An excellent Fall continues to go by way too fast! Bear and moose seasons are now finished.  Bear harvest was up over 2011 in the Tower area. Moose harvest  was down a bit, but so were permit numbers.  Those lucky moose hunting parties who were selected in the lottery enjoyed a high quality hunt and shot some really nice bulls.

The duck hunting continues to be good.  Most hunters are saying it’s the best around here in many years.  The weather has been ideal, thus far, for moving  ducks south and providing good duck hunting conditions.  Big Rice Lake, one of our most popular duck hunting lakes, has had some very good reports.  The combination of decent wild rice and the Little Rice refuge seems to be drawing them in and holding them around.  Time will tell if this management strategy continues to work.

Grouse hunting has also surprised many people.  Spring drumming reports showed a decline in our local Ruff breeding males and monsoon June rains were not kind to brood production in our area.  Nonetheless, hunters are finding birds in good numbers in northern St Louis and northern Lake Counties!  The majority of field reports I am hearing are positive to impressive.  You can’t beat that for a “down” year.  It shows that, with excellent grouse habitat, this area can still hold its’ own during the low part of the ruffed grouse population cycle.

The deer have absolutely come out of the woodwork.  After all the gnashing of teeth and negative reports from the 2011 firearms season, it is great to see deer all over the Tower Area.  They are really hitting the fields, roads-sides, cutovers and other forest opening- now.  The short, mild winter of 2011-12 and long, warm growing season combined to produce a bumper crop of fawns in most of our deer permit areas.

Permit areas 176, 177 and 178 are the most productive deer habitat in my work area and it shows in years like this.  Twin fawns seem to be everywhere.  Roadkills are way up. 

This fawn crop is the answer to the recovery of our local population after tough winters in three of the last five years.  Permit areas along the Canadian border (108, 119, 118, 117 and 127) do not recover as fast.  The heavily forested habitat does not produce the fawns that the mixed forest and fields do.  Field reports are of mostly singles with a few twins.  This is still the best fawn crop for these permit areas in 5 or 6 years.

I think the 2012 deer season, will be much like the 2010 season and way better than the 2011 season.  Hunters who are out there are starting to see the buck sign show up.  Antler production is excellent. With this growing season, we will see some really nice bucks on the pole this year.

Take a ride the first hour or the last hour of the day.  You will see the recovery for yourself.   If you are not getting out there, you are missing one of the best Falls in recent memory.