I've been out a few weeks and didn't have access to my computer so didn't see this thread until now. Too bad you didn't see more deer. I have some land a little farther north in Douglas County. (Near Dairyland, Kevin).
Anyway, I think your experience is fairly typical of those hunting the Wisconsin north woods, particularly in the northwestern part of the state. There are several differences between the deer in the far northwest and those in the central and southern part of the state.
First, there aren't as many of them, but when you find them, they tend to be bigger. They generally have bigger bodies and longer legs to handle the deeper winter snows. Severe winters (of which there haven't been many recently) and predation (bears on fawns in the spring and wolves all the time) and, of course, hunting, keep the deer numbers lowers in the north.
I live in the southern part of the state, and on a 120 acre farm I used to hunt there, it was not unusual to see 20-30 deer a day, a half-dozen or so or those bucks. In the north, I have access to thousands of acres of public land and can go for several days dark to dark without seeing a deer.
Second, in the big woods, they're just not as patternable. You won't see the same bucks in the same place every day. The bucks travel a larger circuit, particularly during the rut. Also, their natural movements have been severely altered by baiting. Due to the prevalence of baiting in the north, a lot of deer simply move out of good habitat to be near bait. They may be nearby, a quarter or half-mile away, but that doesn't do the hunter any good. Many also become nocturnal near baits. They're learning that it's dangerous to come into baits in the daytime. In short, baiting changes their feeding patterns and movements. Baiting congregates them, and they don't follow normal feeding/bedding patterns.
They're also a lot more wary, particularly since the reintroduction of wolves. Where the wolves are back in strong numbers, including where you were hunting, the deer seem as if they're on pins and needles all the time.
All that being said, there's no other place I'd rather hunt. You have to work at it, but it is possible to get away from baited areas, and when you do, you can still hunt truly wild and wiley deer. Take one of those, and you've done something.
Hope you'll come back and give it a try again next year. And if you do, come a week or two later. They'll start chasing this week, and the rut will likley kick in about Nov. 5-7 or thereabouts.
Topic: Hello from the land of cheese heads (Read 3685 times)
