Author Topic: Deer trustee report action team updates  (Read 1275 times)

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Offline Rancid Crabtree

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Deer trustee report action team updates
« on: March 09, 2013, 09:27:27 PM »
Today was the first meeting of the Deer Trustee action teams. These teams are made up of members of the public that would commit to 7 meetings over the next few months to take the 62 recommendations of the Kroll report and discuss how to implement them.

Here is a snip from the deer trustee report website:

?As a starting point in the process of taking the final recommendations of the report and transition them into action on the ground, the DNR will be coordinating a public involvement process that that will be driven by the public through action teams oriented around the specific recommendations of the report.

The four DTR action teams that have been identified are as follows:
 ?Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP);
?herd health / chronic wasting disease (CWD);
 ?regulations and season structure
 ?science and research.
 
Whether you are content or dissatisfied with your deer hunting, this is your chance to help lay a path for the future of deer management in Wisconsin.?

You can learn more about the roles and duties of the teams at this link.

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/trustee.html

Because the DNR is soliciting public participation and involvement and because I am a member of that general public and a deer hunter and a private wildlife manager and a bowhunter, I drove 3 hours through the snowstorm today to lend my efforts towards this task.

Sadly of the roughly 700,000 deer hunters in WI, only about 40 of them bothered to participate. The DNR picked a location (Stevens Point) that was centrally located to maximize participation but only a very small number of hunters bothered to show. The other 699,960 will no doubt make the time to complain afterwards if something is not to their liking.

Aside from the roughly 40 members of the public were about as many DNR staff and a reporter (Paul Smith from the Mile Journal). I took a few pictures of today?s event.

Here is the view of the room showing the participants and DNR staff. (too many empty chairs in my opinion) Perhaps the commitment of that many meetings scared people away.



The DNR went through all the roles and duties and the timeline for the work to be completed. Then the 4 action teams were explained so each of us was able to make up our minds as to which team we wanted to be a part of.

I was most interested in the regulations and season structure action team. Ours was the largest but still was only made up of 15 people and 4 DNR support staff. Here they are.



The DNR broke up the 62 recommendations from the Kroll report and divided them among the 4 action teams. The regulations and season structure action team was to tackle:

Reduce the number of DMUs and combine the Farmland regions. **

Hunting Regulations, Seasons and Bag Limits section

Simplify the regulatory process by setting antlerless harvest goals, harvest regulations and
antlerless permit quotas on a 3-5 year cycle.

Base Antlerless Permit Quotas on DMU historical demand.

Increase the cost of all antlerless tags for Regular and Herd Control Units to $12.

Consider charging a fee for antlerless tags in the CWD Zone. **

Establish a public lands antlerless permit system.

Limit antlerless deer harvest in Regular and Herd Control Zones.

Re-evaluate the effectiveness of the October antlerless seasons in the CWD Zone.**

Maintain the current buck limit of one buck per Deer Gun License (may be used in muzzleloader season) and one buck per Archery Deer License.

Maintain the Bonus Buck Regulation in CWD Zone. **

Resolve the cross-bow season issue through the public involvement process.

Resolve the baiting and feeding issue outside CWD affected areas.

Put the fun back into hunting by simplifying seasons, bag limits and youth qualifications!

Develop a public lands antlerless permit system.

Should the Conservation Congress have a more active role in deer management decision-making at the local level?

Those topics with a ** are topic that are shared between our action team and other action teams because they overlap so multiple groups will weigh in on those topics.

We went through the list of topics which were posed around the room on large sheets of paper. We were given sticky notes and were to right down thoughts and suggestions and question or requests for info from the DNR that will help us arrive at conclusions at the next meetings.  We discussed each topic and then generated sticky notes that we deposited on the papers around the room. The DNR staff gathered those sticky notes to prepare for the next meetings. Here are some of the members depositing their thoughts, ideas, questions and requests of the DNR in preparation for the next meeting.



In order to engage more of the public in this process, the DNR has created a rough draft of a survey that will be made available to the public. We were tasked with refining those survey questions. Aside from questions directly related to the Kroll report, additional concepts and questions could be added so the DNR could include them in this public information gathering. I snapped a photo of this additional question while depositing my sticky note.



I asked one of the DNR staffers to give me his best guess at to whether or not he thought the DNR would be going to a tele-check (internet and phone) deer registration system and he said yes, its most likely going to happen and perhaps as soon as 2014. Personally I think that is welcomed news.

As we wrapped up our meeting I walked around the room looking at the items we would be addressing and the sticky notes left by the other action team members. Here are a few of them and the sticky note comments and questions.









Today?s event and the following meetings were/are to be live streamed via the web but a glitch prevented that live web stream today. The meeting was recorded and is now available for viewing (except for the break-out meetings of the 4 action teams)

Our next meeting takes place April 6th. This might be a concern for some as that is the same weekend as the Youth mentored turkey hunt and the Deer and Turkey expo in Madison. I will continue to update as we progress.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 06:30:33 AM by Rancid Crabtree »
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