Minnesota's coveted hunting lands will be buzzing Saturday morning when the state's first deer season for firearms officially begins.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is expecting it to be a busy deer season with license sales for the youth season up 11 percent from one year ago and as of two weeks ago, the firearms deer license sales were up 19 percent compared to 2019.
Hunters, particularly in Pine, Kanabec, and Chisago Counties are reminded that the DNR has set-up the new East-central Chronic Wasting Disease surveillance area this fall.
"It's just a surveillance area, there's no change in deer management philosophy yet," said Chris Balzer, the area wildlife manager for the DNR in Cloquet. "We haven't found any CWD positive deer on the landscape."
Balzer says CWD detected in a deer at a deer farm in Pine County prompted the surveillance area.
"We're just making sure that it hasn't crossed over into the wild deer," Balzer said. "We're hopeful that it's not, but we're just checking that it hasn't,"
Over a dozen locations have been set-up for hunters to check their deer voluntarily.
Of course the opening weekend for deer season comes with unusually warm temperatures. While the warm temperatures mixed with the deer rut will most likely help hunters, the DNR reminds hunters to process the any deer as quickly as possible.
"There's certainly a tradition with typically cooler weather of people hanging their deer before they butcher it," Balzer said. "Temperatures this weekend won't be refrigerator temperatures, so I would make sure people for sure get them hung up, get the hide off, and get them butchered as fast as they can."
Deer population is expected to vary throughout Minnesota. Balzer says a series of tough winters have hurt the deer population. The biggest impact he says is if you were to draw a line between Grand Rapids and Duluth.
"North of that line, deer numbers are a little lower," he said. "The last eight winters are classified as severe in terms of how they impact deer. Deep snow can impact fawn survival and over-winter deer survivor. Deer numbers down a little bit so it could be tough hunting in some of those areas."
Balzer believes the best hunting in some of areas where deer population is down will be outside of wooded areas, especially on the edge of farm land and where there's been more clearing.
The Minnesota DNR has set-up management designations for deer permit areas.
More information can be found here.
