The second weekend of the 2005 Minnesota firearms deer season won't get near any records, at least in this area, but in some places the action was more prevalent than in others.
It all depended on where the hunters were. Some places in the area had a lot of deer, others didn't.
"The first season there seemed to be quite a few deer," said Greg Melges, owner of Mel's Sport Shop in Spicer. "The second season hasn't been so good. Some of them did well, some of them didn't."
Exact numbers were not available at all deer registration stations as of Wednesday, but Jeff Miller of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' Willmar wildlife office said what he's heard so far indicates the harvest for the second weekend "seems to be on par with last year, maybe a little lower."
Kandiyohi County is a tough area to gauge for deer hunting success. The northern half of the county is in a managed zone, where hunters can purchase an extra tag for an antlerless deer, and the southern is a lottery, where hunters have to submit applications to hunt.
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"In the northern part of Kandiyohi County, it was either sex deer, so that opened things up. Some people don't really care, as long as they get a deer," Miller said.
Even within a county, success depends on a lot of factors, including what hunting land is available, what the weather is like, etc.
"It's been very pokey here. A lot of little deer, is what I've seen; a lot of yearlings. Monday I registered one or two, Tuesday a couple and today one," said Brad Foshaug of Brad's 71 Bait & Sport north of Willmar. "A lot of people I talked to complained about a lack of quality deer."
That wasn't necessarily the case near New London or by Montevideo, surprisingly. Corey Edman at Pete's Surplus west of New London said the second weekend picked up from last year.
"The weather wasn't really good, so that surprised me," he said. "Either they seen a lot of deer, or they didn't see any at all. It helped that there was a lot of corn out."
At Pete's, 106 deer were registered this year for second weekend, up from 89 last year.
"We had a nice 12-pointer and a couple of 10-pointers," he continued. "It was roughly half bucks and half does that were registered."
At DJ's Sporting Goods and Champion Auto in Montevideo, John Dahlvang a normal trend didn't hold true this year.
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"The second weekend, we had a lot more bigger bucks brought in," he said. "The biggest one was a 16-pointer. Overall, I think it was a pretty successful deer hunt. Most guys were pleased."
DJ's registered 68 deer from the second weekend, including 45 bucks.
So, another firearms season ends and will probably be remembered as average. But there's still the muzzleloader season and it could bring a lot of hunters out.
"I expect to see a lot of deer for muzzleloading season. A lot of our customers plan on going," Melges said. "We'll probably see as many deer then as we did the second season. The farmers can go out and hunt and can take their time."
