(PHOTO: Jackie Johnson)
The Natural Resources Board has approved a county by county recommendation on deer population goals. Those goals were set and requested by the County Deer Advisory Councils, a product of the Deer Trustee Report.
DNR big game ecologist Kevin Wallenfang says each county was tasked to investigate and decide their goals for the deer harvest over the next several years. “They were going to produce a deer population objective for their county that would be used to help guide deer management decisions over the next few years. The Board looked at all of those and approved every single one of the recommendations by the individual counties.”
Wallenfang says the goals shouldn’t surprise most hunters. Counties to the north have been hurting for lack of deer and requested fewer tags. “The counties that fall within those forested regions have asked to increase their deer population. That is understandable, those are the areas that tend to have poorer deer habitat and they are hit hardest by winter.”
Counties in central and southern Wisconsin are asking for more tags. “In the rest of the state, in the farmland region, where we have a much more productive deer populations, they have asked to maintain their populations and even in some cases to decrease their numbers.”
The requests and goals will be reviewed each year over the next three years. The Councils will reconvene again in March to go over antlerless tags and send more recommendations to the Board for their May meeting.
WSAU, Raymond Neupert