that’s the last few months of the disease as they starve to death because they forget to eat/drink. There’s no outward sign for the first couple of years until that starts happening.

I’ve used 350 Legend Winchester Deer Season XP 150gr out of a 10.5″ AR pistol for the last 3 years. 16 deer (all under 75 yards), none of which went more than 20 yards or so. Definitely need good shot placement or it can wreck a more meat than I like, but it’s usually less damage than a 12 gauge slug.

I don’t keep count specifically, but I know I’ve seen a couple dozen per year on the highway, and that’s at the absolute edge of 646. Not to mention the interstate.

I looked at the reports, and 646 had a harvest rate of 7.14 deer/sq mi in 2023. Meanwhile according to the DNR’s population modeling, the pre-fawn density was at 52 in 2022. That’s up from 32 in 2017. And we’ve been at a 5-deer limit (or more) for as long as I can remember.

now, to be fair, that’s a group of 10-15 people. If you add in the neighbors that still hunt part of the farm, it’s another 5-10, and they usually take at least 5 off that same acreage in the first season.

We could take at least 75 if we wanted, and in reality we probably should. The area our farms are is part of a valley that’s roughly 8 square miles. There’s less than 50 deer taken per year in that 8 square miles. Add in the next valley to the northwest, where even fewer deer are taken, and you run into a population problem. Unfortunately we’re completely surrounded by people who don’t pay the price for the overpopulation, but reap the rewards of us feeding a considerable portion of our crops to them.

We’ve taken an average of 25/year off these farms for 25 years straight, and the population has only increased.

646, we’ve had 7 taken off our farm (230 acres) so far that I know of, not sure about the neighbors that hunt part of it during the A season. Also have found 2 decent bucks dead, one from a car and one from unknown causes.

With any luck we’ll take another 25 or so this weekend off mine and my neighbors farm. Won’t even make a dent in the population.

We figured we lost 20-25% of our corn to deer/turkey damage this year in the southeast. It would have been worse if it hadn’t been a mast year for acorns.

something like this would probably work. I have something similar on my home and it’s the only way I can get signal in my house during the summer. Pretty much point the antenna at the nearest tower, and because it’s such a big antenna compared to your phone, it can pick up more signal.

https://a.co/d/30MWJnI

Colorado has mandatory testing across much of the state, Wyoming is voluntary I think.

Multiple studies have shown high prevalence areas having virtually zero deer older than 4. Anecdotally, the areas of Wyoming my friends antelope hunt, the COs figure they’re losing 25% of their deer to CWD every year, and with winter kill on top of that the herd isn’t replenishing.

we didn’t this year, although I might order some kits from Priogen and test some meat samples. I’m normally the one who facilitates the testing by getting a bunch of the carcass tags before the season, and it completely slipped my mind.

My big issue with the current testing process is that the samples take so long to come back that if one did test positive, it would have already been cut up and mixed in with the rest of the meat. Although by the look of the test results page they were faster this year than most years.

I’ve talked to the DNR multiple times about improving the system. The simple solution is to print a carcass tag with every tag, and when registering the deer it should ask for the location information. That eliminates the issue of handwriting being illegible.

We took 20 off our farm and neighbors farm in 646 during the second season (roughly 500 combined acres). Mostly does, a few fawns, and two bucks, not that we didn’t have opportunities to shoot a few big bucks. 16 guys, with most of them being over 60, only a couple of us were under 40 years old. The other groups that hunt these areas during the first season took around 10.

If this cold weather would have come a week earlier we likely would have been closer to 30 on that first weekend, at least judging by how active the cameras have been for the last few days. We plan to try to take a few more off during the late December season.

and where would they fit? My group alone has 15-20 hunters depending on the year. Add in the bits of neighbors lands we share and it’s closer to 30-40 hunters on these lands.

The lands we hunt aren’t causing a population issue, it’s the rest of the private land that no one ever shoots more than their “trophy buck” that causes the issue.

ganderpike wrote:

Echo the above^.

