Posted on 10/23/2007 4:51:34 PM PDT by SJackson
WAUSAU, Wis. - Call it the road-kill scam.
Some deer hunters have tried to register an antlerless deer killed by a vehicle, to qualify to shoot a buck in this fall's hunt in hunting zones designated as earn-a-buck, state wildlife experts said Tuesday.
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"It is certainly a ploy that has been tried before," said Bob Manwell, a spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources. "I don't suspect it is successful all that often. Anybody who has driven by road kill, there are probably some that don't show much damage but most of them look pretty beat up."
In earn-a-buck zones, hunters must shoot an antlerless deer to qualify to kill a more coveted buck. It's a regulation designed to kill more does to check the growth of an overpopulated whitetail herd _ and many hunters dislike it.
Exactly how many hunters have tried the road-kill scam is unknown, said Randy Stark, the DNR's chief warden.
No records are kept of those types of citations. But Stark said he's heard of a handful of cases over the years.
"It is not unusual. When a law changes, there's a small percentage of people who start to think, 'How can I get around that law?'" he said in a telephone interview from Madison. "It's our job to figure out what those people are doing and then try to frustrate their efforts."
This fall, 57 of the state's 130 deer hunting units _ covering more than one-third of the state _ are designated as earn-a-buck. The state's biggest hunt _ the nine-day gun season _ begins Nov. 17. The DNR estimates up to 1.8 million whitetail deer roam the fields and woods _ 100,000 more than a year ago.
It's not illegal to claim a deer that a driver stuck and killed but it has to be tagged in the county where the crash happened and it cannot be used for earn-a-buck.
In Wisconsin, about 45,000 deer are killed annually in car-deer crashes, many of them in the fall when they could be targets for the road-kill scam, Stark said.
But out of 100 deer road kills, maybe half a dozen might be in good enough shape to try to sneak by a registration station, Stark said.
Byron Goetsch, warden supervisor for the DNR's 16-county northeast region headquartered in Green Bay, said a hunter caught trying to register a road-kill deer for the earn-a-buck program would be cited for providing incorrect information to the DNR to obtain a permit. The punishment would be a $329 fine, with the possibility of losing hunting privileges for up to three years.
Goetsch has no idea how widespread the road-kill scam is in his region, where earn-a-buck regulations are the norm this fall.
No citations are pending, he said.
Why a hunter would try to use a road-kill deer to meet the earn-a-buck requirement was unclear.
But there are hunters who simply don't like the requirement, feeling it's wrong for the DNR to tell them what to shoot, especially if it's a female deer, Goetsch said.
The road-kill scam is not the first anti-earn-a-buck scheme, Stark said.
In past years, some hunters have tried to register the same antlerless deer multiple times to get the buck tags, leading the DNR to order that an ear be cut to mark the deer as registered, Stark said.
Catching violators of the earn-a-buck requirements, although they may be few in number, is a "fundamental fairness issue" for those hunters following the rules, Stark said.
Heading into the November hunt, about 43,800 hunters had met the earn-a-buck requirement by killing an antlerless deer either last year or while archery hunting this fall, providing themselves nearly 60,000 buck tags, Manwell said.
Stark said he had no idea how many of them may have slipped a road-kill deer past lay folks handling the deer registrations.
"How do I know a negative?" he asked. "I have no way to quantify that. As with anything in life, there are processes in place and there's ways to be dishonest and subvert the processes. Are the vast majority of people law-abiding hunters and do the right thing? Yes."
Roadkill, yuk.
If they want more deer killed, then how about something simple.
Allow feeding again, restore the October doe season, when the weather is nice, perhaps allow landowner permits, similar to crop damage tags.
Heck, allow scopes on smokepoles and legalize crossbows.
Not necessarily my desires, but simple things that would increase the harvest and might actually encourage more people to hunt.
In a lot of areas there are just plain too many deer. It’s amazing how fast they came back population wise. The predators are coming back too, but overall they overbrowse and degrade their habitat, which causes more problems as time goes on, typically mass starvation if left unchecked.
The only way to control the deer population is through harvesting does however. That’s the reason for the DNR policy.
Please add me to the ping list. Thanks.
There are too many deer. Here in Wisconsin, they outlawed feeding a few years ago, though it’s back for half the state. Ironically not the populated southern half. They eliminated a 4 day October doe gun season. So many ways to solve the problem, without relying on an unpopular earn a buck solution.
They still kill too many does. Its just a money issue here. All they care about is selling more licenses.
If I were to stand at the corner of my house at 5:00 am and start swinging a 2X4 at 5:05, I am almost guaranteed to nail a deer. On May 30th at 3:30 in the afternoon I counted 13 deer in my front yard. They eat everything in my garden, the bark off the trees, and since I live right on a busy highway, have smashed into more than a few vehicles. One of those accidents last year was fatal for the driver. We have a resident flock of vultures that live off the dead deer. Coming back from the grocery store last fall so many deer were crossing the road I had to stop and wait on them. One of them walked into the side of my truck, looked at me, then walked around the front. We live in the middle of a town of over a hundred thousand.
Perhaps you might get a dog.
LOL, you are right. These cats don’t do much to scare off the deer. Of course, I was thinking of getting a bigger freezer.
It’s kind of a catch-22 in that, btw, the deer belong to the state, not the landowner but as I understand it there is no recourse for the landowners or farmers if crops or property is destroyed not to mention getting killed or injured on the highways. What is the “correct” number of deer? Wouldn’t want to think about the nonsense that would entail.
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