WAUPACA – Waupaca County hunters registered 2,893 deer during the opening weekend of the 2025 state gun deer hunting season. That is right behind the hunters of Marathon County who led the state with 3,080 deer harvested.
In the top five were Vernon County (2,648), Shawano (2,624) and Dunn (2,392). Portage County came in at sixth place with 2,325 deer.
Statewide hunters killed and registered 90,671 during opening weekend. Of that, 48,748 were bucks and 41,923 were does or antlerless deer (buck fawns, also known as nubbin bucks).
Of these top deer-hunting counties, Waupaca, Portage, Marathon, and Shawano Counties are part of the Central Farmland Zone which stretches to the west with parts of Taylor and Wood Counties included and to the east as far as Door County. This zone is the state’s top deer management zone and all together, 57,036 deer were harvested in this area, composed of 29,591 bucks and 27,455 antlerless deer.
By comparison, Rhode Island’s peak deer harvest was in 2008 with 2,937 reported deer for the entire season.
In Steuben County, New York’s top deer-harvest county, hunters took 15,595 whitetails during the 2024-2025 season. Statewide, New York hunters harvested 223,304 deer during that same season.
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