Shooting half a dozen antlerless deer is bad no matter how you want to spin it. The 3 and 5 deer zones is appalling and shame on the resource managers for allowing it. MN is so poorly managed it is sad.

poop, if we could get down to only shooting half a dozen antlerless deer in my chunk of 646, I’d be happy. That would mean we finally made a dent in the damn population and I wouldn’t be losing 20%+ of my crops to them.

We’ve consistently taken between 20 and 40 deer every year off about 500 acres for 25 years.

my daughter isn’t quite strong enough to hold up a 22, so I’ll wait a year until she can hold a shotgun up herself.

Turned on one of my cell cams at the beginning of the month, and caught my first bobcat on camera ever last weekend, in southeast MN. Doe with a single fawn came by an hour later and sniffed the spot he was in.

Is it a good thing when you’re trout fishing and can hear the deer eating your corn on the other side of the creek?

jimmysiewert wrote:

That brings up another question to all. In the name of CWD, how many deer, have you found in the wild, dead in CWD zones, that you cannot say died from gunshots, car collisions, or from predators. Of all the time spent in the woods hunting, shed hunting and hiking in 342 – I cannot say I ever have. The kills I found that I cannot conclusively say, have all been yearlings and that doesn’t fit the supposed mold of CWD.

The difference between CWD and something like EHD is that they’re unlikely to specifically die from CWD, but it brings their mental and physical abilities down enough that they get hit by cars, eaten by predators, etc. Unless it’s in the later stages of the disease, you can’t really tell if a deer has CWD without getting it tested.

Not to mention 342 there hasn’t been a positive yet, likely because there aren’t many (or any) deer farms in that area.

We used to have every property in the area doing deer drives, so deer were always on the move. It wasn’t uncommon to see a herd of 20+ running across the valley and into another party doing a different drive. These days it’s pretty much just us doing drives still, and while we don’t see as many deer as we did 20 years ago, we still see plenty. We’ve consistently shot around 20 per year off roughly 500 acres for nearly 20 years.

They don’t split the archery numbers out in their interactive map so it’s hard to tell specifics, but here’s the breakdown compared to last year.

Zone 1 is down 13,000, but they’ve got another weekend to hunt yet.

Zone 2 is 7,500 higher than last year.

Zone 3&6 are 10,000 higher (nearly double) than they were last year at this point, and so is the metro. There’s still the 2nd season in much of that, where at least another 4,000 are harvested.

Add in another 10k for muzzleloader yet too.

So in reality, we’re ahead of last years harvest at this point, or at least even depending on what the archery harvest portion of those numbers is.

write your senators and state reps to pass the bill putting a moratorium on new deer farms. It’s not coincidence that each hotspot is around a deer farm.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Im not so sure about that. Its been a CWD zone since 2018 or a little earlier, but I seem remember being able to get up to 3 bonus tags in the past much longer ago than that. We never did however. I think it may depend which part of “640” you are talking about. We are on the far West side. This area is comprised with like 3 or 4 areas from the past.

Nope, the first CWD case was found in 2019, and in fall of 2019 it became 604. It combined part of 246, all of 242 & 247, and small parts of 155, 171, & 172. Of those, only 242 was more than a 1-deer limit in 2017, and in 2018 242 was a 3-deer limit, with 247&155 being 2 deer, and the rest being hunter choice (either sex 1 deer limit).

Since you aren’t restricted to the area you specify when buying your license, you could always buy essentially an unlimited amount of bonus tags anywhere in the state, they just might not be valid in your preferred hunting area.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Where we have hunted for around 20 years the deer herd is nothing like it used to be. Its now zone 604, but used to be 240 something. It was not uncommon to see dozens of deer in one sit for me in the early years. Now we are lucky to see anything. We were lucky to see 5 deer the second afternoon of the early anterless/youth hunt, but I think they were spooked by something as they came bounding in. Back in the day it was either or for harvest. Now its been intensive harvest for going on 10 years at least. I dont think the population supports that type of hunting but since its a CWD zone they keep in on I am guessing. I find it ridiculous that they keep that designation when there wasnt a wild deer tested positive for CWD this entire time and the private herd has since been destroyed.

