10-point bucks in Marinette County, November 20, 2023. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — As Deer Hunt 2023 rolls on, experts reflect on the first two days.
“I think the most common theme, as people are discussing the weekend, I think they’re using the word quiet, and slow,” said Jeff Pritzl, DNR State Deer Program Specialist.
Preliminary numbers from the state DNR show fewer hunters took fewer deer on opening weekend than they did a year ago.
The state’s deer expert says the declining trend is decades in the making, and can be documented, in part, through the latest license sales.
As of Sunday at midnight, the Department of Natural Resources had sold 774,369 licenses for gun, bow and crossbow hunting.
Of those, 421,525 were for gun privileges only.
Sales for all deer licenses are down 0.61 percent compared to 2022.
Of the total licenses sold, 65 percent were sold online, and 35 percent were sold in-person or at DNR service centers.
“Some hunters have their best opening weekend ever. Others have their worst opening weekend ever, and everything in between,” said Pritzl.
Pritzl says preliminary numbers indicate hunters killed 92,050 deer on Saturday and Sunday. That’s a decrease of 16 percent from the year before. Of those, 51,870 were bucks, which is a drop of 13 percent from 2022.
“That wasn’t unexpected, because of comparing last year, we had snow cover. We didn’t this year,” he said.
Pritzl says crisp mornings led to milder weather conditions in the afternoons.
“It got really comfortable, and when hunters aren’t moving around on the landscape, that sometimes leads to less deer movement on the landscape,” he said.
Pritzl says standing corn typically provides good cover for deer, and reports of unharvested crops varied around the state.
“It was pretty darn close to the five-year average. Maybe a couple of days behind yet,” he said.
Pritzl says hunters usually harvest about half of the season’s deer on opening weekend. He says weather conditions often change throughout the nine-day campaign.
“We’re going to see another temperature drop associated with Thanksgiving, and the rest of the week, conditions looking pretty good, other than, again, a lack of snow. So I’ll be hoping to see, especially in the farmland zones, catch back up over the rest of the week,” he said.
The DNR is reporting two gun-related hunting incidents on opening weekend.
On Saturday in Forest County, a 53-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the foot while adjusting his rifle sling.
His injuries were non-life-threatening.
And on Sunday in Adams County, a 62-year-old man fired at what he thought was an antlerless deer, but it turned out to be a dog.
The woman walking the dog was shot in her abdomen.
She was flown to a hospital for treatment.
The season wraps up on Sunday.
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