Deer numbers im se mn

I talked to a bunch of hunters in the Forestville,Preston,Fountain,Wykoff,Spring Valley areas and a lot of people say numbers are down and not a lot of deer observed this fall in general.A lot of this area went down from 5 to 1 bonus tags this year.Wonder if DNR numbers saw this coming or what?

Think it may have to do with all the corn still in during the season

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Think it may have to do with all the corn still in during the season

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I don’t think so, I think numbers are simply down. I bow hunt and have only bow hunted for the last 12 years. Numbers are definetly down. I say this because normally there is always corn on the farms where we hunt. Maybe one or two fields get picked the week prior to the gun season, but it’s not like there isn’t standing corn for them to hide each year.

The number of deer we see in our hunting area’s around the Fountain area are certaily less than they have been in previous years. One of the trends I noticed this fall was less doe traffic and more younger bucks in our area. Might just be a trend, but certainly worth noting.

Personally I think the DNR spends to much time studying deer populations based on vehicle incident reports. Less deer is better in their opinion since they continuously hear from the insurance industry… just my opinion.

I don’t mind only being able to take on doe. The intensive harvest seasons may have lasted about two years to many based on the deer we have all seen this year. With winter starting as it has, it might be interesting the next few years as well.

When we were picking corn this year, and this was the first year that I can remember in a long time where we picked entire farms as big as 400 acres and did not see a single deer. I was not able to deer hunt as much this year to see how things were in the woods, but they definatly were bad in the fields.

Tough to say, I think the corn played a bigger role than some may think. My party filled 7 of 8 remaining tags this last week of bow season. Three woods that where pretty uneventful this year all of sudden came alive. We also saw some pretty nice bucks that will be impressive next year. It was pretty cool to see so many deer in the late season.