Jack Adams can already feel the adrenaline.

Last week in a forest near Pillager, searching for rubs and scraps, the markings that deer make to mark their territory, a deer jumped in front of him only a few yards away. He’d never had one that close and attributes the encounter to the high deer population.

This deer hunting season, starting the second week of November, deer hunters will come across one of the highest state deer populations ever. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates it at about 1.1 million &045; 50,000 more than last year &045; and close to the all-time record in 1992.

&uot;It looks like it should be a real banner year, but you still have to be in the right place at the right time,&uot; Adams said. &uot;There are more right places now.&uot;

He said in the area where he hunts, the DNR is issuing extensive harvest licenses, which allow hunters to kill several deer. It’s something that the DNR has never allowed in that area in the more than 25 years he has hunted there.

Milan Hart, who owns Hart Brother’s Weaponry, attributes the high population to the decreasing number of hunters and mild winters.

He said there are fewer hunters partially because of the fear of Chronic Wasting Disease, an illness that affects the nervous system of deer and has never been found in wild deer in Minnesota.

He also said the cost of the sport and bad economy have hurt sales in the last few years.

Mild winters have an affect, as well as a loss of natural predators of the animal, something man is to blame for, he said.

Lou Cornacelli, big game program coordiantor for the DNR, said the number of hunters last year was only fewer than 2001 by about 4 percent, but licenses had increased.

He said Chronic Wasting Disease did affect Wisconsin hunting with a decrease of 10 percent, where deer were found to have the disease.

(Contact Tim Sturrock at tim.sturrock@albertleatribune.com or 379-3438.)