DEER HUNT 2025 - New northern zones approved; CDAC process challenging this year

DEER HUNT 2025

Wisconsin’s Natural Resources Board unanimously passed an emergency order and permanent rule change that will create new deer management units in the Northern Forest and Central Forest zones that have habitat-based boundaries, rather than county-based boundaries.

While unanimous, two hours of discussion were needed before the approvals were finalized at the board’s Feb. 26 meeting in Madison.

Approving the emergency order allows the new zone boundaries to be in place for the 2025 season yet allows for one more required public comment period within the first few months once it goes into effect, which could allow for germane modifications to be made if deemed necessary. The emergency rule did not include language regarding the County Deer Advisory Councils that the permanent rule does. The permanent rule renames the councils to Citizen Deer Advisory Councils.

County Deer Advisory Councils are expected to meet in late April to set antlerless harvest quotas and permit numbers for their respective counties. The permanent rule is not going to be in effect for this year’s CDAC process, which is going to make the process messy this year.

DNR Deer Program Specialist Jeff Pritzl told the board during last Wednesday’s meeting, some CDACs have been requesting these changes for several years.

“We’re just trying to be responsive to the input that we’ve heard that the sooner the better we could implement this,” Pritzl said. “There’s no question that the year of transition is going to come with some challenges. So from our position it is, let’s roll up our sleeves and tackle those challenges in 2025 so we can learn from them and actually be further advanced to would we would have in 2026. Otherwise the can gets kicked down the road.”

The major concerns brought by presenters, including Wisconsin Conservation Congress (WCC) chairman Rob Bohmann and Chanz Greene, the state assembly representative from the 74th district, which covers Bayfield, Ashland, Iron and Price counties as well as a sizable portion of Douglas County, were with the speed the proposal to go the habitat-based units was progressing.

In each county, the CDAC chair and alternate chair are Conservation Congress members. Bohmann said the WCC favors the boundary changes, but wants to see the changes pushed back for a year.

“Let’s stick with what we have right now for 2025,” Bohmann said. “When we’re done this June and we bring our proposal to the board for approval, we can immediately start on forming the new CDACs that coincide with the new boundaries in the new rule. That’s what I’m asking for. Otherwise I’m going to lose guys. They’re going to be upset because the recommendations they’re making aren’t being put forward. That’s the problem that we’re struggling with. The process.”

“(My constituents) support the map changes,” Green said. “The process is where the concern lies. We want to see it vetted. I would like to see a finished product implemented with CDACs in place, with the new maps and a plan moving forward, making sure that we can still have public and private land tags, a finished product that people can see and understand. Going into a new season, like Rob mentioned in 2026, everybody will be on the same page, we’ll completely understand what’s going on, how the new CDACs will be implemented and I feel that will be better vetted.”

The move to habitat-based units is prompted by the struggles some northern counties have had in balancing deer management because of the varied habitats they have within their counties. Bayfield County was the county mentioned most in the NRB meeting, but Taylor County’s councils, since the first one was formed in 2014, has struggled with balancing higher deer populations in the southern, farm-dominated lands of the county and lower populations in the northern half dominated by public land.

The new map has four units now touching Taylor County, while land south of Hwy 64 will move to the Central Farmland Zone. Unit 114 will look much like the old Unit 26 did covering the center of the county. Unit 110 hits the northwest corner, Unit 119 hits the northeast corner and Unit 115 covers north of Hwy D and a big chunk of Price County, much like the old Unit 25 did.

Natural Resources Board Chairman Bill Smith, who actually turned over the gavel for this agenda item and spoke as a northern board member (he is from the Spooner area), seemed to turn the discussion in favor of the proposals by sharing the input he’s received from CDAC members he was in contact with at a public input session in Cable regarding the proposed changes.

“I’m approaching this as a northern board member and the relationships I have with the CDACs up there,” Smith said. “They said what we want are the boundaries in place and then we want some time to try some different approaches. We might want to reorganize our CDAC around a habitat-based boundary. We might just take a fragment of a boundary within our county and give it to somebody else and you take the lead with your CDAC. You’ve got the bulk of this unit now. They had a lot of different things they wanted to try out and I think that would be very helpful in this process to get to the point where we have something that’s well vetted and it’s something that people better understand. Their argument was put these things in place right now and give us this next year between now and the permanent rule to try out some different approaches. It’s going to be really muddy. We know that. It’s going to be difficult.”

The emergency rule will go into effect upon publication in the official state newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal. The permanent rule goes to the governor for approval. If approved, it will then go through the normal legislative review process.

“We do have a transition plan in place to help navigate what we know will be the challenges this year in approaching it this year,” Pritzl said. “We stand ready to collaborate with the congress and work through those transitions. We will have a way to discuss these units in a transition with gathering the input on how we might adjust things for 2026.”