Dale Schulz's 191 5/8-inch Wabasha County non-typical was one of the top trophies on display at the 2007 Minnesota Deer & Turkey Expo.
March 14 Update
A hunting show is a great way to kill a day or two over the weekend, and sometimes it provides you with a lot of useful information and contacts.
I just returned from the 2007 Minnesota Deer & Turkey Expo in Owatonna, where I learned a lot about what’s going on with whitetails in the state. What made this show especially worthwhile to me is the fact I knew a lot of people there, including several members of the Bluffland Whitetails Association (www.blufflandwhitetails.org).
When I wasn’t conducting food plot seminars at this show, I hung around the BWA booth, sharing deer stories and getting caught up on what’s happening with the Minnesota herd. The leaders of this grassroots organization are dedicated proponents of good deer management, and they’ve done a lot in their group’s short history to bring about positive change.
One proposal BWA is backing is the elimination of “cross-tagging” bucks. For years Minnesota has had a one-buck annual limit, which in such states as Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana has helped to balance the buck:doe ratio and improve buck age structure. However, in Minnesota there’s a catch: “Party hunting” has always been legal, meaning an individual hunter could keep shooting bucks as long as he could find a buddy with an unused tag to put on the deer. BWA is asking the state to disallow this practice, in hopes of reducing the number of bucks in the harvest and improving both the overall age structure and sex ratio. We’ll see what happens, but if this idea becomes law, I think the herd – and trophy hunters – will benefit.
Also gaining support from BWA is a move to have part of every Minnesota deer hunter’s license fee help fund the state’s venison-donation program. Many hunters are reluctant to shoot surplus does because they don’t have a need for that much venison. At the same time, they’re reluctant to donate the extra deer through a processing facility, due to cost. If the state were to help fund processing fees for donated deer, in theory more hunters might not only shoot surplus does but also give them to the needy.
It remains to be seen if Minnesota’s legislators will vote to implement this plan, but I hope they do. Several other states around the U.S. have done so, and it has helped to make venison donation an easy, virtually free decision for hunters. In fact, I hope someday such funding programs are in place everywhere whitetails are hunted.
This weekend I’m off to Ohio, where I’ll be a speaker at the Deer & Turkey Expo in Columbus (www.deerinfo.com for details.) If you’re going to be there, look me up, and we’ll share a hunting story or two.
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