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E-Registration for Deer Has Some Advantages

By Patrick DurkinJuly 11, 20143 Comments

LAST UPDATED: May 1st, 2015

When Wisconsin’s 3½-month archery deer season opens Sept. 13, it will mark the final year that hunters statewide must show up in person to register deer they kill. To preview what Wisconsin’s new deer-registration process might look in 2015 and beyond, the state’s 250,000 bowhunters can look next door to Minnesota, which switched to 100 percent electronic registration in 2008. As many bowhunters know, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in January adopted a recommendation from the state’s deer trustee, Dr. James Kroll of Texas, to replace mandatory in-person deer registration with online or phone-in registration. E-registration is assumed to be cheaper and more convenient for hunters, and a generator of real-time harvest data the DNR can monitor and share with the public.

A Hunter and His deer

Starting in 2015, Wisconsin hunters will be able to register deer electronically from the field.

Personally, some of us will miss the story-telling and picture-taking at busy deer-registration stations, especially on opening weekend. We’ll also miss the perspective each visit provided. When you sit on one stand, watch a relatively small chunk of land, and count deer sightings to assess the hunt, you don’t get a regional – let alone statewide – sense of the hunt. But when you visit bustling registration stations after dusk on opening day of gun season, you see the hoofs, heads, antlers and split chest cavities of countless deer atop car trunks, pickup beds and hitch-hauls. All those carcasses make you realize this is an actual herd, one requiring miles upon miles of woodlots, marshes, forests, fields, plants and crops to sustain its many mouths. Each registration station is merely a “stockyard” where deer start changing from majestic creatures to sausage and venison roasts. Meanwhile, the herd’s main body continues roaming the surrounding countryside, the does already carrying the herd’s next fawn crop.

Then again, if Minnesota’s registration system signals what to expect, the demise of Wisconsin deer registration stations might be exaggerated. Wisconsin will likely offer some in-person registration for years to come. The Minnesota DNR started offering e-registration as an alternative to paper registration in 2005, and went fully electronic in 2008. Even so, nearly 30 percent of its 2013 deer registrations were submitted by clerks at registration stations. Hunters walk in with their license, tell the clerk what they shot, and the clerk files the information electronically for them.

Hunter and deer

Hunters who don’t have cellular phones or computers will probably still have options for registering deer at service stations.

Like it or not, some people aren’t comfortable taking orders from automated voices and punching phone keys. Still others don’t own a computer or refuse to use one. They still write letters by hand, fill out order forms in mail-order catalogs, and pay their bills with checks. How quaint, right? Still, e-registration is becoming more popular in Minnesota. In 2010, 44 percent of deer registrations were walk-ins. That dropped to 39 percent in 2011, 32 percent in 2012 and 29 percent in 2013. Internet registrations accounted for nearly all of that change. Phone-in registrations were basically 30 percent all four years, while Internet registrations rose from 24 percent in 2010, to 36 percent in 2011, 39 percent in 2012 and 41 percent in 2013.

Hunter and deer

Minnesota finds that hunters provide more accurate information about their deer than do clerks who register deer at service stations.

Lou Cornicelli, Minnesota’s wildlife research manager, said hunters who register deer electronically praise the system’s convenience. “In all my years in the DNR, including 10 years running our deer program, I’ve never heard so many compliments from hunters,” Cornicelli said. “I’m used to answering the phone and getting chewed out. When I answer the phone lately, they’re calling to say thanks.” Cornicelli also thinks the agency receives its most accurate deer information when it comes straight from hunters, not through store clerks, tavern-keeps or gas-station attendants. Unlike Wisconsin, which has required clerks to verify each kill and personally attach the DNR’s metal registration tag, Minnesota has never required clerks to go outside. “Where we see the difference is in buck-fawn registrations,” Cornicelli said. “Walk-in registrations consistently come in 2 to 3 percentage points lower than phone and Internet registrations for buck fawns, but 3 or 4 percentage points higher on adult bucks. Something’s lost in translation. Hunters typically don’t say they shot a buck fawn. They’ll call it a little buck or a nubbin buck. We think some clerks just mark it down as a buck. When hunters register it themselves electronically, they choose the buck-fawn box.”

Hunter and deer

Most hunters like the convenience of registering deer electronically soon after finding it.

And what does the Minnesota DNR do when needing tissue samples for disease monitoring? “We can cut off electronic options in specific deer-management units and make hunters register deer in person until we get enough samples,” Cornicelli said. “A recording or message tells them what to do. We don’t leave them wondering if it’s just a malfunction.” In other words, in-person deer registration will probably continue at some level in Wisconsin for years to come. Meanwhile, e-registration might not deliver the immediate cost-savings some envision, but it should be more convenient and less time-consuming for the DNR and hunters alike.

What do you think about this? Will it increase poaching? Will it hurt or help deer numbers?

Patrick Durkin
President at Wisconsin Outdoor Communicators Association
Patrick Durkin is a lifelong bowhunter and full-time freelance outdoor writer/editor who lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin. He has covered hunting, fishing and outdoor issues since 1983. His work appears regularly in national hunting publications, and his weekly outdoors column has appeared regularly in over 20 Wisconsin newspapers since 1984.
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