The deer hunting numbers are just preliminary but overall it looks as though fewer deer were killed and more young hunters were out in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources released the harvest totals for the state’s nine-day gun deer season. Hunters killed 195,738 deer this year, down 0.8 percent from 197,262 deer in 2016.
Within some counties in western Wisconsin, the drop off from last year was significantly higher.
La Crosse County hunters registered 12 percent fewer deer this season. In Monroe County it was an 11-percent drop, while Trempealeau County was down eight percent.
The biggest drop off was in Vernon County, where the harvest was down nearly 19 percent.
The number of hunters statewide also decreased. The number of mentored hunting licenses did, as well, despite lawmakers doing away with the minimum hunting age.
The DNR, however, also reported selling more than 1,800 mentored hunting licenses to children 9 and under – 10 of those licenses were sold to children less than a year old.