Frederica Freyberg:
Last December, the Legislature heard from angry deer hunters upset they didn't see enough deer during the hunting season. They blamed the population estimates the DNR uses to determines the rules for individual deer herd management units around the state. Now it's March and in the coming weeks, hunters will troop to local meetings to find out what the early projections are for deer hunt 2010. They will be learning about a new study the DNR is beginning to see if there's a better way to count deer. Joining us to talk about this is Keith Warnke, big game ecologist with the DNR. Thank you for joining us.

Keith Warnke:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
It seems early to start this study. The season is six months away. Why hold these meetings so far in advance?

Keith Warnke:
We hold these meeting in March every year. We have about 40 of them around the state. They are the herd status meetings. The purpose is to go out to hunters and inform them on where we are and what we are thinking and what could be happening this year. And hear from hunters talk about predators and winter weather and upcoming season structures what they can expect and what they want to see.

Frederica Freyberg:
What can they expect? What do you know?

Keith Warnke:
We don't have all of the population estimates complete at this time. Looks like right now, we are going to be seeing more units near their population projection this year than previous years.
There are some units particularly in farmland regions of Wisconsin that are above their population goals. We will work with hunters there to manage those deer herds too.

Frederica Freyberg:
You heard about the complaints about the accuracy of these herd estimates. What is your confidence level in these numbers?

Keith Warnke:
I'm confident that we are able to accurately describe population trends in deer herds. I understand their frustrations. I'm a hunter as well. I'm working hard to make sure the hunting heritage is around for my daughters and their children. We are able to detect the trends through hunter harvest. We are going to be implementing field work that will help us better and more precisely estimate the number of deer on the landscape.

Frederica Freyberg:
What will that study involve?

Keith Warnke:
We have two major components to this study that involves measuring the impacts of predation, hunting, weather on bucks and buck survival and measuring the impacts of hunting, predation, weather, predators on the survival of fawns from the time they are born until their first fall. Those things are important to our estimate.

Frederica Freyberg:
How long would this study take and will it be of use anytime soon?

Keith Warnke:
No. The study is going to start this coming winter. So winter 2010, 2011. In most cases, we have three to five years of field work to do before we're going to get meaningful results that we can apply to the population estimates. So what we're going to do is get hunters involved. One of the important things about the studies is this is going to be big on hunter involvement. We're going to need help in building traps, capturing deer and handling deer and working with landowners to get permission. Throughout this study, we're going to be keeping hunters and citizens up to date on the progress we made so far.

Frederica Freyberg:
Our reporter Art Hackett will be doing a report on this issue. That will be airing later this month.
Thank you for joining us.

Keith Warnke:
Thank you for having me.