WI Guys.....CDAC 2nd round of meetings this week

[BJE80]

Waupaca is 99% private they could recommend total decimation and it would be meaningless

Only way would be EAB.

 

[wiscwhip]

Spot on BJE, but the State Legislature put the kibosh on that unless they were to vote it back in, which is highly unlikely, as then they would have to admit they made a mistake.

 

[BJE80]

Spot on BJE, but the State Legislature put the kibosh on that unless they were to vote it back in, which is highly unlikely, as then they would have to admit they made a mistake.

IMO. The DNR should worry more about how to get more deer in low population areas rather than how to kill more deer in high population areas. That is where the pubilc outcry is about.

 

[wiscwhip]

First of all, the DNR doesn't want more deer in those "low population" areas, contrary to what they tell us they are all perfectly fine with it and not just our DNR either. In a perfect world that would be the ideal situation. The problem is, the deer cannot be reasoned with and there is nothing except good, safe habitat that is going to keep them from going right back to where they came from. As wild animals, they will always seek out the "best" habitat. Whether that means a small, quiet, urban park area, behind the homes in the woodlot in back of a suburban subdivision, or on prime private habitat in the high population areas like Shawano and Waupaca. They will seek out the easiest food and safest hidey-holes regardless of if it is near a city or as rural as it gets, best and safest habitat wins every time. Those guys with larger than average tracts of private property that don't shoot does are the ones the DNR must gain control of if this situation of "deer pockets" is ever to be righted. I doubt you will convince any of those no-doe shooters to let the DNR come in and remove those does from their lands. I hear exactly what you are saying, but there are no good answers to the problems of individual pockets of high populations, other than forcing those that hunt areas like that to harvest does, i.e. EAB or a very similar rule.
As far as the areas with low populations, the only way to change that is to improve the habitat and reduce human pressure so that deer will want to stay there. Getting the DNR to allow habitat improvements on public lands for a single species like whitetail deer is like pulling teeth. Ask me how I know, I have been inquiring with the idiots in the DNR for years to try and get something moving on that front.

 

[wiscwhip]

To a very minimal extent only IMO. Allowing a hunter to shoot 2 bucks, and then harvesting 1 antlerless(which might also be a nub buck - 0% antlerless kill in that case) in order to be able to harvest another buck will not help reduce herd numbers in the same quantities as forcing a hunter to shoot 1 antlerless deer before earning the privilege to harvest an antlered buck with each and every license/weapon they chose to hunt with. 2 bucks/1 antlerless/1 buck vs. 2 antlerless/2 bucks. With Bonus Buck rules 25% or less of your total kill is antlerless vs the chance at a 50% antlerless kill with EAB, statistically impossible to reach those numbers with BB rules. Sure, not every guy is going to kill a doe with EAB rules, but you at least have twice the chance of that happening as with Bonus Buck. Like it or not, when one is looking for real herd reductions, the true herd management tool is still Earn-A-Buck.

 

[wiscwhip]

Final CDAC recommendations

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/hunt/documents/cdacfinalobjectives.pdf

Now we just need the NRB to vote as recommended by the committees and not side with the County Foresters and Wildlife Biologists who want to lower the recommendation.

 

[bat man]

When does the vote take place?

 

[bueller]

Interesting to see some of the changes from the preliminary to final.

 

[Terrific_tom]

Now we just need the NRB to vote as recommended by the committees and not side with the County Foresters and Wildlife Biologists who want to lower the recommendation.

After looking at map I would be willing to bet that some county recommendations get changed.

 

[wiscwhip]

I do hold out hope that the board will vote to follow the recommendations of the public via the CDAC recommendations(in most areas anyway) based on the following comment from a member of the Natural Resources Board:

"These CDACs have to know they have skin in the game or this whole system falls apart," said Greg Kazmierski, a board member from Pewaukee.

It sounds like at least one of the members "gets it", hopefully the rest of them follow suit.

