A few more thoughts on the 2020 deer seasons
I made it through the halftime show, which left me thinking that they should have just booked Garth Brooks or Foreigner, Boston, or Meatloaf — and wishing it was deer season.
I was just about to fire up the laptop to finish this column off when Josh asked me if I wanted to watch a movie. Nestled next to the woodstove with a birddog on my lap, I agreed.
I was thinking Diehard 3 with Samuel Jackson after watching the Super Bowl ad, but Josh was thinking The Last Samurai.
I had a better evening after the halftime show then before, just say’n.
We must talk a little about the results of the 2020 deer season. All added up, the DNR tells us that over 338,000 deer were killed in all the different deer seasons. Now, several of you out there will say that 338,000 is what was registered, and a lot of people are not registering their deer.
With the abolishment of registration stations and carcass tags, the DNR has always maintained that the number of deer that don’t get registered is no different than what it was with the registration stations and carcass tags. Many hunters don’t think so.
From what I saw in the areas I hunted deer and other game this year, the DNR is most likely closer to the right figures then those who hold the deer-are-not getting- registered theory.
After all, over 338,000 deer were registered. That’s more than the previous year, but 2019 was pathetic so that’s nothing to boast about. License sales were up for deer hunting by like 4 percent, but not as much as other states.
All this points to the end results not varying much from what we discussed after the preliminary results of the gun deer season.
The Northern Forest Zone, on both public and private lands, and the Central Forest Zone, on public and some private lands, don’t have the deer populations that hunters and the DNR expect or desire. Some are starting to get nervous about why the population isn’t recovering.
Much of the Southern Farmland Zone, and some places in the Central Farmland Zone, have more deer than they need. It’s what we knew.
There are several factors that play into this. Predators are only one. A couple winters with later-than-usual snow cover and spring snow storms, the ever increasing age in our forest lands, both public and private, increased poaching activity, and probably more factors. There are still deer out there pretty much throughout the state to hunt. And at least the numbers of deer harvested and hunter participation increased. But there is work to be done...
There has also been some questioning of whether hunters are focusing their hunting time more around the rut then around a certain season. That’s been going on before crossbow season was created. Hunters spend the majority of their deer hunting vacation time during the rut, and much less in early season and gun season if they are archery hunters. Crossbows just brought in the former and new archery hunters who didn’t want to spend a thousand dollars on a new bow and didn’t have the time to practice with the bow to become profi cient with it. For 400 bucks they could get a crossbow with scope and bolts, site it in, and go hunt in the warmer weather during the rut.
That vacation time is staggered, and the hunting often takes place in different locations than gun deer camp. Camo and a bow are not as conspicuous as blaze orange and rifles. It’s three to four weeks instead of nine days — again, less conspicuous. Hunting from home instead of a hotel or cabin also is less noticeable.
The gun season for the majority of hunters has become a day and a half event, and that started long time before the crossbow season was created. Changing that will be tough, and the reasons why go all the way back to the late 80’s and early 90’s. How many hunters do you see hunting during the week of gun season now?
You likely noticed that this column wasn’t statistics-rich, because the needle hasn’t moved much in the last 12 months. The DNR offers plenty of opportunities to voice your feelings and observations. Don’t waste those. We can start hunting deer again in seven months. And those seven months will determine a lot for this fall.
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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
