Deer harvest down statewide

Deer harvest numbers were down statewide 17.6 percent over last year and down approximately 11 percent from the five-year average, according to Jeff Pritzl, deer program specialist with the Department of Natural Resources.

The Northern Forest, he said, was most affected and he owed that, in part, to the winter severity index, which was high in many parts of the north last year. 

While the winter severity index was one factor, he said, there were definitely other factors at play. One was the mild weather on opening weekend of the gun deer hunt. 

Last year, he said, there was snow cover on the landscape, and that helped hunters be more successful. This year, though some hunters did still see evidence of some rutting activity in certain places, daytime buck movement was not at the level expected by many hunters, himself included, Pritzl said in a recent media briefing. 

In the north, he said, there were very likely fewer deer on the landscape than there were last year simply due to tough winter conditions. 

The topic of predators did come up as well, of course, and Pritzl said the predator-prey relationship on the landscape is a moving target, but did acknowledge it could play a part in deer numbers, especially in the case of a harsh winter. 

“We could say this year predators played this amount of a role and next year it could be very different,” he said. “Research suggests that during more severe winters, it does tip the scale in favor of large carnivores like wolves, but in less severe years, the scales tip the other way.”

Although statewide numbers were down more than 17 percent, he said, it was more important to look at the five-year numbers in comparison. While still a down year, the five-year average tended to even out the ebb and flow of hunting and deer numbers. 

Buck harvest so far for 2023 was down 14.7 percent, but, Pritzl said, last year’s buck harvest was up by the exact same amount from the previous year.

While the Northern Forest thus far was down 35 percent in antlerless harvests and 17 percent down in buck harvest, the Central Farmland, he said, was also down, by approximately 10 percent, while the Central Forest and Southern Farmland were not down as much as other zones. 

Relative to the Northern Forest success rates, Pritzl said, Oneida and Vilas did not see as big of a drop in buck harvests as surrounding counties, though they were still down. Oneida was off by 5 percent from the five-year average. Vilas County was 10-11 percent off the five-year average, but ahead of the average decline for the rest of the Northern Forest.

Preliminary registration numbers statewide sit at just over 173,000. License sales trended less than 1 percent behind last year. Pritzl said this fits with the trends the state has been seeing in recent decades, and is actually better than in the most recent years, which have been down from 1 percent to 2 percent each year.

Pritzl said there were still hunting opportunities to come for deer hunters with muzzle loader season, the four-day antlerless season and the Holiday Hunt. Thirty-nine counties will participate in the Holiday Hunt this year. Over half of the total hunting population who heads out to deer hunt also hunt with some sort of archery equipment. 

The long-term trend over 30 years has shown a slow, gradual shift toward hunters participating in more than the nine-day gun season. Over half of hunters also hunt with archery equipment, including crossbow. Harvest numbers have been stable in the last three years with 40 percent being taken during archery season and 60 percent during the nine-day gun hunt.

Over the first two months of the archery season that have been completed, he said, this year was only 2 percent behind last year and still above the five-year average, which he used as a gauge throughout the briefing.

“I think we are going to end up higher than we were in our 2019 results (for a five-year average), but we are not going to hit last year’s mark, so it’s going to be, again, shading on the lower side of the five-year average, but certainly not unprecedented,” he said. 

With variations from year to year, he said he felt the five-year average made for better comparisons than a prior-to-current year comparison.

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].