Like most people (myself included), your memory of how long ago “back in the day” was is skewed.
That area has only been intensive harvest since 2018, and intensive harvest was a 3 deer limit then. It’s still a 3-deer limit even with the CWD restrictions.

There’s been 2 positives in the wild in 640. In January 2019 the first one with CWD was found dead in the wild (on a lake if I’m not mistaken), and a hunter harvested another positive in 2021. Because of the hunter harvested one, it’ll be a CWD management zone through 2024. If no more are found over those 3 seasons, they’ll reevaluate the risk to determine if continued surveillance is necessary.

Tom schmitt wrote:

But I believe you would need a rifled barrel to make that work.
Maybe one of the gunsmith members can verify if a choked shotgun would be able to shoot a copper bullet.

A rifled choke would help, but you’d definitely want a rifled barrel for best accuracy. Either way, at $18/box it’s not exactly affordable to target practice.

Tom schmitt wrote:

The other thing that no one is talking about is lead.
If they truly want to stop all lead, I believe they will need to get rid of shotgun slugs.
I don’t believe they can make a non lead slug for a shot gun.

There’s copper slugs for shotguns, but they’re usually pretty spendy, like $18+/box.

Rifles are also much safer than shotgun slugs, especially in woods and hilly terrain. The usual rifle bullets for hunting don’t ricochet nearly as much as a shotgun slug will, they tend to break apart much easier when they hit a branch or rock, whereas that 1oz chunk of lead from a shotgun will stay mostly intact and keep going.

gimruis wrote:

Hunting with a shotgun slug would put me at a major disadvantage where I hunt. The landscape where I hunt in zone 2 is fairly open. Its not heavy timber like it is up north in zone 1. Its broken country that has a mix of small stands of timber, brush, grassland, and agriculture. I can see 500+ yards in 3 directions when I get 20 feet up in a tree. I’d be so limited if I had to use a shotgun there instead of a scoped rifle.

And it’s no different in the rest of Zone 2, and even most of Zone 3. Stupid rule that needed to be changed 20 years ago.

that’s one senator (Senjem) who put the two county restriction in. It’ll go to conference committee now since the house & senate bills don’t match. We’ll see what they end up with from there.

MN Gun Owner Caucus thinks they’ll get it switched to statewide, so we’ll see.

super_do wrote:

I spoke to a guy from work that said he was going gun deer hunting today for the early gun season in SE Minnesota. From everything I looked through in the regs, the only early season I can find is for youth? Am I missing it somewhere? Or is he wrong?

Thanks

There’s an early antlerless season in 346 and 349. 5 deer limit, doesn’t count towards your statewide bag limit.

puddlepounder wrote:

I saw it on the tv the other day, you are allowed to harvest only one deer in Minnesota for the 2015 season. They did not mention anything about intensive harvest or managed areas.

There’s still plenty of areas in the state you can harvest 2 deer, and a few you can harvest 5 (or 10 if you hunt the early antlerless season in those areas).

sticker wrote:

This is not entirely true. If you use your main tag to take a doe, you can no longer take a buck unless you are party hunting. Even if you take a different license(rifle or muzzy) you can only use one of the 3 possible main tags to tag a deer. The only tags you can use in this case would be a bonus tag for a doe or someone elses main tag if party hunting. Using your main rifle tag after you have used your main bow tag will be illegal.

The rule is that you can’t use another “main (archery, rifle, muzzy) tag” in another lottery area. If you use your archery tag in a lottery area on a doe, you can still use your gun main tag in a Managed/Intensive area on a buck or doe (but not in a lottery area, you’ve used your quota for lottery areas).