Can Wisconsin Deer Hunters Handle The Truth?
Over the years the complaints from deer hunters across Wisconsin have mounted. Where are the deer? Sadly, and amusingly, the issue from time to time has been taken up by politicians wishing to score some quick votes. Running around promising a chicken in every pot would be a lot easier than promising the good-ole boys intent on enjoying ‘deer-week’ that they all leave the woods pleased.
Someone needs to tell deer hunters the way the herd is presently managed makes sense. Every student does not get a gold star on their worksheet as a child, and every hunter should not expect a deer strapped to the car at hunting time. ( The latter a sight I find real sad.) The idea that everyone must win (or get a deer) is something I just fundamentally disagree with.
We need to keep in mind that here should not be so many deer in Wisconsin that we notice them on every car trip anywhere out of an urban setting.
Question is will Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and his DNR team be able to step up and honestly address the deer hunters who think there are not enough of them in the wild? And if not, what does that say about Walker and Company’s ability to press forward on the real tough matters facing Wisconsin?
At the end of the day if the only thing to grumble about is the lack of deer we see out in the woods, I would say all is quite well in the Badger State.
Today a column in the Wisconsin State Journal hit to the core of how I feel about this matter.
Even if “there’s no deer,” and even if “the DNR doesn’t listen,” Gunderson needs more than self-pity to address Gov. Walker’s motto: “Wisconsin is open for business.” The governor can’t afford a half-baked deer-management plan that lets the herd explode.
If the DNR — Gov. Walker’s DNR — allows that, he’ll trade a few unhappy hunters for myriad irate landowners and businessmen. He doesn’t want motorists, homeowners, orchard growers, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, Wisconsin County Forests Association and the Wisconsin Council on Forestry to bear the costs of a runaway deer population.
Those folks helped shape our current deer-management system. Abandoning them now, just as deer numbers become manageable, would prove foolish.
And what about chronic wasting disease? Even if we pretend a CWD vaccine is at hand, we can’t risk letting deer herds boom. The more deer requiring treatment, the greater the cost of vaccines and the difficulties distributing it.
These are just a few problems Walker and Gunderson inherited by politicizing deer management during the campaign. But don’t be surprised if they quietly accept our current, codified system and simply tweak it here and there. The worst that would happen is quieter belly-aching from the eternally dissatisfied.
Why quieter? Russ Decker, the only Democrat who demagogued deer sightings, lost his re-election bid. Meanwhile, Walker, Gunderson, Sen. Neal Kedzie and other GOP leaders can no longer benefit by making deer an issue. With the DNR under their party’s thumb, they must defuse their torpedo.
Gunderson can help by delivering on Walker’s promise to follow science in managing deer. That’s a promise worth fulfilling.
