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Roger Sabota - Northwoods notebook

Monday evening there was a meeting of district three of the Conservation Congress at the DNR Ranger Station in Tomahawk. District three of the Conservation Congress includes Vilas, Oneida, Lincoln, Marathon and Taylor counties. The meeting was the 2008 Fall Congress District meeting. Each fall the Congress meets with a variety of DNR employees to share information and prepare for the fall hunting seasons.

Charles McCullough, who is the area wildlife biologist for the Headwaters Area, presented an update regarding the on-going two-year study of bears. This study has been mentioned several times in this space. For two years bait was placed throughout the Wisconsin bear range. This bait contained a chemical that created a stain in the bones of bears that ate the bait.

For each year of the two-year study, hunters were asked to submit a rib bone to the DNR. Researchers analyzed the bones for the stain on these rib bones. McCullough said that several years ago the game managers began to suspect that there were more bears on the landscape than they thought.

Now, as the data is being analyzed, it appears that there may be two to three times as many bears as was previously thought. There may be 25,000 to 35,000 bears, which compares to the 13,000 bears as were previously estimated. He said that hunters might expect to see more class A bear licenses available over the next several years.

McCullough cautioned everyone at the meeting that bears are long-living animals and that their population grows slowly. He also said any changes in numbers of permits would most likely be quite conservative to maintain the bear population and not risk hurting it.

Thus far this year about 5,500 class B bear permits have been purchased. That number compares with a normal sale of 8,000 class B permits. The wardens present at the meeting each said that they have noticed fewer hunters in the woods training bear hounds. It is suspected that the price of fuel is a factor in this decrease. Of interest to most of those present at this meeting was the comment that hunter success rates in bear management unit B has been 70 to 80 percent.

Another topic covered by McCullough had to do with grouse. His comments were similar to those mentioned by the wardens. They said there have been more broods of young grouse than they have seen during the past several summers. That is good news for the grouse hunters.

On the topic of wild turkeys, everyone agreed that they are seeing very few poults. Bob Maass said he is seeing hens with very low numbers of poults. It is suspected that the tough winter most likely contributed to the low number of poults.

When the topic of deer was introduced, McCullough said that our deer herd in this part of the state got hit hard by the winter. He said that one look at the regulations for the 2008 deer hunts show a regular season is on tap for this year. Most of the rest of the state is under harvest management or earn-a-buck.

This year approximately 500 deer heads will be examined for CWD. Most of these heads will come from car-killed deer but the remainder to reach 500 will come from hunter-killed deer at deer registration stations.

The audit of the sex-age kill system of estimating the size of the deer herd included several recommendations. One was to increase the size of deer management units. We can expect to see some recommendations for changes in deer management units.

John Kubiseak, the fish biologist for Oneida County, began his comments with the statement that currently there are two vacancies for fish biologists. He and Steve Gilbert, who is the Fish Biologist for Vials County, explained how much more work they have taken on in order to prevent the spread of VHS. They are using high-pressure steam cleaning equipment to clean nets, boats, trailers and waders. This is done before the equipment is used from lake to lake.

They mentioned that since the minimum size limit for walleyes in Kentuck Lake has been established the natural reproduction of walleyes has decreased. He said that they are carefully studying the data that they are obtaining.

Gilbert reported that at the spring hearings in April there will be a question on the DNR side of the questionnaire asking if there is support to increase the minimum size for muskies to 50 inches on Sand Lake, Long Lake and Kentuck Lake.

Everyone is feeling the complications and stress created by the increased cost of fuel. This increase has hit all state agencies very hard. In order to compensate for fuel costs Conservation Wardens have been asked to decrease their miles driven for the rest of the year. It seems that the high cost of fuel has caused stress on everything we do.

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