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Wisconsin - At one time, seeing a deer was special
The statement came matter-of-factly, pure vanilla without even a cherry to draw attention.
"With final 2007 season harvest numbers now in the books, deer hunters posted the second largest harvest in state history, registering 518,573 whitetails," said the second sentence of last week's Department of Natural Resource press release.
Only in Wisconsin.
Most states don't have deer herds of a half million animals, much less register that many during a hunting season.
But here we've become accustomed to large herds, large harvests and extraordinary hunting opportunities. Such times can spoil a hunter and cause him to lose perspective.
If you, like me, are over 40 years of age, you remember a time when we couldn't hunt from tree stands and when we had only one tag a year. Today the hunting regulations allow dozens of varieties of tree stands - just check any sporting goods store - and the number of tags available last season was virtually limitless.
If you're over the age of 60, you may remember when seeing a deer was a special occasion.
Last week at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Show, a reader related a story on his family farm in Green County. The year was 1950 and his grandfather had seen a deer while driving down the county highway. The patriarch quickly drove home and had the whole family pile in the vehicle, hoping he could drive them back to see the animal. The effort was in vain. Another 10 years passed before they saw a deer.
Today deer are part of our life in Wisconsin, hunting and otherwise. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, deer hunting has a $925 million economic impact to the state and hunters spent 7,051,627 days afield in a typical year in search of their quarry.
With an estimated population of 1.7 million deer in the woods last fall, we expect to see them when we hunt. And most Wisconsin hunters aren't satisfied if they don't tag a deer. But it's important to not take things for granted.
If you view the Wisconsin deer harvest over the last 40 years, the graph looks like the stock portfolio of your dreams: a gradual and significant increase over time.
In 1970, the total harvest was 79,364 deer. In 1980 it increased to 160,578, in 1990 it grew to 399,331 and in 2000 it set a record of 615,293 deer. The 2000 figure stands as the most ever harvested in any year in any state.
Even if you dispute the DNR's estimate of deer numbers - a popular pastime in Wisconsin - you can't ignore the consistently large registration numbers in this era as an indication of a large deer herd.
What the harvest numbers don't show is the tremendous increase in hunting opportunity over the same time. Today we enjoy months of bow hunting, several gun seasons and lots of tags to use throughout. Our opportunities to hunt deer have never been greater in Wisconsin.
And whether you're intent on a 160-class buck or a doe to provide nutritious meals to your family and help manage the deer herd, Wisconsin is arguably the best state around. In Minnesota, the 2007 harvest figures were 243,416 for gun and 24,200 for archery. In Illinois, 121,938 for gun and 64,217 for archery. And in Michigan, where they don't require registration of each deer and thus only have harvest estimates, the gun harvest was about 249,000 with no estimate available for archery.
So when we consider the 2007 season as normal - and it sets a record for archery harvest and is second highest overall - it makes me pause and consider just how good our deer hunting is.
Nothing is ever perfect. But rather than continually find fault with deer population estimates or regulation details, I think it's critical for us to see the big picture and be thankful we live at a time when hunters are critical to deer management and a significant part of Wisconsin culture.
Our focus must be on working with the DNR to manage the herd, to promote safe and ethical hunting and to recruit more hunters for the future.
We've never had more opportunity in the deer woods, far more than our fathers. For that alone, we're big winners. How we conduct ourselves over the next decade will determine in large part what opportunity is given to the next generation.
JSOnline.com Check out Paul A. Smith's updates and analysis at jsonline.com/outdoors
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