The has changed for me, and not in a good way.
The Wisconsin DNR started the EAB (Earn-a-Buck) program a few years ago in select zones where they needed to reduce the Deer herd. I really did not think about this program before this Deer season. Why? Because it didn’t concern me or my family, the zones we hunt in had not had the EAB program in place. This year for the first time we had to hunt with the EAB program in our zone, and believe me, it changed the way we approached the season opener.
The first morning of the opener is always your best chance to shoot a deer; it always has the most action. The first morning of the hunt we would always be on guard for a big doe, or if we were lucky, that big buck. We always had antlerless tags that we had from the DNR, we called them insurance. If we saw a big bodied deer we would harvest it. This was always a personal choice, for some of us we just chose not to shoot a doe.
This year everything changed, we had to approach the season completely different than before. Since we could not shoot a buck legally before we shot an antlerless deer, we had to harvest the first deer that came through our stand. This I believe resulted in a diminished hunting experience, and also I believe the results were not good for the Wisconsin deer herd.
The first deer that came to our stands just happened to be two small deer; we had no choice, we had to harvest these small deer (Fawns) to get the chance to shoot a buck. Remember this is the first morning, when all the action is. It just so happens that both of these deer did not drop in there tracks, they were good shots, but they just did not drop. Sometimes that happens.
We had to get down from our stands, track them, find them, and make sure that these deer were tagged with EAB tags to have the opportunity to harvest a buck. We had to be certain that we were qualified for EAB. This messed up the whole morning for my daughter and myself, it pretty much eliminated the chance of shooting a buck on the first morning. Just too much activity around our stands.
If you have got this far in the story you are probably saying to yourself that the objectives of the DNR were met and more deer were taken with just a little inconvenience for us. Maybe, but I don’t think so.
The deer that we shot turned out to be Buck Fawns. This did not make us happy, to put it mildly. It just makes more sense to harvest mature does if there is a need to reduce the deer herd. I talked to my neighbor at the end of the day and he had a similar experience. Because of the EAB requirements he had shot a buck fawn also. Three bucks will not make it to next year’s season in the small area that we hunt in.
