Deer Hunting 2022 - Opening Moves

It's been a busy summer so I have not done much hunting prep.  But it is getting to be that time again.....and the current price of groceries is nudging me to think about tasty venison stew.

My contacts in the DNR say that deer numbers overall in our county are fine, but that the distribution is spotty.  This makes sense, lots of things can have local impact.  A pack of wolves in the neighborhood for instance.  Note to my UK friends, this is no metaphor.  We do have wolves near our cabin and actually see one every now and then.  But on the other side of the equation the local gentry have started cultivating feed lots on their private estates and there is some spillover to the public lands we hunt on.  On one of my morning "deer walks" in July I counted 13 critters, some of whom were nonchalant as I strolled past at 20 yards distance.  At that range even I would have no problem with marksmanship!  (Actually I target shoot periodically and am feeling  confident up to 75 yards.  I'll stretch it out to 100 by November).

So all is in order, yes?  Well actually, no.

Wisconsin manages the deer herd carefully but not always scientifically.  Sometimes an area has quite a few deer but the citizen forums that help the DNR adjust quotas are impassioned.  There are  people who want fewer hunters in the woods to increase the odds of a small number of enthusiasts bagging really nice bucks.  Some people, example your humble correspondent, think more people hunting is more good, and that gnarly old bucks don't make for very good stew.  In our area the elitists carried the day this year and so antlerless tags (does and yearlings) are down drastically.  Given the huge preponderance of antlerless in our immediate vicinity this is a bad portent.

So we had complex game theory (pun alert!) discussions prior to the online license purchase date.  There were alternate locations and even crossbows involved.

But in the end chance came through for us.  Everyone in our party was high enough in the randomized queue to get both a buck tag (unlikely to be useful) and an anterless.  A good start to the Campaign to Fill Freezers 2022.