While the 9-day gun deer season in Wisconsin tends to get more attention, there’s plenty of people looking forward to the start of the archery deer hunting season.
DNR Deer Program Specialist Jeff Pritzl says in the past three years about 60-percent of the bucks harvest have been by firearms users, the other 40-percent by archers.
“But it’s not necessarily focused on a preference for weapon type as it is a preference for the time of year. Generally, people just want to hunt in earlier November when deer are moving more,” said Pritzl.
Pritzl says deer populations will vary within the Central and Northern Forest Zones.
There are pockets where he says they’d like to see the population grow and it looks to be trending that way.
“That’s driven partly by the fact that we’ve had relatively mild winters the last couple of years. That’s what allows that population to ebb and flow to increase and harvest kind of tracks that. Interestingly we’ve our harvest results kind of stabilize over the last number of years,” he said.
Prtizl says that stabilization is partly due to hunter’s interest and access to the deer and their certain degree of selectivity.
Hunting and fishing license sales saw a boom in 2020 along with a general rise in interest of outdoor activities.
Pritzl says last year was quite as good but there wasn’t a huge drop off.
“It wasn’t just a one year bump. We gained about 27,000 archery and crossbow hunters in 2020. Last year total license sales dropped about 2,000. We’re still on an increasing trend overall. It will be interesting to see where things play out this year, but in general it’s still increasing,” said Pritzl.
Matt Esser is the DNR West Central District Deer Biologist and a hunter himself.
He says he enjoys going out this time of year while it’s still warm because he can take his kids with him without getting too cold.
Having a successful hunt this time of year is about learning deer habits.
“If you can focus in on those key food sources and then find out where the deer are bedding then you can hunt in between. Deer are very predictable this time of year heading from feed to bed,” said Esser.
The archery season starts September 17th and runs through January 8th.
