But what’s going on over my head, at the highest levels of resource management in our state, will trouble my long days in the woods.ĭave Cieslewicz is a writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. I’ll be excited to return to the camaraderie of my old deer camp. But now our conservation agenda is being set by Ted Nugent.
Internationally revered thinkers, like Aldo Leopold, have been architects of that. Wisconsin has had a long tradition of responsible hunting and forward-thinking conservation. I’m grateful that Evers is there to veto all this junk if it gets to his desk, but it’s sad and embarrassing nonetheless. (I guess if you’re walking down the street and see a crane fly over, you need to be able to pull out your Glock and blast away.) These bills would, among other things, establish a hunting season for sandhill cranes, require the DNR to stock 100,000 trout in Great Lakes waters, and, inexplicably, allow concealed carry without a permit. Nugent was the featured speaker at a press conference where the bills were announced. To top it all off Republicans have introduced a bunch of bills written by Hunter Nation, none of which were vetted with responsible Wisconsin groups like the Conservation Congress, Trout Unlimited or the International Crane Foundation. Conservation and environmental groups as well as a coalition of tribes are trying to head this off in court and last week a Dane County judge issued a preliminary injunction on the scheduled Nov. That may not be illegal, but it’s clearly undemocratic and just plain wrong.īecause Prehn stubbornly refuses to do the right thing, he was able to force the department into yet another ill-advised wolf hunt this fall. That means that Walker appointees continue to control the board almost three years after Evers took office. Board chair Fred Prehn’s term expired in May, but he refuses to surrender his seat to Gov. The hunt was mandated by Republicans in the Legislature, forced though in court by Nugent’s radical group Hunter Nation, and finally approved by a Natural Resources Board still controlled by former Gov. To make matters worse, it took place during the wolves’ breeding season, so the impact on the population was probably multiplied.ĭon’t blame DNR professionals for that. The result was a slaughter as hunters blew past their quota by 80 percent before the department could call off the hunt. In February, a Kansas-based group, which has the insufferable Ted Nugent on its advisory board, forced the Department of Natural Resources into an ill-advised hunt. I missed the guys and it underscored for me how shooting a deer is the least important thing about deer hunting.īut, while my return to the Jordahl Farm will be a cause for celebration, I’ll be sitting in the woods and thinking about what a mess our state’s conservation heritage is in.įirst, there’s the wolf hunt travesty. For the first time in almost 30 years I wasn’t at my deer camp in Richland County. So, I stayed at my place Up North and hunted alone. That’s because last year the season hit during the height of the COVID pandemic. I never reach for it.Īnd when the gun season does finally arrive it’ll be special. My bow hangs on a hook next to my left ear. I love just sitting there in the chilly afternoon and listening for a rustle in the leaves. Most late afternoons when I’m at our place in the North Woods, I walk out to my tree stand and sit, 20 feet off the ground, for a couple of hours before sunset.
This is the build-up to the Wisconsin gun deer season, which runs from the Saturday before Thanksgiving to the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.Īnd, in fact, bow hunting is already in progress. For me this is the most wonderful time of the year.