TT, from what I have seen of the CDAC "maps", you are correct in that a few changes will most likely be made, but I see a few areas that I think the CDAC recommendation is a bit overzealous to begin with. Take Trempealeau Co. for instance, they voted to "Increase". I am up there quite often, as it is only 30 minutes from my house and I don't see very many areas at all that lead me to believe they have low enough populations that justify that vote. It should have been a vote to "Maintain", that is most likely what they needed and would have gotten approved without issue. If they get their "Increase" great for them and everyone else that hunts there(myself included), if it gets changed to "Maintain", no one should be too upset about it, as their initial vote was a bit unrealistic when they already have preseason numbers in the high 30's to mid 40's for DPSM. They overwinter 30 DPSM, so do they truly need an "Increase"? Shawano and Waupaca at "Maintain", good luck, nothing but overzealous idiots on those CDAC Committees. No way should either of those Counties be allowed to maintain their current numbers, they are way to overpopulated already and CWD is ready to spread throughout those areas as we speak. 43 and 46 overwinter DPSM is too high in any area, and those Counties should be under a "Decrease" rule system for at least one 3 year term to see if they can get the population down into the mid-30's in overwinter DPSM. The folks on the NRB are all highly educated and will see right through the "idiotic" recommendations, just as they will see that most County CDAC recommendations are right on par with what they should be and what the public expects.

I do think that everyone who hunts in WI should send at least an email to the NRB Liaison via the DNR website(search NRB contacts) to be forwarded to the Board members. It doesn't have to be specific to each member, just an email addressing the NRB as a whole and what we expect as citizens and deer hunters as far as the following of the CDAC Committee recommendations, which we(I) find to be very accurate and on point with what the public wants for deer management policies and population goals moving forward for the near future in 90-95% of all the counties in the state.

 

[wiscwhip]

I just got done running through the preliminary recommendations and comparing them to the final recommendation map that Stu posted. 14 "areas" had recommendations that changed from the initial recommendation to final recommendation. In every instance the recommendation was moved towards having more deer not less.

 

[bueller]

I just got done running through the preliminary recommendations and comparing them to the final recommendation map that Stu posted. 14 "areas" had recommendations that changed from the initial recommendation to final recommendation. In every instance the recommendation was moved towards having more deer not less.

My guess is a few of those will be headed back down to their preliminary recommendation once the designations are published. This whole thing is all relative to what they decide to do with the anterless tags. For example you can have a CDAC recommend an increase and have the DNR approve it, but if the DNR then issues over X amount of antlerless tags the population may very well be decreased under an increase designation. Hopefully it doesn't happen this way but it's something to be concerned about until we see how this all plays out.

 

[bat man]

Bueller is right its all about antlerless tags issued by county with 2014 being the baseline. Imo, the dnr will do what they dam well please inspite of cdac. Heck they killed 10,000 doe in the northern no doe tag counties this year.

That appears to be the trend. MN, Iowa, Illinois, all had scheduled reductions and they all blew right past those goals and kept selling doe tags.

 

[shawnv]

I just got done running through the preliminary recommendations and comparing them to the final recommendation map that Stu posted. 14 "areas" had recommendations that changed from the initial recommendation to final recommendation. In every instance the recommendation was moved towards having more deer not less.

Must have had something to do with gun season complaints. If the DNR goes along with this then they will approve less revenue for them and that seems like a hard pill to swallow.

 

[wiscwhip]

That appears to be the trend. MN, Iowa, Illinois, all had scheduled reductions and they all blew right past those goals and kept selling doe tags.

