Ryan Rothstein: This deer hunter’s wish list for 2025? It includes eliminating cross-tagging of bucks in Minnesota – Outdoor News
I hate New Year’s resolutions, and this year is no exception. So, rather than list things I should’ve already done (resolutions), here’s a wish list for 2025 from one Minnesota deer hunter’s thoughts from the deer stand.
A mild 2024-25 winter
I know a few DNR area wildlife managers who would grab hold and shake me for wanting it, but I can’t help myself. Truthfully, there are areas that need more deer harvest in this state. It’s getting harder for DNR managers to influence overall herd trajectories with declining hunter numbers and a reluctance by many hunters to shoot does, or to shoot more than one deer.
However, many permit areas are still reeling from numerous severe winters during the past decade, particularly north and east of Highway 10. The days of “up north” being a deer-hunting hotbed and haven of big bucks seems like a faded memory.
Although I remember those days, it’s almost hard to believe there was a time when deer were plentiful in the northwoods.
It’s going to take time for northern permit areas to recover and have a healthy, robust deer herd. The quickest way to achieve that are consecutive mild winters allowing healthy does to give birth to healthy fawns that grow up to be healthy does, and so on.
My fingers are crossed for this to happen. If it doesn’t, we’re going to see hunter numbers drop much sooner than current trends indicate. Deer hunting isn’t much fun if you never see a deer.
MORE HUNTING COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:
A large buck-doe harvest gap in Minnesota this year
Minnesota muzzleloader harvest up 1% from 2023; and is there any concern with crossbow harvest?
Many Minnesota hunters, managers report mediocre seasons for grouse, pheasants
Eliminating buck cross-tagging
Many hunters will probably bristle, but this antiquated regulation needs to go. Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota are the only states in the entire nation that allow a hunter to shoot a buck and place another hunter’s tag on it.
Directly from the 2024 Minnesota Hunting & Trapping Regulations booklet: “The intent of the party-hunting regulation is to prevent parties from shooting more deer than the available number of tags.”
Here’s an elegant solution to prevent parties from shooting more deer than they have tags for: Tag your own deer.
Pardon the sarcasm, but this rule frustrates me. When my father was my age, firearms seasons were two days, and many permit areas had lotteries for doe tags. Party hunting made sense. Many people relied on venison as food for the table back then.
But 2025 is not 1985.
Our seasons and licensing structures are dramatically different now. With a nine-day firearms season and a 16-day muzzleloader season, opportunities to harvest your own deer have drastically expanded.
Today, this regulation is a clever legal loophole for hunters to shoot another buck.
Minnesota is technically considered a one-buck state, but anyone who’s hunted here for more than a season knows that’s not really true.
Before you call this kettle black, I freely admit that I’ve benefitted from this rule in the past. I’m not trying to look down my nose and proclaim my purity. But party hunting is hurting far more than it’s helping.
Minnesota doesn’t collect age-specific data, but I’ve hunted enough in different states and talked to enough wildlife managers across the country to confidently say we are near the top in yearling buck harvest.
No, hunting isn’t all about big bucks. And no, you can’t eat the antlers. But Uncle John popping three yearling bucks after a hot doe walked by his stand opening morning isn’t making anyone’s hunting better.
We don’t allow party hunting for ducks, and turkeys. Why do we allow it for deer?
Simplifying deer regulations
I’m not knocking the DNR, because many states have more complex regulatory structures. However, small regulatory changes could make everyone’s lives easier.
For example, our statewide deer bag limit is five. Let’s say I mainly hunt in DPA 215 (three deer), and I tag three antlerless deer there. Under current regulations, I couldn’t tag another deer in any three-deer unit, and I’d have to travel a fair distance to hunt a two-deer DPA. If Minnesota had unit-specific limits, I could simply move to any adjacent unit and tag my remaining two.
Additional doe tags are meant to increase harvest in those units. Why keep hunters willing to tag does from moving over a DPA? There are many other examples, but I have other wishes to list.
Federal delisting of gray wolves
Quite frankly, this isn’t for our deer herd. Gray wolves are an Endangered Species Act success story. Wolves are ready to be managed by state wildlife agencies in the Great Lakes region. Population goals outlined under the species’ listing have been shattered, and federal protections are unnecessary.
I’m wishing this because I’m angry the Endangered Species Act has been bastardized by animal rights activists to maintain listing an objectively un-endangered charismatic species at the expense of species that actually need attention.
In Minnesota, we could focus our attention on elk, moose, cerulean warblers, red-headed woodpeckers, monarch butterflies, or Dakota skippers. We could throw all our energy and money at these species, and it would still be difficult to increase their numbers.
Instead, we get to waste time, energy, and money re-litigating gray wolves. We’re fighting unscientific and unserious organizations masquerading as serious, science-based entities focused on biodiversity, when in reality they are simply determined to never see another wolf killed.
We get to do this instead of spending time and money building habitat for species in real turmoil. Enough is enough.
A new federal farm bill with a massive conservation title
Our “current” 2018 federal farm bill technically expired Sept. 30, 2023. Federal legislators signed a one-year extension that expired Sept. 30, 2024. And last week, Congress released a continuing resolution to extend the government’s budget through March 14 – including a one-year extension of the farm bill.
What does that mean for wildlife in Minnesota? It means there are landowners wanting to enroll in CRP who are sitting on waiting lists at Farm Service Agency offices. Habitat isn’t getting put on the ground, because land that would otherwise have been planted to habitat couldn’t be enrolled.
Private-land habitat management and restoration is at a molasses-like pace because members of Congress won’t do their jobs.
It’s sickening.
RELATED COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:
Commentary: The U.S. farm bill expired (again), and the stakes are high for hunters and anglers
That’s why I’m wishing for a new farm bill including a massive conservation title in 2025. I want to see a CRP acreage cap increased to 40 million acres nationally, rather than the current 27 million acres.
I want rental rates increased by at least 30% to incentivize landowners to plant habitat on marginal ground that should never have been farmed. I want huge investments into payments for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program to get real forest management and invasive species-control done on private forest lands. I want billions invested in private lands for pollinator habitat.
Except for some areas in northern Minnesota that contain abundant state and federal forest lands, there is not nearly enough public land and available habitat to support thriving wildlife populations, particularly in the farm region.
We need investments in private-land habitat. We need a bigger habitat base, with large, contiguous patches of quality habitat. A new, robust farm bill is how we do that.
