Proposed deer season changes in Wisconsin under fire

Should Wisconsin’s gun-deer season be longer? 

Hunters may weigh in on that question at the next Wisconsin Conservation Congress meetings in April. 

Marc Schultz, the La Crosse County chairman for that group, said Tuesday morning on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk, that ideas for changing the deer hunting dates might need more work.

“These are just kind of ideas that are out there,” Schultz said. “They’re not that well thought out, they’re just concepts.”    

The deer harvest was down in 2019, and the DNR suggests that the gun season started too late because of a late Thanksgiving. 

One proposal being floated is to extend the regular nine-day season to 19 days.

Schultz says a decision in the 1990s to have the DNR secretary appointed by the governor instead of by the Natural Resources Board seems to have put too many people in charge of outdoor activities.

Experts say that by the time the 2019 season began, the deer rut was mostly over, so the harvest was down.  

Sportsmen gather in every Wisconsin county on the second Monday in April for Conservation Congress meetings, to vote on proposals affecting outdoor sports and the state’s resources.