Fewer hunters were in the woods harvesting more deer during this year’s gun deer season. That report from the DNR on Tuesday.
Ecologist Kevin Wallenfang says the decline in hunting sales for the gun hunt doesn’t concern them so much, because totals from the other seasons make up for it.” As crossbows and as the archery season and some of the added seasons out there such as holiday hunt and the antlerless hunt have been added on, we see more of the harvest getting taken outside of the regular gun deer seasons.”
The total deer harvest was up about 7 percent. Wallenfang says this is a rebound after poor weather last year snarled the deer hunt.
“It’s kind of a typical season really, in that some areas increased and some areas went down a bit, so there’s really not anything surprising about the season at this point.”
More hunters are also taking advantage of CWD testing this year. “We’ve got crews working out at our C W D testing labs, pretty much all hours of the day trying to get animals processed as quickly as we so that we can get results back to hunters as quickly as we can,” says Wallenfang.
The hunt is also one of the safest on record, with no gun fatalities and only three injuries during the whole nine days.