Eau Claire (WQOW) - It's the weekend many have been
waiting all year for in Wisconsin.
Hunters headed out to the woods Saturday morning for opening day of the
gun-deer hunt.
This is the 161st annual nine-day
deer hunt. DNR officials say they've sold nearly 615,000 licenses this year, a
two percent increase over last year. They also say there's an increase in the
number of female hunters headed out to the woods this year. But the temps in
those woods were a little bit warm, which makes it more comfortable for
hunters, but harder to bag that buck.
"Overall, pretty
good hunting conditions, right now it's actually a little bit warm during the
middle of the day which has probably dampened some of the rutting activity that
we had hoped to see. I have gotten reports from people saying they are seeing
bucks chasing does, but not all day long like you would kind of hope," says
Kevin Wallenfang, a DNR Big Game Ecologist.
The DNR says because of the warm
weather, there are concerns about venison spoiling. When the temperatures are
above 40 degrees, harmful bacteria can grow quickly. They say field dressing the deer immediately
after harvest can prevent spoiling. Washing the body cavity with cold, clean
water and putting it on ice or refrigerating it as soon as possible can also
help. Leaving venison or other wild game in a car trunk or hanging it in the
garage is not recommended. Even with the warm weather, the DNR is predicting
the harvest will be good this year.
"In general, we
would expect that the overall harvest would be up, we don't have any early
numbers as far as the archery season went, but from what we've heard from
hunters out there, they were seeing more deer, it seemed like they were taking
an awful lot of them, and we would just simply anticipate that that's going to
carry over into the overall harvest," Wallenfang says.
There are free deer carcass disposal
returns in Eau Claire
County again this year.
There are two locations, open through December 10th. The Tower Ridge
County Recreation area at the ski chalet parking lot in the town of Seymour,
and Lake Eau Claire County Park at the east end of the parking lot in Augusta.
Deer hides will also be collected. Proceeds from those hides help pay for the
dumpsters.
The DNR says one hunter was injured in
an accidental shooting in Manitowoc.
That hunter was shot in the hand, and transported to the hospital.
