had the deer in the sights I took off the safety and pulled the trigger. There laid my first deer. Now what to do, I ran to my grandparents house and fortunately my mother’s two cousins who were in on the party tag were there to go out hunting. They didn’t believe me that I had shot a deer until they followed me out to the corn field and there it laid. They promptly showed me how to field dress a deer and then dragged it to the house. 

I started hunting in 1963, no one my age will ever forget that Friday before opening day in American history. Would see lots of does hardly a buck. Then the "party permit" came along along I want to say 1965, my girl friend now wife worked for the Conservation Dept. which is now the DNR. Tons of applications came in, and the office gals would dump them down on floor and hand select the apps., truly amazing how I got one every year. Who will ever forget "earn a buck" !! Another off the wall DNR idea, seemed like the only time I saw a nice buck in those's days  was before I shot a doe, being old school I didn't like shooting does anyway. Think this was about the time they ended metal tags, correct me if I'm wrong. Shortly after this they told us they wanted all the does shot, and we had tags coming out of you know where !! From 90's until now I have a draw full of unused tags. One deer a year is plenty if, I'll never buy an extra tag, right now I get 6 tags a year, 3 bow, 3 gun, in southern farm zone which I never use because my grandsons do most the shooting. I'll given up telling the DNR what a bunch of idiots they are, think they know it !! Doing away with back tags wonderful, now you can't ID a violator even if you wanted to turn them in. No tags at all now, all electronic just great, what do us old dummies do that don't have smart phones, a violators dream.  But even with all this as the Yooper's say, its the greatest time of year.