The 2024-25 Wisconsin white-tailed deer hunting seasons will feature two northern counties with buck-only rules and a slight reduction in the statewide antlerless harvest quota.
It will also include a record high number of farmland zone counties with extended archery seasons and holiday gun hunting seasons. And hunters in most farmland counties will once again receive between two and four free antlerless tags with each license.
The Natural Resources Board approved the rules package at its June 26 meeting in Green Bay.
The board supported all but three among hundreds of recommendations forwarded by the County Deer Advisory Councils. The CDACs are a citizen-based system instituted in Wisconsin in 2014 to review DNR data and produce local recommendations on antlerless quotas and season formats.
The mix of regulations reflects a substantial variation in deer numbers between the state's forest and agricultural zones.
The 2024-25 seasons include a statewide quota of 272,847 antlerless deer, down 4% from last year. The reduction is mostly due to quota reductions in some northern counties that saw winter 2022-23 take a toll on local deer numbers and contribute to a 28% year-over-year drop in northern zone deer harvest last year.
Statewide the 2023-24 deer kill was 299,970, second lowest in 30 years, according to DNR data. The season also featured the lowest number of deer hunting licenses sold since the 1990s, according to the DNR.
This year Ashland and Iron counties opted for buck-only regulations.
Last year hunters registered just 53% of the statewide antlerless quota, a common theme since the Legislature in 2011 prohibited the use of Earn-A-Buck regulations. Under Earn-A-Buck hunters were required to shoot an antlerless deer before they were authorized to shoot a buck.
Under the voluntary system now in place the antlerless harvest has consistently fallen short of the quotas recommended by the CDACs and established by the NRB.
This year the DNR will make 245,245 total bonus antlerless harvest authorizations available for purchase across the state. These authorizations are in addition to the free antlerless harvest authorizations issued in farmland zones.
The numbers were recommended by CDACs based on public feedback and deer population objectives.
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The 2024-25 deer seasons will feature 41 farmland counties with the firearm Holiday Hunt (Dec. 24 to Jan. 1) and 35 farmland counties with extended bow seasons (through Jan. 31).
Both are record high levels of participation in the added seasons and are an effort to increase antlerless deer harvest in those counties. All of the counties have a "maintain" or "decrease" population objective.
The final quotas and season frameworks match the recommendations of the CDACs with three exceptions. In Iowa County, the January archery and crossbow season was extended to match surrounding counties, as recommended by the DNR. And the NRB voted to provide 400 antlerless permits for public land hunters in both Bayfield and Oneida counties. The CDACs had recommended zero.
Bonus antlerless harvest authorizations will be offered for sale beginning at 10 a.m. Aug. 12. The authorizations, commonly known as tags, can be purchased online through the DNR's Go Wild license portal and at license sales locations throughout the state.
Bonus authorizations for the forest zones will go on sale Aug. 12, followed by central farmland zone Aug. 13 and southern farmland zone Aug. 14. All remaining permits will be offered Aug. 15.
Hunters can find information regarding deer season structure, quota information and additional hunting resources on the DNR’s White-tailed Deer Hunting webpage .
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Rules and quotas set for Wisconsin's 2024 deer hunting seasons
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