What would be your ideal MN Deer Season structure?

Curious to hear what others ideal MN Deer Season structure would look like. I have no agenda and I’m not trying to stir the pot, I just think MN could use some fine tuning regarding season structure.

My ideal season as follows.

No antler point restrictions

Youth Gun: Mid-September opener to Oct 1., MEA weekend, and any open gun season (more youth opportunities)

Archery: Mid-September opener to Dec. 31 (same, no changes)

Muzzeloader: First Monday after first weekend in December to Dec. 31 (this year it would be 28 days vs. 16 days as current, colder weather in late December could make for some great hunting with deer relating to remaining food sources)

Gun: (using 2016 dates)

Zone 1A: 11-5 to 11-20 (16 days, no changes) No change in structure due to lower deer densities in the big woods and a later season could run into more inclimate weather

Zone 2A: 11-12 to 11-20 (9 days moved one week back) Move one week to push firearm season to the tail end of the rut

Zone 3A: 11-19 to 11-23 (5 days moved 2 weeks back and shortened) push firearm season to the tail end of the rut, shorten season to give equal incentive to season 3B

Zone 3B: 11-25 to 12-4 (10 days moved 2 weeks back ans shortened) pushed out of the rut

Let’s hear your thoughts!

APR statewide, except youth and elderly. 1 Deer a season (archery, gun, muzzleloader), and 1 buck a year regardless of season. Archery starting in mid Sept ending end of year, Rifle would have same start date but run through end of year, and Muzzleloader season staying as is. Nice and simple.

I like the idea of a Statewide early Youth Season – Maybe a week or so in Mid October.
Not a big fan of APR. – Sorry BigWerm on different sides again
Like the idea of a Earn a Buck in certain high deer area’s.
Keep the rifle season the same dates it is.
Would like them to allow a powered scope on a muzzleloader.

There is my wish list

fishthumper wrote:

Not a big fan of APR. – Sorry BigWerm on different sides again

Haha no apology necessary. I’ve never hunted in an APR area, but my friends that do rave about the number of big bucks they see. And as far as I can tell young bucks and doe’s taste equally good for the meat hunters (myself included).

I’m not a huge APR guy but I would like to see something to get some more bucks. Like you can’t shoot spikes ( youth and elderly exempt). Any one that is a meet hunter can shoot a doe or bigger buck. Spikes are like your dog for size. I’m not for 4 on one side though.

My ideal season as follows.

Antler point restrictions statewide except kids under 14.

Archery: First Saturday in October to Dec. 31

Muzzeloader: First Saturday in December (9 days – two weekends)

Gun: (using 2016 dates)

*Zone must be selected at time license is purchased.

Zone 1A: 11-5 to 11-20 (16 days, no changes)

Zone 2A: 11-12 to 11-20

Zone 3A: 11-19 to 11-23(buck hunting only)

Zone 3B: 11-25 to 12-3

Zone 4: 11-19 to 11-23

**one deer either sex per hunter/year for all seasons.
**No cross tagging/ party hunting.

I would like to keep it simple. 1 deer per yr per license – archery or firearm. Muzzle loaders are guns…..one license to cover both rifle and muzzys just like WI. Make the deer tag good for a buck, doe, or wolf. Keep season dayes the same.

I’d change the youth hunt stuff a little but otherwise like your season CB. Oh, and wolves would be considered bonus animals with those hunters handing over three dead ones would get the deer license fee refunded by the state. deer or not.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

Oh, and wolves would be considered bonus animals with those hunters handing over three dead ones would get the deer license fee refunded by the state. deer or not.

if we remove a few of em from the ecosystem the deer hunting would be 10× better

Leave the amount of deer at 5 or whatever in the metro but the rest of the state 1 deer per hunter.

Apr state wide. We hunt southeast mn and have had apr for sometime now and wow I would say in are area it’s made a big difference on the number of 2.5 to 3.5 year old bucks you see.
I love my bow hunting so no change there but I will say the gun season is to early and way to spread out. Do state wide 10 day season in the middle of November. And get rid of the 3b season. No point for it since you can shoot does the first season anyway.
Matt

I like the one deer for tag idea and the Muzzy and gun tag being one. MN double dips on that. WI if you do not fill that tag you can hunt with the Muzzy and not have to purchase another tag.

