Good to very good hunting conditions on opening day gave way to misty and rainy weather on day two of the 2010 gun deer hunt. Hunters participating in the traditional November nine day gun deer hunt registered a preliminary tally of 106,404 deer over the first two days of the hunt.
The 2010 preliminary count was up about 6.3 percent from the opening weekend count of 100,330 from 2009. Preliminary buck harvest statewide in 2010 was 54,263 and preliminary antlerless harvest was 52,141.
“We want to remind folks that these preliminary numbers come from a staff call-around to deer registration stations this morning,” said Tom Hauge, director of the DNR wildlife management program. “The final opening weekend tally will likely be somewhat larger, when all the registration stubs are entered into the data base over the next couple of months.”
“The hunters I talked to opening day were upbeat with most saying they were seeing deer,” said Hauge. “Conditions were especially good in the northwest where they had some snow on the ground improving both tracking and visibility.”
While the opening weekend is the deer hunting event of the year, “there is still a lot of hunting left,” according to Keith Warnke, DNR big game ecologist.
As of early Monday afternoon, 450 “opening weekend” hunting trip reports had been recorded on the department’s new online reporting database. This is down from 2009 when hunters filed 570 reports. Data from the reports is used to track wildlife population trends and abundance.
“We encourage hunters to continue to file reports,” said Warnke. “The value of this information increases over time and with the number of reports filed each year. We share this information with hunters on our website and it gives hunters an idea of what other hunters are seeing when they are in the woods.
Enthusiasm for hunting remains high
The department’s license sales office reported 607,926 gun deer licenses sold by the start of shooting hours on Nov. 20. This number was down 3 percent from the comparable day in 2009 but in at least one important category, 10 and 11 year old hunters, sales were up 15 percent from 2009.
Deer license and tag sales will continue through the hunting seasons.
The long custom of buying a license on the way to deer camp is also intact. DNR licensing managers reported selling 89,593 licenses on Friday, Nov. 19. At one point in late afternoon Friday, computers showed license sales coming in at a rate of 333 per minute. Hunters purchased 235,547 licenses in the five days preceding the season opener.
Of the hunters hitting the woods on Saturday:
- 564,825 were residents and 32,056 were nonresidents;
- More than 86,000 youth hunters under 18 years old participated in this year’s hunt.
- Females represent 8.6 percent of the total hunters, and 20 percent of new 10- and 11-year-old hunters;
- Hunters throughout the U.S. and 22 foreign countries purchased a Wisconsin gun deer license. The highest number of nonresident hunters came from Minnesota (16,017), Illinois (7,968), Michigan (1,012), and Florida (838);
- The greatest number of foreign hunters came from Canada (32), Germany (19) and U.K. (9).