Downward deer kill trend continues through first weekend in Taylor County

It was still early, with seven days still to go, but through opening weekend of Wisconsin’s nine-day gun deer hunt, registration numbers in Taylor County were on a fairly significant downward trend for the second straight year.

Preliminary numbers released by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Tuesday morning showed Taylor County hunters registered 1,001 deer through the first two days of the season, of which 627 were antlered bucks and 374 were antlerless deer. This is the lowest opening weekend preliminary registration total the DNR has reported for Taylor County since 2014, the first year of zero antlerless permits following the severe winter of 2013-14, when 524 bucks and 128 does had been registered for a total of 652. There were 1,189 registrations in the preliminary opening weekend report of 2019, the last time the season started on Nov. 23.

A year ago, hunters had bagged 1,283 deer on the first weekend, 774 bucks and 509 does. The total registration number is down 22% from last year, when there was a 31% drop from 2022. Buck registrations are down 19% from last year and antlerless registrations are down 26.5%.

Most of the DNR’s 19-county Northern Forest Region saw a drop in total opening weekend registrations. Ashland County, where antlerless tags were not issued to the general public this year, was down 25.9% overall from last year with a 22.5% drop in buck registrations. Sawyer County saw a 23.9% drop in total registrations from last opening weekend and Langlade (20%) and Lincoln (19.5%) were down quite a bit as well. The Northern Forest portion of Chippewa County had a modest 1.9% overall increase and Forest County’s registrations went up 1.7%.

A drop wasn’t necessarily unexpected with the latest possible start to the season. Statewide, the registration total fell just 1.8% from 90,831 registered deer in 2023 to 89,203 this year. Counties such as Waushara, Winnebago, Dodge and Adams had noticeable increases from last year to help close the gap.

As it pertains to the five-year average from 2019-2023, Taylor County is down 27.2% for overall registrations. The average for total registration in that time is 1,375. The buck numbers are 19.6% lower than the average of 780 and the antlerless numbers are 37.1% lower than the average of 595. There was a substantial drop in available anterless permits from last year by about 3,300 in the county, combining public and private land, contributing to the lower doe numbers.

“We’ve heard reports from the field of hunters that had their best deer season ever and others that struggled and this year just isn’t meeting their expectations,” DNR Deer Program Specialist Jeff Pritzl said Tuesday in a briefing with statewide media. “When we take a look at the statewide picture, our overall harvest numbers comparing opening weekend this year to last year, we are down slightly, which was to be expected given the late start of the opener. We’ve seen that in other years when the opening date of the gun season is late on the calendar, it’s further removed from the peak of the breeding season, it’s further removed from the peak of daytime deer activity as well.

“Wisconsin is very different from north to south and east to west. There’s a lot of variation playing out there.”

According to the DNR, conditions for opening weekend were mostly cloudy and dry, with some light precipitation in places on Saturday morning. Mornings were cool and quiet. Temperatures rose to near or above 40 each day, which made for comfortable conditions for hunters.

Reports from the field varied widely from good deer activity to little or no daytime deer movement. Some reports of breeding activity were still coming in, but overall, deer sightings and harvest were down as expected, given the late opening date relative to the peak of the breeding season.

“Really the only thing missing opening weekend was the snow cover that I know some of the state has now, which is great,” Pritzl said. “We wish it would’ve come a few days earlier.”

Pritzl noted while the gun deer season in northern Wisconsin seems to be off to a slow start, the archery and crossbow totals were up from last year through mid-November. Pritzl hunted in Vilas County and said he did not see a deer in his outings over the weekend.

“If we look back in history it’s not unusual to see a 10 to even 15% decline in the harvest during those when we go from an earlier opener to a late opener,” Pritzl said. “Last year even though we did have an earlier opener, we did have a suppressed gun deer season. That’s why we probably aren’t seeing that 10-15% drop this year, more in the neighborhood of less than 5% drop (statewide). Again that varies quite a bit over the state.”

With seven days of deer registrations still left to tabulate, Pritzl said it’s too early to put too much emphasis on the numbers. Snow fell across parts of the state on Monday and a forecasted drop in temperatures may provide a white backdrop during the second half of the gun season, which could aid hunters with better deer visibility and tracking snow.

“Numbers are preliminary,” he said. “They may change slightly over time and a lot can happen over the course of the gun season the remainder of the week so of course we’ll take greater stock into what the numbers are telling us a week from now.” Zero incidents

The best news of opening weekend is through Tuesday morning, the DNR had no firearm-involved hunting incidents to report for the opening weekend of the gun deer season. Last year, there were two on the first weekend.

The DNR reminds hunters to always use the four rules of firearm safety, TAB-K, as a cornerstone for safe and successful hunting.

T-Treat every firearm as if it is loaded.

A-Always point the muzzle in a safe direction.

B-Be certain of your target, what’s before it and what’s beyond it.

K-Keep your finger outside your trigger guard until you are safe to shoot.

License sales data

Preliminary figures indicate the number of deer hunters in Wisconsin slightly increased compared to 2023. As of 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, sales for deer hunting privileges (which include gun, archery, crossbow, conservation patron and sports licenses) reached 778,111, up 0.48% from the same time last year. Of those, 541,258 of those were for gun privileges only.

Final license sales figures will be available in January, at which time DNR staff will perform a thorough analysis and interpretation.