Metro still stays the same.

APR statewide is not a good option in my opinion. I have seen the impacts of APR while hunting in SE Minn. and also areas I hunt in Missouri. It definitely has positive impacts in areas with high deer density as far as seeing more mature bucks. BUT.. in other areas of the state where there are not alot of deer, a guy might not see but a couple deer the whole season. (for instance SW Minnesota and other 1 deer or other lottery areas).be hard not to let him take a 3×3 buck in some of these areas where they dont see deer very often.

I do definitely think APR should be expanded to other zones in Minnesota with good numbers of deer.

I’m also skeptical of a statewide APR especially for those of us that hunt in Zone 1. When I started deer hunting it was bucks only an there were no youth considerations. It expanded to antlerless permits and eventually either or but is back to bucks only for a large percentage of Zone 1. There’s a pretty significant difference between the farm belt and the NE MN woods. Look at the MN winter severity index for years like 1996 or 2014, etc. Zone 1 can experience much tougher winters than other areas of the state and it can have a major impact on the local and regional deer populations.

Hunting implies harvest and you wont eliminate the hunter that has steaks, chops or sausage in mind.

A statewide APR would be like having a statewide slot limit for walleyes. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because each area of the state is vastly different with numbers of deer, etc.
In principle APR has good merits and no doubt it works in certain situations, but statewide I don’t think it would be very good considering some areas have much lower density of deer.

I’m ready to be the least popular person on IDO right now….

Have a similar set-up to the Dakotas.

OTC Archery Tag

Rifle – A drawing system and Landowner tags. It’s never going to happen but man can they grow some dandy deer out there. I’d be more than happy to get a Rifle tag every 1-4 years but knowing that when you do, the odds of seeing a trophy class buck increase immensely!

Obviously Youth are guaranteed a license.

Ben Brettingen wrote:

I’m ready to be the least popular person on IDO right now….

Have a similar set-up to the Dakotas.

OTC Archery Tag

Rifle – A drawing system and Landowner tags. It’s never going to happen but man can they grow some dandy deer out there. I’d be more than happy to get a Rifle tag every 1-4 years but knowing that when you do, the odds of seeing a trophy class buck increase immensely!

Obviously Youth are guaranteed a license.

X2 We can only dream!

Unfortunately I think, Hunting in MN will always be about meat hunting. The only people that can get big deer on a regular basis are people with access to a large chunk of land or a bunch of small land owners that care about big deer and work together. The opportunity for a big deer in MN is set aside for a select few.

It’s the equivalent to me catching 30″ walleye all the time out of a private pond. Not really all that impressive… Lets manage our deer population to the point where we have good sized deer on a regular basis even on public land then I’ll be interested.

For those that say deer management doesn’t work… MN has no restrictions and yet we have the worst hunting in the Midwest? I really don’t care what we do in MN but we have to do something!

I’m surprised to hear you guys would be ok w/ only rifle hunting every 4 years. I disagree about the trophy potential in MN, there are plenty of opportunities for monsters imo. From the special hunts (Ripley, city hunts, park hunts etc) to the huge amount of public land available, the opportunities are there for any average joe. You likely won’t be able to sit in your hillbilly Hilton stand within a 1/4 mile of the road, but if you want to put in the work scouting and getting off the beaten path there are plenty of monsters roaming this state’s public lands. That is also why I like state-wide APR, as it will just increase those opportunities.

since I’m a simple guy, I’ll keep this simple – take the rifles out of hunters hands during the rut. I don’t know of too many big game seasons where they are allowed to use rifles during the peak of breeding

Pete S wrote:

since I’m a simple guy, I’ll keep this simple – take the rifles out of hunters hands during the rut. I don’t know of too many big game seasons where they are allowed to use rifles during the peak of breeding

Lets just say does/fawns only by any means UNTIL bucks can be taken by everyone. Have one buck season and any deer before or after that season has to be antlerless.

Leave archery as is.
Have a youth season or an early muzzle loader they can participate in or both.
Push firearm out one to two weeks, so it likely occurs after the rut (sorry, I was asked).
And, micro manage the intensive harvest areas — meaning our current zones are too large for intensive harvest designation. Our DNR has a way of devastating the herd with the intensive harvest program. I’m sure plenty on this site can attest to their area going from managed or intensive one year to lottery the next. If they want to encourage young hunters at least let them have the opportunity to see a deer.

