Wisconsin’s 9-Day Gun-Deer Season Has Lost its Clout

   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/archery kill.

   Until 2019, November’s gun-kill never sank so far, even when Wisconsin offered four-day antlerless-only gun seasons during October from 1996 through 2008. When gun-hunters registered nearly 86,000 deer in 2000 during October, December and muzzleloading seasons, November’s nine-day season still produced 72% (442,581) of the overall harvest – a state-record 615,293 deer. And when those non-November gun hunts registered a record 93,756 deer in 2004, the nine-day season still produced 62% (320,038) of the overall kill, 517,366.

   Contrary to assumption, bowhunters aren’t making up for the nine-day season’s decline, even though crossbows became legal in 2014 for the state’s four-month archery season. The bow-kill has varied little this century. From 1999 through 2011, the archery kills averaged 91,105 deer. And from 2012 through 2024, it averaged 93,773 deer, a 3% increase.

   Yes, bowhunters surpassed the century mark in 2020 and 2024 with 113,567 and 103,904 deer kills, respectively, but Wisconsin’s top two archery seasons occurred nearly 20 years ago, seven years before crossbows joined the hunt. Bowhunters arrowed over 100,000 deer three out of four years from 2004 through 2007. They set the current record (116,010) in 2007, and they arrowed 103,572 deer in 2004 and 113,918 in 2006.

Wisconsin’s nine-day firearms deer season in late November long delivered 85% of the state’s annual deer kill. From 2019 through 2024, it failed to deliver 60% of the annual harvest four out of six years. — Patrick Durkin photo

   Antlerless kills drove archery’s big seasons from 1999 to 2011, nearly doubling the kill of antlered bucks. And that power came from earn-a-buck rules, which required all deer hunters to register a doe or fawn before shooting an antlered buck. As a reminder, the Legislature created EAB in 1996 to help the Department of Natural Resources reduce crop-damage concerns from farmers.

   Bowhunters adapted quickly to EAB. After shooting more bucks than antlerless deer in six of nine archery seasons from 1987 through 1995, bowhunters reversed course, killing more antlerless deer than bucks 11 of 14 seasons from 1996 through 2009.

   After the Legislature reversed itself and outlawed earn-a-buck in 2011, bowhunters turned again toward bucks. And after the Legislature OK’d crossbows in 2014, the buck kill never again trailed the antlerless kill during archery seasons. In fact, the archery buck kill surpassed 46,000 for the first time in 2014, and then exceeded 50,000 nine of the 10 seasons since, including a record 64,681 bucks in 2020.

   Further, the nine-day gun season peaked at 442,581 in 2000 and never again reached even 400,000 kills. The nine-day hunt’s best season since was 354,384 in 2007, but it hasn’t reached 300,000 again. In fact, the November gun-harvest has averaged 205,500 the past 16 seasons (2009 through 2024), as gun-license sales dropped 13% (83,482) from 638,842 in 2009 to 555,360 in 2024.

   And it will l probably stay in that range indefinitely, given the herd’s size, fossilized regulations, stabilizing numbers of gun-deer hunters, and stable to slowly rising numbers of bowhunters, who target bucks at 60% rates whether they shoot crossbows or compound bows (https://www.patrickdurkinoutdoors.com/post/bowhunting-s-weapons-of-choice-don-t-matter-to-wisconsin-deer).

   Meanwhile, rural Wisconsin has been changing. We’ve lost 40,000 family-run dairy farms the past 40 years, which means fewer farmers demanding the DNR and lawmakers reduce deer numbers and crop damage. Likewise, today’s farmers more often bring their cows and cattle baled alfalfa and other forage rather than leave them out to graze their pastures. Therefore, they’re less likely to monitor the deer’s daily browsing impacts on crops, saplings and woodland habitats.

   Further, corporate farms, nonhunting landowners, and absentee landowners now dominate much of rural Wisconsin, which disrupted or ended local hunting parties and closed lands to hunters. In addition, deer hunters who buy rural properties typically under-hunt it and forbid access to all others.

   On top of that, chronic wasting disease keeps spreading geographically and increasing in density in local deer herds. It’s been found in wild deer in 49 of the state’s 72 counties, and as of Thanksgiving day, 11.4% (724) of the 6,333 deer tested so far this year were sick. Further, Wisconsin research shows CWD kills more female deer than do hunters once it infects 29% of a herd’s females. At that rate, more deer die annually than reproduction replaces, causing local deer-herd declines.

   Those reductions might not be obvious in county-wide deer-population estimates, but hunters and residents see it at the township (6-mile by 6-mile areas) level. Tests in 2024 showed overall (bucks and does) CWD rates at or above 29% in six townships in Columbia County, three townships in Dane County, eight townships in Iowa County, 11 townships in Richland County, and 15 townships in Sauk County.

   All these changes build barriers to hunting, causing casual deer hunters to retire their rifles. More devoted deer hunters buy licenses for gun seasons and bow seasons, or switch entirely to archery, often quitting the woods once cold weather sets in.

   Those trends also stoke social friction – real or imagined – between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Many hunters long relied on rural friends and families for hunting access. As those networks faded, some hunters declined to look elsewhere for private-land access or they perceived public lands to hold more hunters than deer.

   Likewise, they can’t grasp what foresters and wildlife biologists are talking about when science-based calculations show record-size deer herds across much of Wisconsin’s southern two-thirds. They think their best hope is hunting a good spot, public or private, bordering private land that’s overrun with deer. With luck, something will hop or squirt through the fence.

   And if that happy coincidence doesn't happen regularly, they quit hunting rather than scout for more productive turf.

   Given all that change, and the inevitability of more to come, when will Wisconsin legislators concede their inflexible deer-management laws provide recreation and little else for deer and deer hunting?