The Department of Natural Resources says it’s closing one of the state’s six wolf hunting zones at noon on Saturday, just a few days after this year’s hunting season got underway.
The department had set a quota of 15 wolves for wolf hunting Zone 2 in northeastern Wisconsin. As of Friday, 12 wolves had been killed. Tom Hauge, a wildlife management director for the DNR, said the hunting season just opened Wednesday, but this relatively fast closing of Zone 2 isn’t really unexpected.
“This is only our third season, so we don’t have a long track record to base our decision-making on, but I think it’s likely that Wisconsin hunters and trappers — they’ve got a couple years of experience now, and so that may be influencing the pace of harvest,” said Hauge.
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None of the five remaining harvest zones is close to reaching its quota. Overall, the state has set a quota of 150 wolves this season, down from last year’s 251.
Hauge said it’s important that hunters who take a wolf let the DNR know as soon as possible.
“And then we can take action, as we have done now, to shut the season down so that our actual harvest hits the mark that we intended it to, and we can safeguard our wolf population and have a sustainable population going forward,” said Hauge.
The wolf hunt is scheduled to continue through the end of February, or until the statewide quota is reached. Last year, that happened in late December.
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