One of my suppositions was THEY need money. They said that's not the reason for this proposal but I never trust a bureaucrat to speak the truth. Why else is the reason for this. The deer herd is at 1996 levels which is low. So that's a red flag for me on the need to kill more shed bucks and does. I'm not the smartest guy sitting around a campfire but I is see that one a mile away.
I like to think I can trust the guys that show up to do the presentations and I do, however, there was a line from one of the presenters who said they have never been told to sell more tags to raise more funds.
My understanding in the context of the discussion at that time: they have never been told to increase the number of antlerless tags per county in the counties that historically sell out, just for the sake of selling more antlerless tags. But, if I look at my own budget and see I'm going to fall a little short, and one way I can make up for the short fall is work more hours, nobody has to
tell me I need to work more hours. So nobody needs to
tell them to figure out a way to sell more antlerless tags in counties that have unsold antlerless tags to increase funds. They ain't dummies.
One way to figure it out, and I don't have the number of antlerless tags/county or reported antlerless harvest/county at my finger tips, would be to figure out how much more the state would take in if they sold all the antlerless tags in a yet to be determined counties in the yet to be proposed late antlerless season then figure out the percentage of those tags that would be filled (based on historically reported harvest/success rate in the past) and you'd come up with a rough guestimate of funds realized and deer killed.
Again from the back row with dirty trifocals the counties that Tyler was pointing at with their laser pointer for the possible late antlerless season were Allamakee and Clayton for sure and
MAYBE Dubuque and Delaware but it was hard to tell. Then the southern counties would be Lucas and Wayne back to the Mississippi. Again Tyler's laser hit that general area and as I recall he said
MAYBE from Wayne and Lucas. I got the feeling that the area wouldn't go any farther west than Wayne and Lucas and
MAYBE not even that far east, perhaps stopping at Monroe and Appanoose.
Also remember a few years ago the DNR wanted to decrease the antlerless tags available in several counties and it was blocked by the Governor's office.