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The state Department of Natural Resources wants to create 33 earn-a-buck zones this fall, up from 21 last year. The agency also wants to impose earn-a-buck regulations in all chronic wasting disease zones, where hunters were allowed to kill either sex last year.
The Natural Resources Board is scheduled to take up the proposal on Wednesday.
Hunters in earn-a-buck zones must kill a doe before they can take a buck. State wildlife officials say the earn-a-buck plan is designed to curb a deer population that is jeopardizing crops, creating more car-deer crashes and devastating forest plants.
Hunters generally loathe earn-a-buck. They contend the program forces them to let trophy bucks walk by.
The state brought the program back in 2006 after putting it on hiatus in 2005. DNR deer ecologist Keith Warnke said the antlerless harvest was good last year. Of the 506,947 deer killed last fall, about 326,065 were antlerless. In the 21 earn-a-buck zones, the number of antlerless deer killed increased 30 percent from 2005, when the areas were designated as “T-zones,” where hunters could get an unlimited number of antlerless tags.
But without a second year of earn-a-buck, the population will likely remain flat or grow and the agency will be no closer to its management goals of about 20 to 30 deer per square mile, Warnke said.
Either-sex kills in CWD zones also won’t be adequate this year, Warnke added.
The DNR wants to thin the herd in those zones to slow the spread of the fatal brain disease, but a state audit in November found the number of deer in those areas has increased. Warnke said the antlerless kill dropped by 10,000 animals in the zones last year.
“We have a responsibility to manage toward these goals,” Warnke said. “We’re on the cusp of making some really strong progress.”
The earn-a-buck zones generally lie in far west-central Wisconsin and along the Fox Valley north to Green Bay. Those areas feature abundant agriculture, habitat and private lands where hunters can’t enter, adding up to an ideal setting for deer. A mild winter hasn’t helped, either, he said.
“It’s an absolutely perfect mix,” Warnke said. “They’re not wanting for food, they’re not wanting for cover. There’s basically no winter impact.”
Ed Harvey is a Sheboygan-area deer hunter and chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, an influential group of hunters and anglers. He said he fields a steady stream of complaints about earn-a-buck.
He said he’s not sure tampering with regulations in CWD zones is a good idea, but the congress likely won’t raise any objections.
The congress hopes the earn-a-buck zones will end after this year and those areas will become herd reduction units, where hunters can get cheap antlerless tags, he said.
“This year we’re taking what we’re getting here,” Harvey said. “We’ve got to get past these earn-a-bucks. The complaints are just constant about earn-a-buck seasons and getting into them and never getting out of them.”
Warnke said he understands the program is controversial. But the agency has warned hunters this might be coming, he said.
Hunters in so-called “watch zones,” areas where the DNR was contemplating making earn-a-buck this fall, were told they could bag a doe last year, qualifying them for a buck this year, he said. And hunters that kill a doe with a bow in early hunts this fall can count it toward getting a buck later, he added.
Warnke said the deer herd must be brought under control. If it isn’t, they could change the face of Wisconsin forests, wiping out their favorite food sources and in effect thinning themselves and putting the state’s hunting traditions at risk.
Natural Resources Board chairwoman Chrstine Thomas said she hadn’t seen any details on the plan.
Todd Peterson, 35, of McFarland, hunts in a western Wisconsin zone that was earn-a-buck last and will be again this year if the board approves the plan. He said he agrees with the earn-a-buck philosophy, but questioned why his zone remains earn-a-buck this fall when DNR data show the doe-to-buck kill ratio was three to one there last year.
“Talk to me this fall when I have to pass up that big one,” Peterson said.
On the Net:
Natural Resources Board: http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/nrboard/
