Oneida CDAC opts for antlerless tags, but not in all DMUs

This year County Deer Advisory Councils (CDACs) in the Northern Forest had a bit of a different look at managing the deer herd than in past years. For years the CDACs in Oneida and Vilas counties had asked to split their counties into two separate Deer Management Units (DMUs). The push across the Northwoods lead the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to take a serious look at the boundaries, eventually moving them back to habitat-based DMUs. While they are larger than the DMUs previous to moving to a county-based management system, they do allow CDACs to manage the deer herd differently in different parts of their counties. The Oneida CDAC did just that, offering up some antlerless opportunity in DMU 120 and 121, while allowing no antlerless harvest in DMU 116, which is the western portion of the county where many have said the deer herd has reached crisis numbers.

Attendance at the Oneida CDAC meeting on Tuesday was light, with only 12 members of the public attending. Several members of the public said others would no longer come to the meeting, feeling it was not worth their time, when recommendations were changed by the DNR or NRB at the last minute.
(Photo by Beckie Gaskill/Lakeland Times)

The Oneida CDAC met Tuesday evening at the Woodruff Town Hall. Attendance was slim, with just over 10 members of the public coming to make public comment. The CDAC members did, however, receive 250-300 written and online comments regarding the public’s feelings about antlerless harvest quotas.

The meeting started with a presentation from DNR county wildlife biologist Curt Rollman. Rollman walked the CDAC and those in attendance at the meeting through county-wide statistics, which were what was available for this year. Going through his typical presentation, he also helped the council members better understand how they could extrapolate county-wide statistics out to make them fit into the three DMUs that would now be partially in Oneida County. Those DMUs can be found on the accompanying map. 

He spoke about the deer harvest from 2024, which was up over the 2023 harvest. Last year’s season was a question mark for the CDACs and others when planning for antlerless tag quotas. The 2023 season came after a particularly severe winter. With a mild winter of 2023-24, but the latest possible opening date, some were unsure how the harvest would play out. Typically, buck harvest can be down as much as 20 percent over the previous year when the hunt takes place at the latest possible date. It is furthest away from the rut, and bucks especially tend to become more nocturnal. In the end, buck harvest in 2024 was up 10 percent over 2023 and antlerless harvest was up 12 percent in the county. 

The winter of 2024-25, up through March, Rollman said, was also shaping up to be fairly mild, with a Winter Severity Index of only 35. The index is a measure of how many days had a temperature below zero and how many days there was over 16 inches of snow on the ground. A day could conceivably get two points, if both conditions were met. The 35 points from this past winter, he said, were all temperature-based.

Rollman spoke at length about habitat, one of the biggest drivers of deer herd health, he said. During the summer months and into fall, even poor habitat is inconsequential, he said. For the most part, deer can still find food and most go into the winter healthy. Where the issue with poor habitat begins is when temperatures start to dip and snow starts to cover the ground. Starvation and predation due to poor health are the two biggest drivers of how many deer come out on the other side of winter. 

Deer eat 6-8 percent of their body weight in wet forage per day, Rollman said. This means 10 pounds of food for a 150 pound deer per day or 2,500 pounds per year. The average northern hardwood stand holds approximately 100 pounds of that forage per acre, and a regenerative aspen stand approximately 1,000 pounds per acre. This made it clear that, where deer are concerned, all habitat is not created equal. 

Young aspen stands on private lands have been on the decline, up to 30 percent. This means less browse for deer in winter. On county and municipal lands, he said, county harvests are still decent, but even with that aspen coverage is down 28 percent since 1983. National forests have a tendency to be managed more for old growth, he said. 

Limiting factor

Rollman said he felt there was some limiting factor as far as the deer herd in Oneida and Vilas county. One measure of growth is the number of spike versus fork 1.5 year old bucks in an area. In 2020, Oneida County had 43 percent forked 1.5 year old bucks. Those percentages stayed relatively stable until 2024, when that percentage jumped to 70 percent. He attributed this to the mild winter. Young bucks were healthy enough to expend the energy to put into antler growth. The county, he said, was hitting the population ceiling at a much lower WSI than some of the neighboring counties, with the exception of Vilas County. He said there was something that was limiting deer growth, which was likely habitat related.

Online input

CDAC members each spoke about comments made that pertained to their position on the council. Matt Carothers holds the forestry seat on the council and said there is a segment that has always wanted a higher deer kill while others, who are also hunters, wanted to see more deer or to see populations stay the same. 

Denny Nitzel said the agriculture comments he read through all pointed in the same direction. Most felt there were too many deer on agricultural lands, he said, which has been a common thread for many years. 

The comments seemed to reinforce the need to manage the deer herd based on habitat type not county boundaries, which are arbitrary to wildlife. This thread continued with public comment from those in attendance. Attendees asked for a zero quota in DMU 116, where the general consensus was that the deer herd was in trouble. Those wishes were granted when the council members came to setting the quotas for the three DMUs that lied largely within Oneida County

Quotas and tags

The council started with DMU 116, with a recommendation for zero antlerless tags. With council members in agreement with this, it triggered the question whether or not there should be youth antlerless tags issued within that DMU. Council members ultimately decided there would be no youth antlerless tags in 116, either. Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker, who sits in the Deer Management Assistance Program position on the CDAC, said if hunters wanted youth to ever have deer to harvest in 116, they would have to not allow antlerless harvest, as the herd in that section of the county was in the worst shape he had ever seen in his decades of hunting. Others agreed.

The discussion then turned to DMU 120, on the eastern side of the county. Ultimately, the CDAC decided on a quota of 60 deer on public lands and 400 on private land. With an estimated success rate that was the best possible considering the new DMUs, this would mean 300 antlerless tags on public land and 1,600 on private land in DMU 120.

In 121, which is essentially the middle of the county, the discussion went back and forth a bit before settling on a quota of 100 deer on public land and 350 on private land. This would mean 500 antlerless permits on public land and 1,400 on private land. 

Next steps

Normally these recommendations would go to the DNR and then on to the Natural Resources Board (NRB). In the past, the NRB has changed CDAC recommendations, leading to a great deal of frustration from hunters and CDAC members in the Northern Forest. Just last year the NRB added 400 antlerless tags to public lands, stating they were needed in order to provide hunting opportunity, rather than taking the recommendations of stakeholders in the county. This frustration has caused many members of the public to no longer attend CDAC meetings, which was mentioned by several people in attendance this week.

Because DMUs no longer follow county boundaries, this adds a special wrinkle to the CDAC procedure this year. Each CDAC will come with a recommendation for each DMU that lies partially in their county. The department will then look at all of the recommendations and circle back with CDAC members in each county to discuss any differences in recommendations in a particular DMU, eventually coming to agreement on a recommendation to send on to the DNR and eventually to the NRB.

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