MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – With a few more people taking to the woods, this year’s opening weekend for gun-deer hunting season was slightly better than last year.
“Gun deer license sales are up about 3% over the previous years, and the same is carrying true about our harvest as well,” said DNR Wildlife Management Bureau Director Eric Loebner. “We have about 49,000 antlered deer registered and 46,000 antlerless deer registered. So that shows us that overall harvest is about 95,000 deer for opening weekend.”
Numbers for antlered deer this year totaled 49,025. That’s a 1.6% percent increase for opening weekend over last year’s 48,252.
Hunters registered 95,257 total deer. That’s a 2.3% increase over the 93,155 harvested in 2019.
“Weather was obviously near perfect, except we didn’t have any snow on the ground. Snow on the ground always makes it a bit easier to pick a deer out. When you’re standing in a brown woods, it’s hard to pick out a brown deer,” Loebner told WTAQ News. “We’ve got a lot of season left to go, so that’s a great thing. And now, good parts of the state do have snow cover. So it just depends on how long it will last and how many people get out to enjoy the remainder of the season.”
As of Sunday, there were 559,591 gun license sales. That’s a 1% bump over 2019. Sales of all deer licenses, including for bowhunting, were up 3.2%.
“I can say that the system has been working flawlessly,” Loebner said. “Our license sales system called go wild has been functioning exceptionally well. We were selling license numbers easily in excess of 50 licenses per minute during some of our peak times.”
Even reporting CWD samples and information was made fairly simple for hunters out in the field.
“Hunters could enter their data for there CWD samples electronically, which was a great addition for them. They were able to handle it very well,” Loebner said.
But he encourages hunters, especially those in Northeast Wisconsin, to submit as much of that information as they can, as soon as they can.
“In the Green Bay area this year, we are kicking off our surveillance effort – starting it this year to try and maintain a solid grasp of where CWD exists on the landscape,” Loebner said. “[In the] Northeast district it’s really important this year that hunters submit that information. We have more than 250 locations where hunters can submit the CWD sample, whether it’s a self-serve kiosk, a cooperating business.”
Hunters can also call up local wardens and set up a time to meet and exchange information.
However, with the rise in success came a few downturns. Four people were reportedly shot during opening weekend. There was one fatality in Door County, while others in Washburn and Saint Croix counties were hit during deer drives.
“One fatality is always too much,” Loebner said. “There are a higher number of accidents that occur during deer drives. So it’s very, very important that everybody works together to establish a plan and then hunt your plan…Don’t shoot forward or shoot in the direction of where your standers are, and vice versa. When there are standers, or people are standing off the area that is being walked through, they don’t shoot into the deer drive.”
The season runs through Sunday.
