Don't forget this is just the CDAC recommendation. The NRB still would have to approve this. This is a lot of political pressure now to stop this. It will be interesting on what happens. But this is far from a done deal yet.
I live just north of Waupaca Co and hunt in Waupaca county quite a bit and in my opinion the population is fine. I've lived here most of my life and the population was higher in the early 2000's late 90's. You hear the 30-40 deer per square mile hog wash, thats around 2 deer per 40 acres, that equals miserable hunting. If landowners feel the population is to high, we'll kill them, we don't need more government telling us what to do on our own land any more than they already do. If Waupaca Co goes to doe only, I will hunt elsewhere and that's what most will do until the ban us lifted, but everyone knows this is nothing more than a headline.
I used to think the 50,000 acre public land parcel I hunted was tough and I wanted private land. Now I'm beginning to believe it is the best thing that ever happened to my hunting. We used to kill about 1,000 deer a year on those 50,000 acres and now we are down to about 500 deer killed each year. Ain't the best hunting, but I don't have to deal with much stress. My fellow hunters and I regulate the doe population by killing very similar numbers of does and bucks. Bottom line, I walk out in the woods with my bow and hunt and don't have to worry about a bunch of bs.
I hunt waupaca county. It's true that some areas have too many deer, but that's the landowners choice. Funny that 1 of the 6 guys on the board owns a tree farm and said he can't even grow trees anymore. BS. If he has so many deer let any one come there and shoot does. Gonna be some heated guys at the meeting on the 19th. I'll be one.
I think this has a chance to happen in buffalo county as well in a few years. Like Brad said, there is very little public land, and people are very protective. The bonus doe tags sold out everywhere around here very fast. Buffalo county sold very little because people don't want to shoot does.
I have been hunting Waupaca, Shawano, Marathon, and many surrounding North Eastern Wisconsin Counties for quite some time now and the deer density is definitely much higher in that part of the state than most. If this actually goes through it's going to lead to a large amount of bitter hunters not to mention a lot of illegal activity. Myself and 3 others just got a new lease this year which is literally right on the Shawano/Waupaca county line and we paid $3,500 for the lease. There are some really really great bucks on this piece of land as well as the surrounding areas. I know it's difficult to accurately manage deer numbers but the DNR needs to do a better job of analyzing trends in order to let landowners and hunters plan for things like well in advance. If the DNR gives a proposal for something like this I feel like it should be at least two years in advance for people to plan accordingly. I also think that it will be very difficult for a hunter to let a 160" buck walk by without letting an arrow go. There will be a lot of previously law abiding hunters who wind up getting themselves into trouble because of this. It sounds like it could really end up leading to some issues, especially because of such short notice. Don't get me wrong I love shooting does and having a freezer full of venison, but I can wack a doe in any part of the state. We leased this land because we enjoy hunting big mature bucks and we paid a lot of money to do that. I guess we'll see how everything pans out in the next few months.
