Department Of Natural Resources Discusses Deer At Open House

The Department of Natural Resources is opening up the conversation about deer, and they’re encouraging the community to participate.

Today, the DNR hosted a Deer Open House at the Bemidji City Hall building. Some information the DNR wants everyone to know is that because of the more mild Minnesota winters we’ve had, there will be more opportunities for hunters to catch deer. The DNR also says they’ll be more transparent when it comes to the money spent on licenses.

Dave Rave, the Bemidji Area Wildlife Manager, says, “You know, we’re going to make sure that more of the money that people spend on deer licenses goes to deer hunting and deer management. So that’s something where we’ve guaranteed a certain percentage of the license fees will go to deer hunting and we’ll be a little bit more accountable for that. We’ve got some new codes and things that we’re going to work on habitat-wise to help deer.”

The DNR will also be on the lookout for chronic wasting disease, or CWD. They say people in the Bemidji area shouldn’t have to worry too much, but it’s another story for folk down in the Brainerd area.

Rave says, “Unfortunately, we have some deer disease issues and we are going to be doing some sampling of deer, but that’s down in the Brainerd area. So people that live in the Brainerd area will have to have some deer sampled for CWD. Up here in the Bemidji area, to this point, we don’t have any CWD that we know of and we’re hoping to keep it that way, but we’ll stay very vigilant.”

You can keep track of the deer meetings or read the full deer plan on the DNR website here.