, ,

Natural Resources Board Discusses Extending Gun Deer Hunt To 19 Days

Proposal Seen As Way To Bolster Declining Gun Deer Hunt License Sales

Person deer hunting
Keith Srakocic/AP Photo

The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board will ask state residents this spring if they’d like to extend the state’s storied nine-day gun deer hunt to 19 days. The proposal and others discussed Wednesday are aimed at addressing declining license sales.

Natural Resources Board (NRB) members voted to include six questions on the annual Wisconsin Conservation Congress spring hearing questionnaire, which gauges public opinion on a wide range of hunting and environmental issues.

Along with an extended gun deer season, board members voted to add questions asking about limiting the use of crossbows for deer hunting to October and November after the gun deer season wraps up, eliminating a four-day antlerless-only hunt in December, banning hunting for two or five days leading up to the start of the November gun season and whether archery or crossbow buck tags should be invalidated during the gun deer season. Current law allows hunters to use guns or “lesser weapons” like bows and crossbows during the gun hunting season. They can also use archery tags to register bucks killed during the gun season.

Stay informed on the latest news

Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Board member Greg Kazmierski said the questions are aimed at improving gun deer hunter participation.

“Lets shore up our gun season again,” said Kazmierski. “We’ve kind of taken them for granted for so long. But now the results of taking the gun season for granted is showing up in license sales.”

According to DNR records, gun deer license sales to Wisconsin residents have dropped by nearly 20 percent between 1994 and 2018. The number of deer harvested during the November gun deer hunt has dropped by more than 23 percent in just the last year with 219,715 killed in 2018 and 168,091 killed in November.

Larry Bonde, chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, said the questions introduced by the NRB echo concerns he’s heard from hunters that the gun deer season starts to late, which means deer are less active after the end of their mating season.

“With the crossbow being a new weapon of choice, we killed over 40,000 bucks alone with the archery equipment,” Bonde said. “So, that means 40,000 bucks, which is what most hunters are after, are gone from the landscape before the gun hunters ever are even out in their tree stand.”

He said that’s caused concerns about inequities among hunters based on what weapon they use.

“And there are a lot of concerns from firearm-only hunters that they’re not getting a fair shake at the resource,” said Bonde. “They’re saying by the time they hit the woods too many animals are already gone from the landscape. So, they’re not getting their fair shake at the resource that should be shared.”

The questions approved by the NRB will now go to the Conservation Congress spring hearings where they’ll be voted on in all 72 counties. The results of the hearings go back to the NRB, which can vote to implement recommendations through its rulemaking process.