We have land in central Wisconsin.  It's a wooded area with very little farmland.  A vast majority of our area is very poor, sandy soil.  The quality of forest ranges greatly but we have a lot of that 8-10ft scrub crap everywhere that's great for deer to hide in but garbage to hunt.  Our Oak forests have been demolished by disease(every Oak on our property had to be cut due to oak wilt).

Combine that with the fact that our DNR has been in panic mode over CWD and has been handing out doe tags like santa handing out gifts at Christmas and you now have a horrible deer population which, in turn, has caused horrible hunting license sales state wide.  Why hunt what isn't there?

Well this year the DNR finally got it's scape goat.  The exceptionally cold winter we had is to blame for the terrible numbers.  Amazingly the winter of '13-'14 managed to negatively impact deer numbers for the past ten years.  It's certainly not that the DNR made something out of a non-issue(CWD) and royally fricked up their herd count(or purposely under-reported it?  I'm not accusing, just throwing it out there).

But I digress...FINALLY they have accepted that something has to be done.  Wisconsin is divided into 3 zone.  A N. and S. Farmland zone and the central woodland.  For the central woodland they will be giving out a limited number of tags.  How many?

Public land - 50 antlerless tags

Private - 450 antlerless tags are the numbers I am hearing.

So if you are a WI hunter and you're looking for a doe tag make sure to get on the ball early.  Aug. 18th is when you can throw your name in the hat for a doe tag.

Also a noteable point, prior to this our area got the maximum number of doe tags the state would give out anywhere and if you tagged out you could buy another one for 12 dollars.  

Not a N. & S. farmland zone. South farmland, central forest, and northern forest. AFAIK, zero doe tags in most of the northern forest (none in my county - Vilas- for certain). Everything you said is dead on. Deer numbers in the north have steadily declined since late 1990s also. Too many doe tags, lack of logging that creates better habitat (deer do NOT thrive in old growth hardwood forests), and a HUGE increase in predators such as coyotes, wolves, and yes, bear too (which mostly prey on fawns... very efficiently too I might ad). Until the last two, winters were average or milder than average over the last 15 yrs. The last two have been very severe (last year was the most severe winter in WI's recorded weather history... and I'm still seeing deer every day).

Ah, thanks for the correction.  Yeah N. Farmland wouldn't make much sense for a zone in N. WI.

I live in a semi-rural area of S. Milwaukee county.  We've got a fair amount of farmland around us.  Honestly, we've been seeing more deer this summer than we have seen in a while.  It's quite strange considering the winter we had.

Our little strip of land up north has been HORRIBLE for hunting lately though.  The entire area has been quite poor but our tiny strip is especially shit for hunting.  There used to be public land along a river by our property that was great for late season but some jackass with an in with the county convinced them to put it up for sale so he could buy it all.

There's also a central farmland zone now too (they split "farmland" into south & central). That makes 4... central & southern farmland, central & northern forest.

50 doe tags for ALL public land?  I know places that get 50 tags per farm. I also know of a place that gets 365 nusiance permits - a deer a day as it were. Damn virtually every hunter I know in the zone I hunt in upstate NY gets a buck and doe tag. Add another one for bow and muzzleloader and each guy can fill a bunch of freezers. We blister the crap out of em and on day 3 of the season alter our shooting patterns so as not to overkill does, go for racks only or on good days run with the motto "if its brown its down"

Ill be damned but theres a new cropload every year including some slammers

A state government has no business telling me how many deer I can kill on my own property.  Public land....sure.







 

Our doe tags were cut also but I think its a good thing

The deer are not your own personal property. If you want to kill all you want, put up a high fence and buy some breading stock.

I entirely agree that it's a good thing.

There are 50 doe tags(antlerless) for the zone we are in(which is the smallest of the 4, I believe).  They were sold out within seconds of going on sale.  I did land a private land antlerless tag though(450 of those available).

If some gnarly old bitch comes strolling by I'll take her but I'm going to try and hold off on anything that isn't past prime breeding years.

My neck of the woods has had a scorched earth brown its down attitude for to long and it really shows in the numbers we've been seeing the last several years.  Our dnr are a bunch of head up their asses fucktards all deer tags are to them are paychecks

Just think of all the kickbacks they get from the insurance companies though!

They have been slowing down on doe tags in my Missouri too.  In most of MO the year before last it was one any deer tag and an unlimited number of doe tags.  Last year it was one any and two doe.  This year it is one any and one doe.  I think CWD is being blamed.