CALUMET COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The countdown is on: Deer Hunt 2024 is less than a week away.
Experts say about 550,000 hunters are expected to take to the field in pursuit of a deer population that is closing in on the two million mark.
But what are the conditions leading up to opening day?
“Gun season is going to be as late as it possibly can be on the calendar this year, and that’s a cycle that we experience,” said DNR State Deer Program Specialist Jeff Pritzl.
Pritzl says that calendar cycle has an impact on deer movement and the peak of the deer breeding season, also known as the rut.
“It’s just an artifact of having a late opener. In general, when we see this late opener of the gun season, it typically suppresses the overall harvest by about 10-15%. Whether that happens this year or not will remain to be seen, but from an expectation standpoint, people should anticipate maybe a little less daytime deer movement than they might have experienced in other years.”
Pritzl says another mild winter means fawn production was up. He says it’s been a relatively dry season, as well.
“We have a lot of lowlands, swamp, forest, marshes. Hunter access can be improved by either by drier conditions or frozen conditions. And it’s not often that we get good solid frozen conditions opening weekend,” he said.
Pritzl says the 2024 agriculture season is ahead of schedule.
“That can be a big influence in the farmland, and so given the dry conditions and the good favorable harvest we’ve had with soybeans, but especially corn coming off. If most of the corn is harvested before the gun season starts, that usually plays in a hunter’s favor as well. We want crisp, cool, calm weather. A little bit of frost. Deer will move better and hunters can hear better. See better if there’s some snow on the ground,” he said.
“I think given kind of the pull of positive and potentially things, at that point, I’d have to say it could be a wash. And so, I think expectations should be that we will see harvest numbers not that different from last year,” said Pritzl.
That’s when hunters bagged 17.6% fewer deer than the year before.
Deer Hunt 2024 kicks off early Saturday morning and runs until Dec. 1.
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