Wisconsin deer hunters took home more bucks during the opening weekend of the nine-day gun season than last year, said Kevin Wallenfang, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources big game ecologist.
“The official numbers indicate that hunters took over 64,000 bucks, which is an increase from 2015,” Wallenfang said. “So we’re happy to see that there was some good success out there and a little bit surprised considering that Saturday was pretty much kite flying weather.”
By Monday afternoon, 64,311 bucks were tagged through the state’s electronic registration system, that’s around 1,400 fewer than last year’s opening weekend. But hunters shot 6,044 fewer does across the state compared to last year.
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“Overall, though, the harvest is down a little bit compared to 2015, but (there’s) still a lot of season to go, and we’ve also got some antlerless seasons coming up after the regular gun season. So not really concerned about that right now,” Wallenfang said.
In total, hunters registered 115,640 deer between Saturday morning and Monday afternoon. That’s 4,500 less than last year.
The DNR is encouraging hunters to submit deer heads for chronic wasting disease testing. Since the state moved from physical, in-person deer registration to electronic registration in 2015, the number of samples from hunters have declined.
Three nonfatal gun injuries have been reported across Wisconsin so far.
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