I've suffered from a selective memory these past few years. It seems that I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, yet I can nearly recite all of Robin Yount's offensive statistics from his MVP season in 1982. A coworker says I have "stress-induced ADD." Maybe he's right!

In any event, I do vividly recall a conversation I had with another D&DH fanatic in 1995 when I was compiling the state-by-state deer hunting statistics for our Deer Hunters' Almanac. We were talking about our home state of Wisconsin's then-impressive annual archery harvest of 69,158 whitetails. This number was almost unheard of at the time. "Nearly 70,000 deer taken with bow and arrow?" my friend said. "Amazing, but that will likely never happen again. Once we get this herd down, we bow-hunters will be back to the days of killing 40,000 to 50,000 deer a year...and liking it."

Not quite.

Wisconsin's bow harvest has not only increased expotentially since then (our five-year average is 101,000 deer per year), there are no signs of it ever going back to those averages of the "old days."

The numbers from this past season were released yesterday. Brace yourself. In 2007/08, Wisconsin bow-hunters established a new season record of 116,042, eclipsing the previous record of 113,918 that was only one year old. Gun deer hunters brought in 402,531 deer, their third best season ever.

The overall harvest of 518,573 deer is the second highest in state history and sixth highest in U.S. history.

--Dan Schmidt D&DH Editor

Here are some snapshots of the state's amazing run: