Federal trappers are back

[Greta&Gus]

Wolves took a calf from a neighbor again and the trappers are back. In 2010 they took 13. I also heard a story that a neighbor chased down a wolf while it was carrying a fawn, but that might grow after a few beers. Reports aren't looking good this regardless of shooting does or not. Very disheartened.

 

[bat man]

What will happen to the deer herd in the wolves home range, a range that seems to grow each year?

 

[SD51555]

Didn't you hear? It's all fine up there now. The whole north shore is lottery and the Duluth zone is intensive harvest again. Half of Pine county is back to lottery as well. Might as well sell polar bear tags for this fall while they're at it.

 

[Jim Timber]

Lottery doesn't mean much. Just that the DNR is going to get your money and you probably won't see any deer.

Better off buying Hot Lotto - odds of winning are more favorable.

 

[bat man]

Lottery doesn't mean much. Just that the DNR is going to get your money and you probably won't see any deer.
.

That could be a good tshirt. DNR management options explained.

Bucks only. Unlimited buck harvest. Cross tag until you have no relatives left. Then buy tags for recently deceased.

Lottery. Pray someone in camp gets a doe tag, and if they don't, find every relative under 17 you can to buy an either sex youth tag. Youth don't care if you tag their deer. You don't care if they ever come back hunting.

Managed. Unlimited doe tags. Everybody gets to shoot 2 deer. If you kill too many e-check them in a neighboring intensive zone. They get 5 deer there.

Intensive harvest. Kill them all. Deer are vermin that are about to eat every plant on earth before they throw themselves in front of a mini van full of orphans.

Early antlerless. Intensive harvest on steroids. Get them while they have spots.

 

[SD51555]

That could be a good tshirt. DNR management options explained.
Intensive harvest. Kill them all. Deer are vermin that are about to eat every plant on earth before they throw themselves in front of a mini van full of orphans.

I'll take a large, black, long sleeves if possible.

LOL!

 

[Jim Timber]

Minnesota party hunting is a miracle: Deer get killed while the shooter is playing cribbage at the cabin.

 

[Greta&Gus]

Minnesota party hunting is a miracle: Deer get killed while the shooter is playing cribbage at the cabin.

Killing a nice buck is harder than getting a 29 hand these days.

 

[Jim Timber]

As much as I like the online and phone registration, I kinda wish you had to register with some ID in person. At least then the tag holder needs to be there.

 

[SD51555]

Even when they did that, nobody ever came outside to look at my deer other than my first time. It seemed it was more of a pain than anything and they just zinged out registrations as quickly as possible.

 

[biglakeba$$]

I never saw a person verify a kill either when we had to register at the gas stations.

Not sure it changes much. You can still tag a deer with Joes tag, even though Joe is at work........

 

[Jim Timber]

I know it wasn't run that way (I've never been hide checked), but if you had to present ID and your animal; it would slow the casual freezer-filler's and I think that would help the whole of the state. Of course, with how few wardens we have, it might not matter since the chances of getting caught are so slim.

What we really need is an attitude adjustment like I got when I started learning more about the why's of the regs. I used to want the wife to go afield so I could get another tag. Now I don't want to shoot the deer I see.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

In any state - isn't it amazing how cross-tagging slips under the wardens' radar as a " non-priority " issue when baiting is a big deal ?? Deer is dead either way. And I'm not defending baiting by any means.

 

[sandbur]

The person working the cash register or credit card machine in a store does NOT want to go out and look at every deer and leave the till unattended. Sometimes they cannot even take the time to check ID's.
Jim has the right idea. We also just need to look at the resource and make good choices. And many of us hunters need to get over greed and grow up a bit.

 

[SD51555]

Dare I say finite number of buck tags?

 

[wiscwhip]

Dare I say finite number of buck tags?

I see where your going SD, but it will never, ever happen. Your DNR(just like WI and many others) relies heavily on the funds generated by the sale of unlimited buck tags, full well knowing that the success rate runs around 30-40%. They need the revenue from the 60-70% that will not shoot a buck to run their operations. Issuing a"finite" number of buck tags would be similar to the way things are done in the western states where you actually apply for a buck tag through a lottery. This will not only increase the average price of tags, but could have the potential to decrease the amount of hunters in general over the long term, due to hunters which may not get a tag for multiple years running to quit hunting altogether. This again would only serve to decrease the States natural resource revenues and force them to increase fees even further to compensate. It works out west because they have highly desirable species that you can't just hunt everywhere, we can choose to hunt whitetail deer anywhere we want. It is a novel idea, but I'm just not sure it is a viable long-term solution that wouldn't have detrimental effects to our sport down the road.

 

[Greta&Gus]

Dare I say finite number of buck tags?

Honestly, I would be OK with almost any option to help return the deer herd to a reasonable number. If I only hunted MN every other year, or every third year, but it meant I had a legitimate chance at getting a decent buck I would do it. Better than hunting every year without much chance.

This year we made some changes in our property layout to hopefully help out chances. We reduced the number of food plots we planted from 12 to 5. They are mostly all bigger plots too, 1/2 an acre to 4 acres with one smaller kill plot. We also increased our hinging. With so few deer right now (about the same as last year) I am attempting to concentrate all of our bedding and food within a small portion of our property. I am only going to be hunting 5 different stands on a 60 acre spread of our entire 280. The other 220 acres is almost worthless to hunt and is going to be used as a buffer. All of our quality food and bedding is as far as possible from the next closest hunting neighbor.

We have more deer on my Dad's 6 acres in WI than our 280 in MN.

 

[wiscwhip]

If WI land prices and taxes weren't so d*mn high there would be no need for threads on how bad the hunting sucked in MN, only habitat project threads and successful hunter threads from east of the river.;)

 

[j-bird]

Someone physically looking at your deer when you check it in ......that's funny!

DNR worried about party hunting.....that's funny too!

 

[wiscwhip]

Perhaps moving further south would take care of both the crap deer hunting and tax issue.

I will likely never move much farther south than I am now, a couple hours at most, but I hear what your saying. TN and KY grab my attention on a regular basis. I'm just not sure I can deal with the heat. Cold doesn't bother me all that much, the heat sucks the life right out of me. I think I would learn to hate plotting and habitat work if I had to deal with 85+ degree temps for 7 months of the year.