Reason Behind Lagging Deer License Sales in Wisconsin Could Be an Aging Hunting Population

Monday, November 13th, 2023 -- 11:01 AM

(Paul Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) Wildlife managers are trained to face a range of challenges, including the impacts of diseases, invasive species and changing habitat.

But, according to Paul Smith with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there's a significant one facing white-tailed deer managers in Wisconsin they can do nothing about: Father Time. The largest cohort of the state's gun deer hunters is now in their 60s and a portion stop hunting each year.

The reasons vary, some lose interest, some have their hunting groups dissolve, some lose access to their traditional hunting spots, some move out of state, some experience poor health and some die, but without sufficient recruitment of new hunters the result has been a declining deer hunting population in the Badger State.

Through the end of October, Wisconsin gun deer license sales were running about 2% behind last year, said Jeff Pritzl, Department of Natural Resources deer program specialist. The license sales decline has become the norm in recent years.

"What that is capturing is what has become pretty well known and that is the baby-boom generation, which embraced deer hunting like no other generation before or after, is simply aging out and retiring from deer hunting," Pritzl said Nov. 2 during a deer season media briefing.

"As they are slowly and gradually hanging up their blaze orange for the last time, we are losing a couple of percent every year. And we know that's going to continue for the next decade."

As Pritzl indicated, the trend is not a surprise. It was predicted 16 years ago by a team of University of Wisconsin and Department of Natural Resources researchers.

The work used Wisconsin hunter data from 2000 to 2007 and utilized an age-period-cohort analysis to examine the recent decline in gun deer hunters and project the future number of hunters in the state.

It focused on male gun deer hunters, the largest cohort in the state's hunting population and the primary driver of changes. The authors noted the deer herd in Wisconsin is largely kept in check by hunters who purchase licenses and kill deer each fall.

Further, it stated hunting was vital not only to wildlife management efforts but is also an important cultural activity through which people become intricately connected to the natural world.

However, purchases of deer hunting licenses by Wisconsin hunters had declined in the 2000s and, through modeling, the study predicted the drop could become more exacerbated over the coming years.

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