PATRICK DURKIN OUTDOORS

Wisconsin long considered its nine-day gun-deer season “the hammer” for managing whitetails, accounting for over 90% of the annual deer kill during the early 1970s, and routinely 85% of it through 1995.    But November’s gun season has lost its clout. Since 2018, four of the past six gun seasons generated less than 60% of the total autumn deer kill. The most recent shortfall was 2024 when November’s gun-hunters registered 190,798 deer, or 58.4% of the total 326,547 gun/archer

Wisconsin deer hunters love quoting “tradition” when talking about bowhunting or November’s nine-day firearms season.    That’s especially common when bowhunters badmouth crossbows, when old-timers yearn for backtags, or when everyone at the bar says the Department of Natural Resources gives away too many antlerless tags.    Whatever the complaint, it's easy to invoke “tradition” too loosely. Heck, some teens think 2010 was “back in the day,” and some old guys can’t distingui

Matt Jefko says he can’t sacrifice the time and money to hunt Western states, so he turns his Wisconsin hunts into hard-earned adventures whenever possible.    But after this Middleton high-school teacher arrowed a buck in southwestern Wisconsin’s Yellowstone Lake State Park, he triggered more adventure than most hunters ever find on the Great Plains or in the Rocky Mountains.    Jefko, 41, wouldn’t wish similar misadventures on anyone.    He’s just grateful he’s still enjoyi

Wisconsin’s bowhunters registered 103,904 deer during 2024’s four-month arrow-flinging season, the fourth highest archery kill in modern times and the fifth in which they’ve killed over 100,000 whitetails.    That success — driven mostly by folks shooting crossbows and compound bows, along with a smattering of “stick-bow” traditionalists toting recurves and longbows — ended a three-year slide in bow-kills from 2021 through 2023. In 2020, when participation increased during th