Chris Caporale, sports@wolfrivermedia.com
Shawano County’s Deer Advisory Council recommended three free tags and an anterless quota of 8,000 for the 2017 deer season during a meeting Tuesday at Shawano Community Middle School.
The most discussion centered on how many free tags hunters should receive with the purchase of their license.
Last year, for the first time, Shawano County hunters who purchased either a gun license or a bow license received three free antlerless tags.
Hunters, who had an 8 percent success rate with the free tags, harvested 11,308 deer, including 6,560 anterless in Shawano County last year.
John Stezenski, with the Hunt/Conservation Club, called for the tags to remain the same, as did Deer Management Assistance Program representative Jim Weinmann.
“The ones who will use them, will use them, will shoot more than one,” Stezenski said. “And it seems to have worked. Our antlerless deer killed went up 1,000 deer.”
“We need to make the tags available, however we do it,” Weinmann said.
Blake Schuebel requested the free tags be limited to two since many hunters didn’t use all three and that it could help the perception of hunters.
However, the motion for three tags carried 3-1.
The total quota for the 2016 season was roughly 17,000 deer. The estimated pre-hunt deer population was 71,000. The projection for 2017 is down 13,000, to roughly 58,000.
The council agreed to a recommended quota of 8,000 anterless deer in a unanimous vote.
Kay Brockman-Maderas, DNR wildlife biologist, said that quota would decrease the overall deer population by roughly 1 percent.
The group recommended selling up to 4,200 bonus tags at $12 each. Last season, roughly 1,000 of the 4,200 bonus tags were purchased.
Of those, 3,450 tags will go to private land while the remaining 750 can be used on public land, the same distribution as last year.
The county’s recommendations, along with those from counties across the state, will go to the state Natural Resources Board for consideration later this year.