I think it would be a bit different in this situation bat man. What we are talking about here would be reductions in the face of an "Increase" or "Maintain" scenario. Far worse case than scheduled reductions that went too far, and with that flag flying in the face of the public, it wouldn't be long before the whole thing blew up in the DNR's face, and that is handled a little bit differently in WI than it is anywhere else. Number of antlerless tags issued per Unit this last season(and prior years) are hard numbers that cannot be disputed, as is the antlerless harvests based on those tags. If the DNR were to issue more antlerless tags in a given area that was scheduled as "maintain" or "increase" without justification of those numbers from harvest data per tags issued that showed a trend that an area would increase more than what would be acceptable over the next 3 year period, the DNR would be immediately taken to task on the decision to issue those extra tags. Again, in the end, the Natural Resources Board has to approve everything that is done in this arena, whether it is done by CDAC recommendations, DNR recommendations, or pulling a random number out of a hat, nothing gets by without NRB approval. Now, whether or not the antlerless quota that is set will actually turn out to give the results desired is another story altogether. I would like to think that the DNR Deer Managers can use previous years harvest numbers to get new tag quotas that will "meet" the expectations of the recommendations and not go too far whether the goal be to Increase, Maintain, or Decrease, and I would also think that the educated members of the NRB could look at the metrics as well and decipher whether or not the DNR proposed antlerless tag numbers are in line with the current goal vs past harvest trends. This is what remains up in the air and why we need to contact the members of the NRB to bring all of this to their attention and let them know that we are skeptically watching how this plays out.

 

[wiscwhip]

Must have had something to do with gun season complaints. If the DNR goes along with this then they will approve less revenue for them and that seems like a hard pill to swallow.

I would think they could easily make up for lost revenue of antlerless tag sales if there were enough deer to stop the bleeding of license sales and start selling more actual licenses instead of seeing the decrease in overall sales drop like it did this year. Getting more hunters back in the woods at $24 apiece is better than a few thousand doe tags at $12 apiece, and they know it, especially if 50% of those hunters buy an antlerless tag anyway.

 

[shawnv]

I would think they could easily make up for lost revenue of antlerless tag sales if there were enough deer to stop the bleeding of license sales and start selling more actual licenses instead of seeing the decrease in overall sales drop like it did this year. Getting more hunters back in the woods at $24 apiece is better than a few thousand doe tags at $12 apiece, and they know it, especially if 50% of those hunters buy an antlerless tag anyway.

We can only hope they see it that way.

 

[Tree Spud]

I would think they could easily make up for lost revenue of antlerless tag sales if there were enough deer to stop the bleeding of license sales and start selling more actual licenses instead of seeing the decrease in overall sales drop like it did this year. Getting more hunters back in the woods at $24 apiece is better than a few thousand doe tags at $12 apiece, and they know it, especially if 50% of those hunters buy an antlerless tag anyway.

If it is about revenue, why do we discount out of state licenses compared to surrounding states?

If the DNR sells 100k additional doe tags at $12/each, that is $1.2 million in revenue

If the DNR would increase Non Rez licenses to compete with Iowa ($500+) or Illinois ($500) would mead a potential $350 per license at 25k hunters is $8.75 million in revenue.

 

[wiscwhip]

Sorry Spud, but Non-Res license sales are a nonfactor in this discussion. WI needs to increase license sales to instate guys. The whole revenue discussion is mostly moot anyway, the state has seen the writing on the wall as far as how to keep sales/revenue up. More deer are needed to keep hunters coming back to the woods, how many more deer are needed remains to be seen. It will get really interesting when they make all these changes for the herd to increase and the sales keep decreasing, I fear for the herd in that situation. They will increase antlerless tags again so that they can kill as many deer with as few hunters as possible, not a situation I want to see us get thrown into. Get the rules set up to increase the herd, recruit a hunter so you can sell an extra license, show them some deer in the field so they keep coming back to buy future licenses, revenue/hunting/life is good!

 

[Tree Spud]

You are already losing revenue because of lost hunter participation and mis-management of the herd by the DNR. Create a trophy environment similar to IA & IL and you would see a increase in revenue even with fewer Non Rez.

For the DNR to continue to focus on more hunters at $24 each is a losing battle. They should be targeting the hunters where the highest margin of revenue can be obtained by improving the product.

Hunting is no different than any other product or service that is marketed. The DNR keeps focusing on adding marginal hunters, who want to pay the lowest fare, who are not increasing the harvest. This is the failed airline strategy ... we can make up low margin with more customers. It would take a while to do, and WI may never be perceived the same way as IA, but employing the same strategy over and over again is not working.