Despite two consecutive severe winters, Oconto County deer hunters should have about the same number of deer to pursue this fall as they did last year, the Department of Natural Resources predicted in its annual Whitetail Deer Forecast.
The DNR is projecting “modest increases” in the buck harvest for most of the Northeast District, with a few exceptions where the harvest is expected to be the same or somewhat lower than last year.
Northeast Wisconsin did not experience the excessive snow depths and periods of sustained subzero temperatures that resulted in high mortality rates for fawns in northwest Wisconsin, said Dave Halfmann, a DNR wildlife biologist in Peshtigo.
“We had some fawn loss here, but the snow depths weren’t enough to prevent the deer from moving,” he said.
Deep snow makes it difficult for young deer to survive.
This fall marks the initial implementation of a number of changes recommended in James Kroll’s Deer Trustee Report. A key change is the reduction of deer management units statewide from 134 to 72. The old DMUs were defined by roads, rivers and lakeshores, but a recommendation to simplify them resulted in management zones that follow county boundaries.
Oconto County is one of nine statewide that will be an exception, Halfmann said. Instead, it lies within two zones, the Northern Forest and the Central Farmland, due to changes in deer habitat.
North of state Highway 64 and east of state Highway 32, the county is largely forested and is included in the Northern Forest Zone, which stretches west to the Minnesota state line. Forests change to cropland south of Highway 64, and the southern part of the county has been added to the Central Farmland Zone, which extends south to Sheboygan and Marquette counties.
Deer are less plentiful in the Northern Forest Zone, where bucks-only harvesting is authorized this year. A few exceptions are made for antlerless deer taken with a permit by hunters under 17 years of age and veterans of foreign wars, Halfmann said.
Deer damage to farms and forests is more prevalent in southern Oconto County, and antlerless permits are being issued this year to licensed hunters for use there.
Years of public dissatisfaction with DNR deer management resulted in the creation this year of County Deer Advisory Committees to add public input. Bob Ellingson, of Lakewood, chairs Oconto’s CDAC, which will make a preliminary recommendation this week to increase the Northern Forest deer herd and keep stable the Central Farmland’s herd size during the next three years.
The committee has representatives from hunt clubs, forestry, agricultural, tourism and transportation, and seeks to balance competing interests in its herd size recommendation.
“It’s not just a bunch of hunters who want more deer,” Ellingson said.
Instead, the CDAC gathers data on the impacts deer have on farms, forests, vehicle accidents and tourism, he said.
The preliminary recommendation is to be posted to the DNR’s website, dnr.wi.gov, for public comment.
In December, the comments will be incorporated into the committee’s final recommendations for each of the county’s two management zones. The DNR board will consider the recommendations in setting permit quotas.
Halfmann said the committee believes there should be more deer in the Northern Forest Zone, but deer can still be harvested while the overall numbers increase over time.
“They see the numbers can be brought back,” Halfmann said.
Another significant change in hunting regulations this year is the rollout of a pilot program to register deer kills by smart phone, landline or computer.
Some 14,000 hunters were selected to participate in the test program this year. If successful, the program would apply next year to the several hundred thousand hunters who obtain licenses annually.
In-person registration at designated stations will continue until then for hunters not selected for the program.
Because there are many hunting regulation changes this year, Halfmann advised hunters to study their permits so they know what kind of deer they can tag, depending on their hunting location.
Halfmann recommended hunters better acquaint themselves with the changes by checking the DNR’s website and enter search keyword “deer.”
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