Revisiting the questions on cross-bow hunting
The annual spring hearings are set for April 11 starting at 7 p.m., and the hearings are going to be virtual again. You will have three days to complete the hearing voting and you’ll be able to access the questions via the DNR website.
If you support, enjoy, hunt with or hate crossbows there has been a question added by NRB chairman Greg Kazmierski pertaining to the crossbow season once again. The question he added will read: “Would you support the (NRB) requesting from the DNR another review of the impacts of the crossbow season on Wisconsin’s gun deer season?”
The question will be preceded with a bit of framing with background information about crossbow harvest of bucks prior to the gun deer season. Currently 40 percent of the annual buck harvest takes place during the archery season.
I know a lot of hunters in our area support hunting with crossbows. I also talk to a fair number of hunters that prefer to hunt deer earlier during the archery season for several reasons, not just the rut.
You make your choice, but one avid archery hunter I spoke to who does not use a crossbow got pretty riled up about his. “My God, let the people hunt,” he said. “What do I care about some old guy or young kid using a crossbow? We need people hunting, period, and it every year this gets brought up. It makes my blood boil!”
Another added question by a NRB member came from Marcy West. Her question will read: “Do you support having the DNR undertake a two-year pilot project to test if offering a healthy herds incentive payment to landowners and hunters can increase the testing rates and remove CWD positive deer to levels effective in reducing prevalence and slowing disease spread?”
The DNR has six wildlife related question and ten fishing related questions. For hunting they have questions pertaining to Youth Waterfowl hunting, leftover turkey tags, preference points, raccoon hunting, and landowners hunting non deer species on the Friday before gun deer season. The Conservation Congress has 45 advisory questions.
There are fishing questions on walleye bag limits and size structure. Catching your own minnows, Wisconsin Minnesota border waters regulations, and fishing tournaments are some of the other topics. Walleye questions always raise some interest.
The other big topic pertaining to fishing essentially asks if you support moving the start of the musky season opener statewide on the opening day of fishing season in the beginning of May. Currently the northern zone for musky opens on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. The justification of this would be to standardize the season structure. I got an earful on this one as well from a couple tournament musky fishers. They both fish the northern lakes a lot and they both never miss a fishing opener for walleyes. If there is open water prior on the first Saturday in May they are both on the water fishing for panfish and walleyes. Both fish the Fox and Wisconsin rivers for spring walleyes. But come Memorial Day weekend until freeze up they fish musky.
They both travel to Canada annually to fish for musky, at least before COVID, and they both catch several 50 inch fish each year.
“I can’t see why we would want to target spawning musky?” One told me. “They don’t spawn until 55 degree water or so, so there will be a fair amount of females caught and they need to be handled with kid gloves. If you don’t handle them correctly at that time you lose the fish and all the eggs.
“My entire life the season where I fish the opener for musky has started on Memorial Day weekend, I don’t understand the need to change it.
There are a lot of things that I believe should be standardized for the northern part of the state like the waterfowl opener, but the musky opener isn’t one of those things,” said the other musky angler. “I’m like thinking ‘did I miss something?’ Because the last time I checked we are still stocking musky throughout the state and they aren’t overpopulated.
If they want people to fish for gamefish during their spawn, how about letting people fish for spawning northern on lakes with stunted fish that might make sense.”
If any of these and more topics get your blood boiling remember to participate. You have 72 hours and it doesn’t take long.
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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
