DEFOREST, Wis. — On Friday night, deer hunters across the state were getting ready to hit the stands for a chilly Wisconsin gun-deer opener Saturday, but according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources, while the weather might make it easier to spot deer, expect to see fewer hunters overall.
‘Twas the night before the gun-deer opener, and all through the stores, hunters were stocking up on last-minute gear to keep warm.
“(I’) getting my hand warmers, and I broke this last year so I’m picking up a new one,” said Joey Marshall, gesturing to an orange ski mask at the Fleet Farm in DeForest.
Rhyming aside, it is a lot like Christmas for them — in more ways than one this year.
“It has been about, gosh, six years or seven years since we’ve had snow on opening day,” Marshall said. “If you shoot one then you’re going to have a blood track and you can see that easier.”
With so much excitement about a “white” opener, the DNR’S Bret Owsley said maybe the temperature won’t feel so bad.
“It’s going to be one of the colder opening days that I can remember here in the last, you know, last 10 years or so,” he said.
“I’m going to be out there with my nine-year-old daughter, so we’re right now contemplating how many layers of clothes we have to put on,” the southern district wildlife supervisor said.
Before sunrise Saturday, wind chills are expected to be in the single digits in many parts of Wisconsin – not too much to handle, for dedicated hunters like Emma Orr, who plans to “layer up a lot (and) bring extra snacks.”
“One of the first years I hunted… the windchill put it maybe in the negative 10s, negative 15, so this is definitely not the coldest,” she said.
That’s a good thing because the number of hunters has been dropping since a spike during the pandemic.
RELATED: DNR lays out expectations ahead of nine-day gun deer hunt
“I think a lot of that was I need to get outside, get outdoors, provide a healthy source of food,” Owesly said.
According to Owesly, as of 4 p.m. Friday, license sales were down more than 2% from the same time in 2021.
“A lot of our hunters, the hunting demographics are older. And so, you know, as they start to fall out of being interested in hunting, how do we replace those individuals that are kind of done with their hunting career? How do we replace them with younger individuals through our Learn to Hunt program?” he said.
Fewer hunters mean less information the DNR can gather from harvests.
“We do that to help reduce deer densities or in times increase deer densities depending on the amount of permits that are given out,” Owesly said. “But really, to help improve the quality of the deer herd, make them healthier, get an idea of where disease prevalence is, and also, by removing deer from the landscape, it also helps with habitat quality.”
But for many hunters getting snug in their beds, it will be a while before visions of 30-point bucks stop dancing in their heads.
“It’s awesome, it really is, the whole hunt,” Marshall said, “cleaning the deer and everything it’s awesome.”
The DNR reminds hunters that all deer carcasses have to be registered by 5 p.m. the next day. They can do so from the woods with the Hunt Wild app.
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
