Preliminary counts over the first two days of the 2004 gun deer hunting season show hunters registered 141,884 deer. Hunters registered a preliminary 122,080 deer over the 2003-opening weekend. Hunting license sales have reached 644,233, just 585 shy of the 2003 total of 644,818. Conditions were, in a few words, soft, damp and quiet for the opener in much of the state. A misty, drizzly rain and overcast skies covered much of the state throughout the opening morning of November 26th, 2004. Deer visibility was low in the absence of snow and the damp forest floor conditions made it difficult to hear approaching deer. Conditions improved a bit in most areas by Saturday afternoon and were much better on Sunday.

An informal survey of registration stations taken on Saturday found mixed results depending on the location around the state. In units with Earn-a-Buck rules in place, antlerless deer registrations were running ahead of previous years. Earn-a-Buck requires that hunters first harvest an antlerless deer before a buck. Earn-A-Buck is strong medicine but it works, most of the objections to this strategy came from areas where it was newly implemented this year, but people seem more accepting of it once they get used to it.

The weekend was marked by four hunting-related gunshot incidents including two fatalities. One fatality occurred Saturday in Juneau County when a member of a 16-person hunting party shot three times at a deer, hitting the victim, a 47-year-old man who was helping the hunting party drive deer. The other fatality occurred in Rock County Sunday. A 35-year-old man died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while he was hunting from a tree stand that was in poor condition and tilting.

On a depressing note there was a situation in Birchwood, Wisconsin. A hunting party

was on their way into the woods when they noticed an intruder in one of their stands.

When confronting the intruder the situation turned hostile. The intruder fired at the group

killing five and injuring another 3, a sixth died a day later. The man was apprehended

only after confronting two other hunters who were unaware of what had happened and

gave him a ride, a police officer recognized his DNR identification number because one

of the wounded radioed it out. The man was then arrested. It is also possible that the man

is a suspect in a previous hunting murder that took place in

2000.