By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Stauffacher: Green County doesn’t need a Holiday Hunt
Letter To The Editor

From Shirley and David Stauffacher

Monroe

To the Editor:

The Green County Deer Advisory Council (CDAC) made a decision to reinstate the Holiday Hunt (Dec. 24, 2023 to Jan. 1, 2024) and to extend the Archery/Crossbow season changing that end date from Jan. 7, 2024 to Jan. 31. We think this is wrong!

The fall season dates for 2023 on the DNR website, published earlier this year, had no Holiday Hunt nor extended end date for Archery/Crossbow. However, sometime later this year the Council added both these for Fall 2023. How did that happen?

We participated in the public input survey this year that sets the season dates by the council. The results and consensus leaned toward no additional days were necessary and leave quotas same as last year.   

We pay close attention to the season dates because the woods are directly out our back door. Our wooded property goes up and over a hill and then changes ownership 3 times. We don’t know who is hunting the woods beyond our property line.   

We’ve canceled this year’s Christmas gatherings because the first thing the children wish to do when they get here is to go out in the woods to play. 

We are not taking a risk that they wander too far and into a bad situation. We don’t hunt. Our complaint is not with responsible hunters but with these excessive hunting days.

If a doe survives multiple gun hunts and the four-month Archery/Crossbow season, she would be pregnant by end of December. By adding these later dates you are allowing the killing of pregnant doe. No pregnant doe — no new deer. No bucks — no pregnant doe. The deer are already stressed by this time and facing winter.

We thought the goal of the DNR and the Council was to satisfy hunter wants while maintaining a robust, healthy herd as well as give consideration to landowners like us who don’t hunt.   

Maybe decisions like this should be put on a ballot for all Green County residents (pop. 38,000) to vote on, not left to a few council members who may be of one mindset and input from 80 respondents (residents and non-residents) to a non-binding public survey available if you knew it existed and where to find it. 

If some areas are “infested” with deer and others are not, maybe it’s time to divide the county into quadrants and fix appropriate hunting seasons for each.