It’s that time of year again: the leaves are starting to change color, the days are getting shorter and the temperature is slowly decreasing. Thousands of hunters will be walking the woods on Sept. 14, in search of the elusive whitetail deer, hoping to catch a glimpse of a buck to hang on their walls.
Scott Katzenberger, an avid hunter who’s been hunting for more than 40 years in northern Wisconsin, said he still enjoys getting the chance to be out in nature and deepen relationships.
“I’ve been able to bond with my high school friends. I think about all the moments that I bonded with my dad and my family. I got to take my son deer hunting for 3 years. I just got married, and now I hunt with my new wife and she loves to go, and it’s a big part of our life,” he told The Daily Cardinal.
But there is more to the story of hunting than meets the eye.
Hunting is less of a survival use and more of a recreational pastime, according to PETA. The animals suffer in pain during the process of being shot, with the risk of being wounded and suffering even more, the organization argued.
Still, Katzenberger said hunters never try to cause harm to wildlife or the land that they hunt on.
“I think most hunters have more respect for wildlife and nature than most people realize,” Katzenberger said. “Everything that we hunt and take as game goes across our table as food, [and] everything that we take we have a legal license in order to consume.”
Hunting accidents, such as destroying property or unintentionally killing an animal or human, occur frequently each year. Out of around 18 million hunting participants, 4,700 of those were involved in an accident in 2018, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Since the introduction of hunter’s safety courses in Wisconsin in 1967, all hunters in Wisconsin born after 1973 are required to receive a hunter’s safety certification. As a result, incidents have decreased by 96%.
The Wisconsin deer population is at an all-time high, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Mandatory registration of each deer harvested helps track population trends, and other factors such as weather, the length of the hunting season and the amount of hunters that register affect the population statistics. Katzenberger said that hunting is a great way to reduce overpopulation.
“When any animal gets overpopulated, there’s more disease amongst the herd. There’s a lot of evidence [that hunting] keeps the deer herd in check but healthy. And when I say healthy I mean it’s not so overrun that they’re decimating the population of a lot of other game,” he said.
Every three years, the DNR releases a map of Wisconsin showing counties with high, maintained and low population density of deer. This can help hunters determine the best counties to hunt in to reduce overpopulation, the counties to not hunt in to increase population and the counties to hunt in to help maintain population.
Overpopulation also has the possibility of increasing traffic accidents. Between 15,000 and 19,000 deer crashes occur annually on Wisconsin roadways, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
“[When] your deer population is way out of control, you’re gonna have way more accidents on the highway, and deer hits raise insurance prices,” Katzenberger said.
And due to overpopulation across the state, chronic wasting disease (CWD) is becoming more prevalent each year.
“Chronic wasting disease is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer/caribou. It belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases. CWD occurs only in members of the cervid or deer family — both wild and captive,” Christina Kizewski, a wildlife biologist for the Wisconsin DNR, told The Daily Cardinal.
Kizweski said there are some practices hunters can follow in order to slow and control the spread of CWD, including testing deer for CWD by removing the lymph nodes in the neck. The DNR and partner supporters also have many deer carcass dumpsters across the state.
Managed hunting plays a large role in the DNR’s conservation and land management efforts, Kizweski said.
“It helps keep populations in check and keep a balance on the landscape,” she said. “Without hunting, species populations can grow to unhealthy levels where disease outbreaks can occur more readily and could impact human health and safety.”
For people who don’t hunt but would like to support conservation, just purchasing a license can help, Kizweski said.
“Hunting license fees are used for habitat management for species, and monitoring and research objectives as well. Even if folks are not interested in harvesting an animal, the purchase of a hunting license contributes financially to landscape level work, which supports wildlife in multiple facets,” said Kizweski.
Hunting is more than just the importance of conservation, the reduction in overpopulation or the reduction of diseases, according to Katzenberger. It’s a tradition, an endless part of many families lives that many hope to pass onto future generations.
