MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin wildlife officials planned to shut down this season's wolf hunt Friday after allowing hunters to exceed their kill limit for a third straight year, giving rise to complaints that the agency had violated the public's trust in how the hunt would be conducted.

State law allows the hunt to run from Oct. 15 through the last day of February or until hunters reach the statewide kill limit. Hunters had killed 151 wolves as of Thursday, one more than the statewide limit, prompting the state Department of Natural Resources to announce Thursday the season will end at noon Friday. That raised the possibility that hunters could further exceed the quota.

Hunters have gone over their limit in each of the last two seasons as well. In 2013 they killed 257 wolves, six more than they were allowed. In 2012 they killed 116 wolves, one more than the limit.

Jodi Habush Sinykin, an attorney for a coalition of humane societies that opposes hunting wolves with dogs, said the DNR is failing to enforce its own quotas and violating the public's trust to maintain a sustainable wolf population.

"It really indicates a lack of accountability and control by the DNR and a commitment to a sustainable wolf harvest," Habush Sinykin said. "They chose not to be conservative. This is not how Wisconsin has managed other harvests."

DNR spokesman Bill Cosh said in an email to The Associated Press that the agency has taken a measured approach to each wolf hunt. He noted that the DNR initially set the 2012 quota at 201, the 2013 quota at 201 and the 2014 quota at 156 and the kill was below those limits each year.

Those initial quotas aren't the true operating limits, however. Treaties with the state's Chippewa bands entitle the tribes to half of any quota established in the northern section of the state. As a result, the DNR reduces its initial quota each year for nontribal hunters accordingly so the tribes can meet their allotment. The Chippewa consider the wolf spiritual brother and have never killed a single one. For all practical purposes, that leaves the reduced nontribal limits — 150 wolves this year, 251 last year and 115 in 2012 — as the statewide limit.

Cosh offered no explanation why the DNR the agency didn't make this year's closure announcements early enough to ensure that hunters wouldn't exceed the limit and didn't immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry.

Hunters began this season on a torrid pace, killing nearly 70 percent of the state's 150-wolf limit by the end of October and prompting the DNR to close four of the state's six hunting zones where hunters were approaching or had reached or exceeded the zone-specific harvest limits.

The pace slowed considerably in November. As of last week, though, hunters had killed 146 wolves. State statutes require the DNR to give the public 24 hours' notice before closing zones; agency officials said they were monitoring the pace of the hunt, but they didn't issue any closure notices for the last two zones until Thursday. They said they would close Zone 6, which includes the southern two-thirds of the state, early Friday morning and close Zone 3, a narrow swath of northwestern Wisconsin, at noon.

That means hunters in Zone 6 could continue hunting Thursday afternoon and hunters in Zone 3 had Thursday afternoon and Friday morning to stay in the woods.