MILWAUKEE — With overall deer harvest numbers in Wisconsin down by roughly 18% from last year, hunting experts this week are left to analyze what worked during this month’s annual gun deer hunt and what didn’t.

“One of the interesting things about hunting that keeps it intriguing is there are these variables, and it’s not a given, and that’s what I think is part of the magic of hunting,” said Jeff Pritzl, the Wisconsin DNR’s deer program specialist. “This is one of those years where things were stacked more in favor of the deer than the hunters.”

In addition to not having much snow on the ground statewide this year, which Pritzl said enhances the harvest, Pritzl said that after an above-average harvest in 2022, there may simply have been fewer deer this year to hunt.

“In certain parts of the state, there probably weren’t that many deer on the landscape as there were last year, especially in the northwest part of the state,” Pritzl said. “There were some impacts from the winter we had last year.”

Watch the full interview above.