By DAN DURBIN - Special to GM Today

April 2, 2009

Question 57, proposed by the Conservation Congress, asks hunters if they would consider an alternative to the earn-a-buck season that would make bowhunting in areas over quota goals to be for antlerless deer only, except for a two- or three-week period during the rut.

So, if you've been bowhunting 20 years and the buck of your life steps out during the majority of the season, that deer has got to walk.

Sashie Ehlke of Waukesha said her group of 40 hunters has decided that if their unit in Shawano goes into either EAB or this new proposed rule, they won't be buying tags.

"There just aren't enough does out there to support a season like that," she said. "We have seen the hunting get gradually worse for the last several seasons and we hunt 600 private acres. The only thing we keep seeing more of is bears, wolves and coyotes."

Ehlke, 34, said her group of hunters are hard core, and that she and her husband are hunting at least two days a week for the entire bow season.

"We're not sitting in the tavern," she said. "We were in the woods all that time last year and I saw just one doe. We normally take a dozen deer during gun season alone, and all we could muster for the entire season this year were six."

Ehlke says the land around them isn't rich in agriculture for feeding, so they have gone with food plots.

"We even have cameras set up on our food plots and we're not even seeing nocturnal deer on them," she said. "Some of the guys we hunt with live up north and rely on deer season to fill their freezer for the winter. We want to take does; we just aren't seeing any."

Chris Matheson, 40, of Richfield, has been bowhunting for 27 years, and is also against the proposed change.

"We already have policies in place to manage the herd." he said. "The current DNR strategy seems to be working just fine in all the woods that I've been hunting across the state. I have seen a marked decrease in the total number of deer over the past several years. Take away the potential for a big buck and I might just stay home altogether. This new plan is simply shortsighted. If you want to kill bowhunting altogether, this seems like a fine path to follow."

Matheson thinks the idea could backfire with fewer hunters willing to put up with rules they no longer believe are connected to the realities they see in the woods.

"This is such short-term thinking" he said. "Besides, compared to gun season, the number of bow kills is simply not enough to make a significant population impact."

Matheson said the DNR is risking the future of bowhunting.

"I can't imagine telling my two sons, James, 9, and Michael, 6, when they are going into the woods for their first bow hunt, 'Remember boys, you have to pass on a big buck this week because the rule says so,'" he said. "Just doesn't fly with me. It was the hope and dream of a buck that got me into bowhunting in the first place. Enough is enough. How about we start promoting the heritage of hunting and stop the over-regulating that moves it into obscurity?"

Kyle Drake, a conservation warden for the DNR, said this rule change was not proposed by the department, but by the Conservation Congress, so it could take a few years to be enacted if it won the majority of votes at the hearings.

"If it won the vote, then the Congress would come to us to see if we would enact it or it would become a DNR rule change question at the hearings in 2010," he said. "At the earliest, it would probably be 2011 before this were made a rule."

(Dan Durbin writes a weekly outdoors column for The Freeman. Call Durbin at 644-7940, or e-mail him at ddurbin@bastdurbin.com if you have a story idea.)