Hunters in the 2025 Wisconsin white-tailed deer hunting seasons registered more bucks than any year since 2007 and the most deer overall since 2012, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
What’s more, the harvest of antlerless deer – the key to herd control efforts – showed a year-over-year increase of 5% and the archer, crossbow, holiday, late antlerless and youth seasons all showed higher deer registrations.
“All in all, our harvest numbers were strong, the strongest we’ve seen in a couple decades,” said Ryan Haffele, DNR acting deer program specialist.
Haffele and several DNR colleagues presented the 2025 Wisconsin deer hunting season summary at the Feb. 25 Natural Resources Board meeting in Madison.
The 2025 statewide deer hunting opportunities opened Sept. 13 with the crossbow and archer (vertical bow) seasons and included a Oct. 11 and 12 youth, Nov. 22-30 gun, Dec. 1-10 muzzleloader and Dec. 11-14 late antlerless hunts.
Many deer management units also included a Dec. 24 to Jan. 1 holiday hunt and late bow seasons that closed Jan. 31.
All told, hunters had more opportunity than ever to take a deer in Wisconsin.
Their pursuit was further aided by a statewide deer population estimated at 1.82 million following the 2024-25 hunting seasons, highest on record, according to the DNR. Two consecutive mild winters helped bolster the herd in the northern and central forest zones and deer numbers in the agricultural zones have generally swelled over the last decade after the Wisconsin Legislature prohibited Earn-A-Buck regulations and the early gun hunting season for antlerless deer.
Both the central and southern agricultural zones showed record high deer populations, according to the 2024 post-hunt estimate by the DNR.
The Feb. 25 report was dominated by positives as hunters took advantage of the higher deer numbers and excellent late season conditions.
The 2025 results are especially impressive since the number of deer hunters has dropped by 116,640 (or 16%) in the last 25 years, according to the DNR.
The DNR data showed hunters in 2025 registered 389,481 deer, including 165,754 bucks and 173,727 antlerless deer. The totals, through the end of January, will increase when registrations on agricultural damage tags and tribal harvest are added in the coming weeks.
The seasons started out strong with 8,480 deer registered in the two-day youth hunt, 18% higher than the five-year average.
The only season in 2025 that didn’t show a year-over-year or five-year increase was the nine-day gun hunt. Hunters registered 183,094 deer in the season, which has the most annual participants and contributes the biggest harvest. But hunter effort over the last three days was hampered by a heavy statewide snowstorm and the deer kill fell 4% from the previous year.
Once the storm passed, though, the snow cover persisted through December and helped hunters see and track deer in the muzzleloader, late antlerless and holiday hunts, Haffele said.
In the muzzleloader season, hunters registered 11,911 deer, 68% higher than the five-year average, while the total in the four-day December antlerless season was 10,591 deer (30% higher) and holiday antlerless deer hunt was 11,278 deer (77% higher).
Haffele said the 2025 data helps illustrate an important aspect of deer management.
“It helps tell the story of how a lot of our hunting harvest can be condition-based,” Haffele said. “When conditions are good we still have the capacity to get out there and have excellent harvest conditions. But the counter of that is when conditions aren’t as good it can also bring down our harvest, which we don’t have control over most of the time.”
Continuing a trend since 2014 when crossbows became legal for all hunters regardless of age or physical ability, the crossbow season kill of 70,050 was the highest on record.
But deer registered by archers (users of vertical bows) also was higher in 2025. The archer kill of 41,461 was 5% higher than the five-year average.
The 2025 seasons were the first with a hybrid system of deer management units. Most of the state uses county lines to designate DMUs, but last year the northern forest and central forest zones were rearranged into habitat-based units.
While it will take a few more years of data to allow direct comparisons, Haffele said the first year results looked good.
Among counties or deer management units, Marathon County showed the highest deer registration, with 11,876 deer, followed by Waupaca (10,525), Shawano (9,798), Vernon (9,344) and Dunn (8,972).
License sales: Sales of deer hunting licenses continued a trend, albeit very slightly, in the negative direction. In 2025, the DNR reported sales of 792,969 deer hunting licenses (gun, crossbow and archer combined) a 0.1% decline from 2024. The gun license sales of 552,362 were down 0.5%.
Among the licenses, the DNR reported 40,348 were sold to “new hunters,” a 0.6% decrease from 2024.
Hunting incidents: Two firearm-related incidents were reported during the nine-day gun season, including one fatality, according to the DNR.
The last decade has shown an average of five incidents for the nine-day season. Six of the last 10 have had no fatal incident.
CWD positives increase: As of March 4, the DNR had tested 18,232 deer in Wisconsin for chronic wasting disease and 2,035 (or 11.1%) were CWD-positive, according to the DNR. The number of CWD-positive deer and percentage of positive tests are highest since the state began testing for the disease in the 1990s. It continues a trend toward increasing number of infected deer and higher prevalence rates in the affected areas.
Under the current “monitor only” strategy in Wisconsin, the trajectories of higher prevalence and geographical spread of CWD are expected to continue in the state, according to wildlife disease experts.
The fatal disease was first identified in the 1960s in captive deer at a Colorado research facility. It was documented in Wisconsin for the first time in deer killed in the 2001 hunting season near Mount Horeb. It has since spread to more than half of the state’s counties.
Although CWD has not been proven to cause illness in humans, the Centers for Disease Control and other health agencies recommend humans not consume meat from a CWD-positive animal. The DNR provides free, voluntary CWD testing on deer samples by hunters and others.
Deer donation higher: Hunters provided 1,331 deer to the state’s deer donation program in 2025, a 21% year-over-year increase, according to the DNR.
The number is expected to rise since about one-fourth of processors hadn’t filed reports as of Feb. 25. They have until March 31 to do so.
The program had 58 participating processors in 41 counties for the 2025 deer hunting seasons. In another optimistic note, the number of processors increased for the second consecutive year, Haffele said.
The program relies on hunters to donate deer. Venison from donated deer is processed and distributed to food pantries across the state. Since the program began in 2000, hunters have donated over 100,000 deer, which were processed into over four million pounds of ground venison, according to the DNR.
“Overall a lot of great, positive things coming out of the 2025 deer seasons that we hope will set us up for a successful 2026,” Haffele said.