I would love to see changes something anything to improve, but with our DNR you have to remember one thing money. They want to make as much money as possible and that is priority number one, nothing else. They devastated the deer herd intentional, got more money for the lumber sale with lower numbers of deer. So unless they think they will make more not much will happen.

http://mnbowhunters.org/2015/02/16/did-our-dnr-sell-the-herd-for-pennies/http://mnbowhunters.org/2015/02/16/did-our-dnr-sell-the-herd-for-pennies/

Matthew Sandys wrote:

I would love to see changes something anything to improve, but with our DNR you have to remember one thing money. They want to make as much money as possible and that is priority number one, nothing else. They devastated the deer herd intentional, got more money for the lumber sale with lower numbers of deer. So unless they think they will make more not much will happen.

http://mnbowhunters.org/2015/02/16/did-our-dnr-sell-the-herd-for-pennies/http://mnbowhunters.org/2015/02/16/did-our-dnr-sell-the-herd-for-pennies/

oh boy, we cannot contain ourselves it’s the mighty monster dnrs fault that we shot all those deer. Maybe the people pulling the trigger or letting the arrow fly should have used some common sense,? No way, it’s too easy to blame someone else while they harvest 3 or more deer. Good grief.

Keep the APR’s in the zones they are in now, if those folks are happy with it they can have them. Not a big fan at all. Some hunters don’t care about the size of the horns. I do care about the horns so I don’t shoot small bucks, but I don’t think everyone should be forced to hunt the way I do.

The archery and muzzy season are fine like they are. I wouldn’t mind moving the firearm season out a week or two so it isn’t during the peak rut.

I would like to see our zone move from hunters choice to management. I think the deer numbers are quite a bit higher than they think. I’d like to be able to keep the doe numbers in check and still have the opportunity to harvest a mature buck. I certainly don’t want it to be intensive harvest ever again though.

Nothing with APR.
If you want big bucks then buy some land yourself, grow your food plots and manage the deer your way. Placing size restrictions on public tax payer funded land and not to mention PRIVATE land is wrong.

Very tired of special interest groups keeping me from taking a nice 4 or 6 point deer if I want to put food on my table and don’t care about my wall decorations or bragging photos.

The whole “trophy” fish and game mentality it becoming bothersome. Its almost to the point that you are criticized for hunting or fishing to put food on the table in addition to enjoying the activity.

IMO, there is some middle ground between the “total APR” program and the free for all that currently is Zone 1 where we go from does and antlerless bucks getting hammered to the bucks getting hammered because the populations have crashed.

One thing that I think guys forget is that it is NOT a given that we will always have an over the counter tag option in MN where everybody gets to hunt. Most guys here probably are too young to know or remember this, but MN’s deer season had to be totally shut down in 1971 due to a terrible population crash in most of MN. The rules were different then and much more assertive management tools are in place, but it can never be a given that MN will have an OTC tag option in all Zones.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The glory days of the 1985 to 2005 in terms of very high average deer numbers over a sustained number of years may never happen again. This was not “normal” in historical terms, so the idea that somehow it is a given that we will get back to the numbers of deer we saw in those years is misguided.

I think we should go with a system that would make nobody totally happy, which for me is always a sign that you’ve achieved the best balance possible.

I would like to see a system where all sexes and rack sizes are managed similar to what western states do for elk.

There would be APR in place, but with limited draw permits issued for bucks under the APR size and doe permits issued as we have now.

The meat hunters will be unhappy because they can’t mow down everything that moves, but they will at least like the fact that it’s not total APR only.

The big rack APR fans will dislike the fact that smaller bucks can be taken by permit, but they will like the fact that there is a limit to how many bucks under the APR size can be killed.

The average hunter who leans not too much in either direction should find something to like in terms of the fact that multiple options will be available and at least under this system we can maintain the “everybody gets a tag” system that MN has always had.

Grouse

Pete S wrote:

since I’m a simple guy, I’ll keep this simple – take the rifles out of hunters hands during the rut. I don’t know of too many big game seasons where they are allowed to use rifles during the peak of breeding

This is my only complaint. We all know that rifle hunting is a strong tradition in MN, and it has always opened the 2nd Saturday in November. If we changed the season to late November a lot more 2-3 year old bucks would live another year. I also would like to see a drawing for NR rifle hunters – they have to apply for a tag.

