Minnesota's firearm deer season opening weekend that begins Saturday is expected to draw more than 400,000 hunters. The season comes as the state experiences warmer-than-usual weather for a deer opener.
"As much as we'd like to have snow and cooler weather, it'll be easy to sit most of the day, if not the entire day," said Pat Rivers, the Deputy Director of Fish and Wildlife at the Minnesota DNR. "That'll help people increase their chances of seeing deer."
According to Rivers, Minnesota's deer herd is in relatively good shape thanks to a stretch of favorable weather including mild winters.
"Back in 2013 and 2014 we had some pretty tough winters, but we've had relatively mild winters the last couple of years," Rivers said. "Those northern counties that experienced that winter severity haven't been as bad the last couple years. Even with the drought this summer, deer are pretty mobile and find water."
Despite a booming deer population, Rivers says chronic wasting disease still remains a threat to Minnesota deer. On Wednesday, the Minnesota DNR reported the first suspected case of chronic wasting disease in a wild deer along Minnesota’s border with North Dakota.
The deer, according to the DNR, came from an area near Climax, Minnesota and prompted the Minnesota DNR to implement a voluntary CWD sampling for all deer harvested in this area during the 2021 firearms season.
"Southeast Minnesota has had CWD in wild deer for a few years now, and now we have the unfortunate news this week," Rivers said. "We're doing everything we can to test deer in areas like that to understand the extent of the disease and then where it is present to lower deer densities and that we don't move deer out of those management areas."
Rivers says that hunters play a key role in managing CWD.
"That's one reason in the southeast we've been able to keep the disease at about 1% in the deer herd. That's a success for us," he said. "If we can keep it low, we can slow the spread."
More information on CWD and mandatory test areas can be found on the Minnesota DNR's website.