Public vs Private Antlerless tags

I attended the spring meetings in Marathon county this year and listened to the biologist present on antlerless goals and tag issuance for this year. This is the first year that there will be public and private antlerless tags. What surprised me was that in Marathon county, 15% of the antlerless tags were set aside for public land. The biologist explained that 12% of the land in the county is public, so 15% of the tags were set aside for this group. I thought the idea was to increase antlerless pressure on private land, but setting aside MORE tags for public would have the opposite effect. I then called the biologist for Portage County (where I own a farm) and asked her the same question. She said she looked at public vs private land harvest in the last 5 years. 7% of antlerless deer were historically killed on public land, so they set aside 15% of the tags for public. THIS IS EVEN WORSE! I own private land in these counties and we don't have a deer shortage on the land we own. I am afraid that with this type of tag issuance we will have too many deer shot off public land, and not enough on private. The Portage county biologist said they did this to make sure that public land hunters get a chance at an antlerless tag- this amazed me.

So. . . what exactly is "slob hunting" ? Are any of you old enough to recall that not so very long ago we were issued 1 tag for bow and 1 tag for rifle, either sex (archery) and you were done after you shot ONE. Then we had the boom in deer numbers and all of these changes came about in response to that. Of course there was going to be a crash. That boom couldn't last. We got so spoiled getting unlimited (CWD area) tags, multi buck tags, tags for this and tags for that. We got set into this mind game that you need to shoot a Booner buck or nothing and that after reading a few internet blogs you suddenly became a wildlife biologist. I met a young man working in the archery dept of a local big box sporting store. He was helping a person equip himself for the fall bow hunt, telling him all he needed, from bows and arrows to armguards and broad heads, giving very one sided advice. We spoke and I found out that he himself had never killed a deer as he was "waiting for a Booner". He learned on the internet and via TV and hook and bullet mags, but very little time spent actually doing it. We all have goals, and we all grew up into various ways of doing things. If your family and friends always got together and ran pushes (drives), then that's what that group finds to be "hunting". Same with bait, and treestands etc. It also wasn't so very long ago that treestands were not legal. Now most of our bowhunters won't even go into the woods without one. As far as they are concerned, you can't hunt deer without one. A close friend of mine is always after me about my ground hunting. In certain areas of this state and UP MI, if you aren't hunting over an established bait pile, you won't see any deer, or.... so they say. and heck, if you aren't seeing any deer, why bother ? Point is. . . what constitutes "slob hunting" or even fine tune that. . what is "proper hunting" ? Do you really have the right and standing to tell me my way is not as good, accepted and holy as your way ? Chuck

Amen bowbuckman AMEN!

I am not you *bro* this has got me steaming hot let me tell you.....

I guess the point is just this, if bone shredder did shoot 11 deer legally and used all the meat for his family and friends, then good for him!

boneshredder how mad are you bro? No more unlimited tags looks like you might have to settle for ramen noodles this year ehh? haha

Wow greatoutdoors you nailed it head on. Two points for you except it was 1500 walleye 450 pheasant breasts 600 pounds of prime goose meat and 1000 pounds of fresh salmon. YUMMM

Shredder is either a raging lunatic, a moron, or a troll. Since he seems to be rather smart, he is just trolling to get people riled up. Nobody can be that stupid. Centralwiwalleye slayer is not a troll.

There are roughly 600,000 hunters in Wisconsin, right? What percent do you think are paying attention to this public vs private antlerless tag discussion? My guess is less than 20%. What we really need are signs to hang in the public hunting land areas..."Let her go, so the population may grow."

"Boneshredder- I gotta call BS on eating 11 deer. Unless you have a family of 10 you did not eat all of that meat." Keep in mind he claimed to have eaten all of this during just the winter. So, the big 10 pointer probably had 100 pounds of meet and lets say 50 pounds each of the other deer shot. That is 600 pounds of meet. Considering winter is about 100 days long, they were pounding through 6# of venison a day. If he got anything processed, that number is higher. What did he eat for the other nine months? If I had to guess, I think his family would need about 800 walleyes, 30 wild turkeys, and 20 muskies to be able to be fed for the rest of the year.

even if he didnt eat it all yet who care vaccume pack it and it will last years

It will be impossible to enforce these public/private permit regs.,,The dnr should simplify and adjust an amount to an area as needed,,,and definitely more constraint on the over the counter sales,,increase the price or eliminate,,,,definitely had more deer to hunt before all these extra tags were given out,,,increase tags as needed ,,,,just some comments,,the deer are in the woods ,huntem'

I call bs on you rempump. Keep managing your deer herd guys i will manage to shoot them all

Boneshredder- I gotta call BS on eating 11 deer. Unless you have a family of 10 you did not eat all of that meat.

JC- The public land harvest decrease won't happen unless the biologists for each county cut back on the public tags. If you read my OP, the problem (in my opinion) is they are allocating too many tags for public land and not enough for private. The framework allows for reduced harvest on public land, but not if the tag allocation is going to be what it is for Marathon and Portage counties in 2014.

Well then boneshredder, if you are killing 9-11 deer on public land in WI yourself, then the new rules are intended exactly for people like you. Public land tags are limited this year, and will even be more limited next year when the free tags printed with your license will not be good for public land areas. The new rules will be a blessing for us public land hunters who pass on most deer as we know the population is down. People talk all the time about hunters having to regulate or police themselves because the DNR hasn't done it. Well, this answers this question - we hunters cannot regulate or police ourselves. There will always be guys like boneshredder out there. If you feel like there aren't enough deer on public land, and you pass up that fawn, there will always be guys like boneshredder out there to kill the deer you pass on. Thank goodness the majority of hunters are more concerned about the herd than simply hunting only to fill their freezer, and have supported methods to restrict guys from shooting so many deer on public land. I believe this change is long overdue.