Wildlife officials say they're reaching their population goals for deer, but the agency plans to revisit those targets as hunters report they're not seeing the number of deer they've seen in the past. The DNR says hunters bagged 192,300 deer last year. That's down from the peak, 290,000, in 2003.

Hunters in Minnesota are expected to see more deer than last year after the mild winter and early spring, but fewer hunters have antlerless deer tags this fall, the Duluth News Tribune reports. This is because the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is trying to conserve the number of does this year. “We’re going to see more deer and kill less deer,” Mark Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association based in Grand Rapids, told the newspaper.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says that a strong harvest and a healthy deer population should make for a robust hunting season. 500,000 hunters are expected to participate in the season that opens Nov. 5.

The first deer depredation specialist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is a busy man. Clint Luedtke says he gets new complaints every day from farmers and gardeners losing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of food to the state's oversized deer herd. Luedtke says fences and chemicals can help but more hunting is the long-term solution.