MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – Wisconsin’s gun deer hunting season is off to a much better start than a year ago.
The DNR says 119,495 deer were taken in the opening weekend of the nine-day hunt. That’s 15.5 percent more than in 2014.
The statewide buck harvest was up almost 13 percent, while the antlerless total rose by close to 20 percent. More than half the season’s total harvest normally takes place on the opening weekend.
A new phone and online registration system is being used for the first time this year — and it got bogged down Sunday night and much of Monday. By early Tuesday morning, a special DNR website had a county-by-county breakdown of the opening weekend.
Meanwhile, authorities continue to investigate the first shooting-related death in the gun season since 2012.
Officials say a 39-year-old Alaska man was shot in the armpit while handing a rifle to a woman in a tree stand. It happened Sunday near Portage in Columbia County.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