I do not see the Rifle season moving at all. Too many WI folks come over and hunt before their season. MN would not turn away that money.If they push back then they will lose the out of state money. I’m not against moving it but know the money coming in for out of states tags DNR likes.

Pat McSharry wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Pete S wrote:</div>
since I’m a simple guy, I’ll keep this simple – take the rifles out of hunters hands during the rut. I don’t know of too many big game seasons where they are allowed to use rifles during the peak of breeding

This is my only complaint. We all know that rifle hunting is a strong tradition in MN, and it has always opened the 2nd Saturday in November. If we changed the season to late November a lot more 2-3 year old bucks would live another year. I also would like to see a drawing for NR rifle hunters – they have to apply for a tag.

I’m not sure this is a given in the modern era that moving to the end of November would automatically get the bulk of the hunting away from the rut.

It is always speculative to say when the peak of the rut is, but IMO the rut activity that we see has been spread out over a much longer period of time and the intensity seems much lower and I wonder how much the warming weather trends drive this?

Deer hunting in Zone 1 especially used to be in what I’d call “early winter” and from when I first started hunting in 1983 to the late 1990s, we never went beyond the second weekend in my area of Zone 1 without having significant snowfall and the average daytime high was in the upper 20s to low 30s during the entire season.

Fast forward to the 2000s and we have rarely seen even passing snow and we routinely have daytime highs in the 50s or warmer for almost the whole season.

Is it the case that if the season were to open after, say, November 20, there is a high probability the rut is over in most places?

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Pat McSharry wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Pete S wrote:</div>
since I’m a simple guy, I’ll keep this simple – take the rifles out of hunters hands during the rut. I don’t know of too many big game seasons where they are allowed to use rifles during the peak of breeding

This is my only complaint. We all know that rifle hunting is a strong tradition in MN, and it has always opened the 2nd Saturday in November. If we changed the season to late November a lot more 2-3 year old bucks would live another year. I also would like to see a drawing for NR rifle hunters – they have to apply for a tag.

I’m not sure this is a given in the modern era that moving to the end of November would automatically get the bulk of the hunting away from the rut.

It is always speculative to say when the peak of the rut is, but IMO the rut activity that we see has been spread out over a much longer period of time and the intensity seems much lower and I wonder how much the warming weather trends drive this?

Deer hunting in Zone 1 especially used to be in what I’d call “early winter” and from when I first started hunting in 1983 to the late 1990s, we never went beyond the second weekend in my area of Zone 1 without having significant snowfall and the average daytime high was in the upper 20s to low 30s during the entire season.

Fast forward to the 2000s and we have rarely seen even passing snow and we routinely have daytime highs in the 50s or warmer for almost the whole season.

Is it the case that if the season were to open after, say, November 20, there is a high probability the rut is over in most places?

Grouse

Well that’s where things get to be kind of tricky. What most people classify as the “rut” (when you see the most daylight activity of bucks seeking does, checking scrapes, rubbing, fighting, even chasing) is actually the seeking and chasing phases of the rut and not the peak breeding time. The peak breeding time is not when you will necessarily see the most activity. It’s actually probably the hardest phase of the rut to hunt. Bucks can be locked down with does for up to 72 hours and will only move when they move.

Pulling the season further away from the seeking and chasing phase of the rut would definitely have a big impact. From my interactions with deer in the woods and the research I have done, the seeking and chasing phases of the rut are typically somewhere between October 25th to November 15th. So is the rut over after November 20th? Absolutely not. I would however say that the peak of the seeking and chasing phases are over.

The phases do overlap and a lot of it has to do with when the does in your area go into estrous so it’s not a fail safe rule of thumb by any means. My opinion is that peak breeding is usually always around mid November.

Please realize that this is my opinion as well. Their are a lot of different theories on this.

Pat McSharry wrote:

It is always speculative to say when the peak of the rut is, but IMO the rut activity that we see has been spread out over a much longer period of time and the intensity seems much lower and I wonder how much the warming weather trends drive this?

I think the warmer weather can play a factor in how much daylight activity you see for sure. I still think a large factor is the moon phase and an even larger factor is the photoperiod.

Just my opinion.