Wisconsin is one year into the Department of Natural Resources’ “new era” of deer hunting, but the accusations and anti-science rants heard April 19 in Waupaca eerily resembled what we heard in 2009, 2000, 1992, 1983, 1943 and every other “era” since whitetails rebounded from the 1800s’ logging boom and market hunts. The deer debate still seems far from over.
Some hunters refuse to shoot antlerless deer, even in areas where the herd overruns its habitat.
Hunters still don’t want to shoot does, or at least not many of them. And they still claim the deer aren’t there, even though that night’s standing-room-only crowd of about 750 represented Waupaca County, which led Wisconsin in bow-killed deer with 2,086 and ranked second in overall kills (all firearms and archery seasons combined) with 11,428 in 2015.
And they still blame the DNR and “you people’s numbers” for their woeful hunting experiences, even though DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp long ago turned over Wisconsin’s deer management to Greg Kazmierski, one of seven citizens appointed by Gov. Scott Walker to the Natural Resources Board, which sets DNR policy.
Stepp, “Kaz” and Walker seemed confident they had negotiated a cease-fire in Wisconsin’s 85-year deer war by ending earn-a-buck regulations and launching the Deer Trustee Process to involve the public more directly in deer management.
But then the good public packed into Waupaca High School’s auditorium for nearly three hours on April 19, and didn’t leave until Waupaca’s County Deer Advisory Council voted 4-1 to abandon its recommendation to forbid buck hunting in the county this fall. The CDAC stood by their decisions, however, to hold a nine-day antlerless-only hunt in late December, and to issue three bonus antlerless tags for each gun and archery license purchased.
For some perspective, that night’s crowd was …
— 50 times larger than the 15 citizens who attended Waupaca’s CDAC meeting March 22 when the council originally voted 6-0 for the antlerless-only season.
A citizen deer council in central Wisconsin’s Waupaca County dropped its push for an antlerless-only deer season when 750 people show up to oppose the idea April 18.
— Only 300 fewer people than the combined 1,050 who attended Deer Czar James Kroll’s six “listening sessions” when he toured Wisconsin in Spring 2012 to hear our age-old complaints of no deer, but “way too many” wolves, bears, coyotes, bobcats, cougars and every other predator, real or imagined.
— 53.5 times larger than the average 14 people who attended the 35 statewide Deer Trustee Review meetings in Autumn 2013. Those 490 citizens reviewed what was left of Kroll’s recommendations after Kaz and Stepp’s executive team whittled everything to shavings.
The reason the 750 Waupaca County residents mutinied, of course, is that they want no part of an antlerless-only autumn. For nearly a month many of them made life miserable for the men who took the doomed, yet gutsy, stand.
This was not the way Kaz and Stepp wanted the “new era” to begin. They gambled that none of the 72 CDACs would actually vote for an antlerless-only season. Didn’t Waupaca County’s guys remember what happened in Spring 1996 when the DNR Board voted for a statewide antlerless-only hunt? Within minutes of that vote, then-Rep. Jon Gard, R-Peshtigo, declared it would not happen, and launched hearings to find a better idea.
Gard and his supporters soon conceived earn-a-buck regulations instead. That lesson wore off soon enough, and by 2011 Kaz and Stepp supported legislative efforts to kill EAB, too. But they offered little to replace it except the antlerless-only “nuclear option” that caused the statewide revolt 20 years before.
#SnoozedThroughHistoryClass.
Therefore, when Kaz showed up Tuesday night in Waupaca, it was good that he asked the crowd to ease up on their county’s CDAC committee. He noted these folks are unpaid volunteers, and had “big cojones” for pushing the antlerless-only option. It’s too bad, though, he didn’t tell the crowd he’s the one needing the tar-and-feather treatment for giving CDAC members statewide no viable options.
Instead, Kaz said Waupaca’s CDAC committee was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time because all the “good, current data” aren’t yet available for them to use, such as “DOT data for car-deer collisions.” In effect, Kaz said Waupaca’s deer council was “stuck with the old system we used to have … that old population model that tells you something your stomach doesn’t feel is right.”
Kaz finished by telling the crowd they hadn’t given their CDAC any feedback at the previous meeting, but could do so now. And after the meeting, he told some state foresters they need to do a better job sharing “hard data” about deer impacts on tree regeneration because no one believes deer population estimates.
Bowhunters in central Wisconsin will be allowed to hunt bucks this fall.
In fairness to Kaz, he’s right that some folks will never believe deer-herd estimates, even when they’re based on historical data and regularly predict annual harvests within 5 percent of the eventual kill. The numbers must be wrong if hunters didn’t see their county’s estimated herd of 57,578 whitetails funnel from its 481 square miles of deer range and trot past their stand overlooking a 2-acre opening in 2015.
They only believe what they see, right? Yet these same critics believe cougars are stalking their woods, even though they’ve never seen one; and wolves are threatening the county’s herd, even though they’re rare this far south; and they’ve hunted the same stand for 40 years, even though they haven’t seen a deer since the Clinton administration. (Hint: Move your condo-stand.)
But let’s give Kaz a chance. Let’s see if he can get folks to accept scientific management once he schools them with the state’s “hard data” on deer-car collisions and deer browsing impacts on trees and forest plants. Surely they’ll believe his numbers, right?
If Kaz succeeds where better men such as Aldo Leopold failed, Gov. Walker should knight him Deer Czar II for life. And if he doesn’t, Walker and Stepp must make him take ownership for the mess he’s unloading.
