February 2, 2023 at 11:25 a.m.
Deer season recap presented to Natural Resources Board
Deer season recap presented to Natural Resources Board
Jamie Adams, DNR customer outreach services field operations section manager, started the presentation with license sale information for the season. In total, 797,734 deer hunting licenses were purchased through Jan. 3, 2023, she said. At year end for the 2021-22 season, 811,076 licenses had been sold.
She also highlighted license sales by weapon type. Archery license sales were down this year, she said. 118,668 were sold, down from last year's total of 124,854. Crossbow licenses were up slightly to just over 12,500, with last year's license sales being just over 12,000. Gun license sales were down as well, with 556,483 authorizations this year and 565.940 last year.
New hunters were down from 45,876 last year to 42,037 this year. There was a decrease in both new male and female hunters over last year. Twenty-three percent of new hunters were female, she said, approximately the same percentage as last year.
Overall sales totals showed a decrease in male hunters of just over 2,000, with approximately the same number decrease in female hunters. There were hunters from all 50 states as well as 23 different countries. Hunters aged 90 and better accounted for 515 license sales. The oldest female hunter was 95 and the oldest male hunter was aged 101.
Mentored hunt sales were down by just over 200 licenses, but archery and crossbow mentored license sales were up by just over 100 licenses.
Media Update
DNR Director of Communications Katie Grant gave the media update for the department. She said 31 deer season and chronic wasting disease (CWD) related news releases were put out by the department this year. DNR staff gave over 130 media interviews related to deer hunting and the deer season, she added. Overall news coverage in Wisconsin had nearly 2 billion views across all media, beginning on August 1, 2022.
The department also conducted four Q&A sessions on Facebook and Instagram as part of their social media campaigns. The new webinar series "Wanna Go Hunting?" went live leading up to deer season as well. The webinars were focused on various aspects of hunting but some of the content was specific to deer hunting, she explained. Email campaigns targeted lapsed hunters, those who had not hunted recently. Grant said she did not have all of the data compiled on the success of those email campaigns at the time she spoke to the board, but could confirm a spike in license sales that seemed to coincide with the timing of those emails, she said.
Grant said this was the department's third year of the media push for the Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation Campaign. This year the focus was on the retention and reactivation portions of that campaign. The department has used the Packers Radio Network as well as billboards, online display and banner ads as well as Spotify and social media, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Twitter, she said, was new, as was Spotify, targeting potential Gen Z hunters.
Safety
Casey Krueger, DNR chief warden, spoke to the board about what wardens saw during the hunting season. In all, he said, there were seven non-fatal incidents and one fatality in the hunting season. Six of the last 10 seasons have been fatality-free, he said. Of the seven non-fatal incidents, he said, four of them were self-inflicted. For the most part, he said, it is the 20+ year hunters who are becoming complacent and causing injuries to themselves. He said the department would look for ways to reach out to those hunters who may not have taken a hunters education class in 20 years.
He attributed the safety of the season to participation in hunter education programs. In 2022, the preliminary data showed almost 21,000 hunters were certified in 577 courses throughout the state.
R3 Program
This year, he said, the R3 Program (Hunter Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation) went back into full swing. During the pandemic, programs such as the Learn to Hunt program could not be held. This year, however, there was a push to get back to those classes as well as the Learn to Butcher Deer workshops and the kick off of the Wanna Go Hunting? Webinar series. All of those were aimed at bringing new people into the sport as well as keeping others in the field hunting. In 2022, there were 85 Learn to Hunt Program classes, Krueger said. Nineteen of those were DNR-staffed while others were put together by members of the public and various conservation groups.
Warden reports
During the nine-day gun deer season, Krueger said, patrols made 13,664 contacts. There were 1,274 calls for service as well as 543 hotline tips that came in to the department. The patrol contacts and calls for service was up from last year.
Baiting and feeding was the top law enforcement issue on the landscape, he said. There was also an increase in loaded firearms in vehicles this year, up 20-30 from last year. Often, he said, this could be weather dependent. As temperatures dip, or weather becomes inclement, Krueger said hunters seem more apt to jump in a vehicle and go driving around without unloading their fire arms.
Another issue seen in the field was failure of hunters to have the proper authorizations. That may have meant a hunter on public land having only a private land tag, or it may have meant the hunter did not possess the proper approval to hunt for that particular species. The number of those violations was approximately the same as last year, he added.
Deer registrations
DNR deer program specialist Jeff Pritzl presented more end-of-season information to the NRB. For the third year, he said, the state did not have a bucks only zone in the state. He then spoke about registrations from this year versus last hunting season.
Overall hunter deer registration was up 8.8% across all seasons, he said.
The nine-day gun deer season total of 210,465 registered animals was up 15% over last year. Both bow and crossbow harvests were down, however, 7.6% and 1.4%, respectively. The youth deer season saw 63.3% more animals harvested, at 8,291. The harvests for muzzle loader were up slightly by 7.7%. In total, 355,607 deer were registered across all hunting seasons for 2022, versus 308,429 in 2021.
When looking at the zone level harvest, Pritzl said, both antlered and antlerless deer registrations were up in the Northern Forest Zone. In all, 24,379 antlerless and 37,368 antlered deer were registered.
The Central Farmland antlered harvest was up 6.1% over last year. Antlerless harvest was up 4.4%.
In the Central Forest, 3.4% more antlered deer were harvested this year over last year. Antlerless harvest was up as well, by over 19%.
The Southern Farmland hunters registered 0.6% more antlered deer. Antlerless deer were up only slightly as well a 1.2%.
Throughout the state, the number of license sales is trending down over time, Pritzl said. However, average harvest per hunter has been increasing slightly. The proportion of the buck harvest by weapon type has shifted a bit in recent years, he said. Archery equipment has taken a larger portion of that pie. The number of firearm harvests, however, "pop up" he said when there are good conditions on opening weekend of the gun deer hunt.
CWD
Pritzl gave a brief chronic wasting disease (CWD) update, noting that a much more robust update will take place in the coming months when the CWD team comes before the board to discuss the surveillance program.
The sample size this year stayed approximately the same, although the sampling sweep, which targeted certain areas of the state each year, ended in 2021. He attributed this to gaining a cohort of the hunting community in all areas of the state that are interested in CWD sampling either from a food safety standpoint or simply a citizen science standpoint. This year saw approximately 16,000 samples once again. The sampling year, Pritzl noted, does not truly end until March, as there are still samples trickling in.
There were 177 sampling kiosks across the state during this year's hunting season. Hunters could submit samples at any of these kiosks.
Carcass disposal has also become a concern where the spread of CWD is concerned. There were 160 carcass disposal locations located in the state for 2022, Pritzl said.
There were 136 carcass disposal dumpsters across the state, which was up 15 locations from the 2021 hunting season.
Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].
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