Gone are the old-time days of deer hunting in Itasca County when Dennis Neitzke saw cars and trucks parked at every trailhead leading into the big woods from a main road.
The scene featured crowds of orange-clad hunters swapping stories and showing off big bucks outside the restaurants and bars that dot the region's rural crossroads.
"The number of hunters in the big woods has changed dramatically," Neitzke said. "But everybody around here still gets pretty excited this time of year."
The retired veterinarian from Grand Rapids is one of more than 450,000 Minnesotans expected to participate in the whitetail deer firearms season that opens next Saturday, a half-hour before sunrise.
The buck kill in Minnesota's northern forests has plunged over the past decade. After the harsh winter of 2021-22, hunters in the region won't be surprised to see even fewer deer, Neitzke said. But in the areas he hunts close to Grand Rapids and in nearby forests, there's enough opportunity to hold interest.
Moreover, Neitzke and countless other deer hunters have traditions to uphold. He has been part of the same hunting camp for nearly 45 years, gathering each fall with friends and family at a cabin in the woods near Bowstring Lake.
"If it's like the last few years, we'll be happy to take one or two bucks," Neitzke said.
New to Itasca County hunters this year is mandatory disease testing of deer taken on opening weekend. The sampling was ordered by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) after chronic wasting disease (CWD) was detected earlier this year in an adult doe found dead in a backyard in Grand Rapids.
Michelle Carstensen, DNR wildlife health program supervisor, said the agency's response plan created a new and enlarged deer permit area, No. 679, with Grand Rapids in the center.
Not only is CWD testing on opening weekend mandatory inside the zone, but no deer carcasses can be moved outside the zone during any season until a "not-detected" test result is received. Hunters are allowed to transport properly quartered or boned meat.
The same rules apply in seven other 600-series "CWD management zones," including a second new zone around Climax on the North Dakota border. Carstensen said she especially is interested in the zones around Climax and Grand Rapids to see if more disease is detected. The two zones are similar in terms of having a single CWD case pop up within the past year.
According to the DNR's plan for CWD management zones, tissue samples from harvested deer are collected for three consecutive years. If no new cases are found in that time, deer hunting regulations in the area return to normal. That will happen next year in two disease management zones if CWD is not detected during this year's sampling. One is in Douglas County and the other in Pine County.
Carstensen said DNR biologists expect more cases to be found in CWD management zones in southeastern Minnesota, but so far prevalence of the disease in that region is low.
On opening weekend of the firearms season, the DNR will conduct the bulk of its tissue sampling at stations inside CWD management zones. Some of those stations will be self-service, but 400 DNR staff members and college students will work Nov. 5-7 at full-service testing stations spread throughout the eight disease management zones. Like last year, all sites will be equipped with large dumpsters to collect carcasses and properly dispose of them.
Carstensen said the DNR this year sent postcards to known hunters in CWD management zones, reminding them of mandatory testing and voluntary testing after opening weekend. She said the mailings should help improve the compliance rate, which was around 70% last year. New in 2022, she said, are self-administered testing kits available free from the DNR for hunters anywhere in the state. The kits (5,000 in number) require hunters to extract deer lymph nodes, note the location of their kill, and mail the kit to a predetermined laboratory.
Carstensen also said the DNR has expanded its partnership with taxidermists throughout the state, paying them $20 for each trophy buck they have tested. Mature bucks are three times more likely to have CWD. "It expands our reach,'' she said.
Another aid for hunters this year is an interactive map on the DNR website that explains CWD testing options, bag limits and season dates specific to each deer permit area across the state.
For more than a decade, DNR has been falling short of the state's goal to harvest at least 200,000 deer per year. In 2021, for instance, the kill totaled 184,698.
Barbara Keller, DNR big game program supervisor, said she's expecting this year's harvest to be in the same range.
Results were promising at the outset of this year's archery season, which opened Sept. 17 and produced whitetail registrations that were running 15% to 20% above last year's pace. But Keller said results slowed with a blast of warm weather that carried into the early antlerless season and statewide youth hunt Oct. 20-23.
Cumulatively as of last Sunday, registrations reached 20,651 — 9% below last year's mark over the same period.
"We had been doing well with weather'' until it got windy and warm, she said. Conditions for the opener are tentatively projected to be favorable with temperatures in the 30s, 40s and 50s.
Keller said deer populations are "faring pretty well" from the northwest corner of the state to the southeast corner. In the southwest, deer are doing "quite well," she said.
But in the north-central and northeastern regions, where deer densities were already low heading into last winter, the DNR will distribute fewer deer tags than a year ago.
