Friday, March 4, 2005

Crying wolf Boy, it's tough to listen to all the bellyaching by deer hunters who didn't see enough deer last season to suit them.  Some say the wolves are eating them all up, others say the DNR herd estimates are way off base.  In reality, it is likely that all the baiting and feeding activity going on statewide has altered deer behavior to the point where they are not moving like they normally would. Mark Cuddeback, designer of the Deer Cam and Cuddeback Digital Scouting Cameras, just laughs when he hears those complaints.  His advice?  "Put a camera in the woods and you'll see there are a lot more deer out there than you think!" Hunters who use trail cameras agree with Cuddeback.  Jeff Bast, of Bast Durbin & Associates, a media-relations firm that works with the outdoor industry, has only used a trail camera a few times, but when he put one out inthe area he hunts one week in late October, he captured 7 different bucks on one roll of film.  One of them scored in the 180s when a young hunter shot it during gun season. Two other hunters had a similar experience AFTER the gun season.  Ken Kaszuba and Brett Gorzalski photographed 12 different bucks a couple winters ago, some of which they had never seen before, and they spend a lot of time hunting the 80-acre woodlot where they filmed the deer.  Granted, those deer live in suburban southeast Wisconsin, but Cuddeback reports the same results in the north woods of Price County. Cuddeback also shared this highlight-film note from one of his customers. "This guy had a 3-D deer target in his back yard that was getting knocked over every night," Cuddeback said. "He thought it was the neighbor's kids, so he put a camera in his backyard and photographed a little buck mounting the target three or four nights in a row." The woods are full of deer, say Cuddeback and others who use trail cameras. Hunters who complain that there aren't any deer or that the wolves are getting them should put a camera in the woods or go out in the winter and look at all the tracks, Cuddeback says. That's something to think about when certain groups and individuals are complaining loudly about Earn-A-Buck, T-Zone, wolves, license fee increases and DNR "incompetency." Some folks I have talked to say complaining hunters are just spoiled by the high deer numbers of recent years.  Hunters get accustomed to seeing lots of deer, then assume that's the norm or the new "standard."  In some parts of the state, deer are so abundant they are browsing hemlock, maple and other seedlings down to the ground.  In some places, there will be no forest as we know it when the current crop of mature trees is gone. To put deer numbers in perspective, last season Wisconsin hunters registered over 500,000 deer.  Archers alone accounted for nearly a fifth of the total.  Back in 1972, the year I started hunting deer in Wisconsin, gun hunters killed fewer than 75,000 deer (and just under 50,000 bucks), while archers took a whopping 7,087 (including 1,956 bucks). Now you tell me when were the good old days! Later.. 10:01:50 AM    comment []