May 25, 2023 at 12:00 p.m.

DNR committee agrees with CDAC recommendations


By Beckie [email protected]

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) deer advisory committee recently met to review the recommendations of the County Deer Advisory Councils (CDACs), that met earlier this month to formulate recommendations. After reviewing the recommendations in all of the Northern Forest Zone, they left those recommendations as the CDACs made them, sending that on to the Natural Resources Board.

Overall, according to DNR's Jeff Pritzl, the theme across the state was to hold steady or slightly increase hunting opportunity by providing more antlerless tags. This was true even in some northern counties. Much of the state, he said, is losing hunters and gaining deer population. The lower number of hunters was making it more difficult to keep the deer numbers under control in places, he said.

Another theme that was almost unanimous in the Northern Forest was a desire to move back to habitat-based management units, with most CDACs in the north expressing a desire to return to the old Deer Management Units (DMUs). In many northern counties, including Oneida and Vilas, there is a large disparity in deer numbers from one part of the county to another. Forest County, he said, had a particularly interesting outcome. Their plan was to show they would not intend to vote until habitat-based units were back. However, the outcome was not what they intended. Three CDAC members abstained and two voted to approve the recommendation they set forth. Unfortunately, the chair treated the abstentions as "no" votes and voted for the motion as well, believing this would kill the motion with three for and three against it. However, this meant they technically did pass the motion in a 3-0 vote, with three members abstaining. Pritzl said the biologist's recommendations for the county were to go even a bit higher, but ultimately the committee upheld the recommendation of 1,300 private and 500 public land tags.

Lincoln and Langlade counties both increased their antlerless quotas as well. Langlade's permits went from 1,500 last year to 2,000 this year. Lincoln County's recommendation was 200 higher than last year, with 1,200 permits being allowed.

In Oneida County, there was talk about the difference in deer numbers from the eastern portion of the county to the western portion. The county cut public land permits in half and turned down the number on some private land, he said. Several members of the committee felt the CDAC in Oneida County was releasing far fewer tags than the public wanted, citing the fact that even when three times that number of tags were given, they still quickly sold out. Ultimately, there was not an appetite by the committee to change that recommendation, however.

Vilas County, Pritzl said, made the decision to split their tags 50/50 between public and private land and increased their tags to 1,500 per land type. They increased their quota a bit, thus raising the number of tags over last year. The feeling was that the CDAC decided to increase opportunity as opposed to attempting to bolster the poorer performing parts of the county, he said.

In the Northern Forest Zone overall, antlerless tags were up slightly. As a zone, the recommendation for antlerless tags this year was approximately 25,400, versus 23,600 with both public and private land tags increasing.

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