Big bluestems’ stems took on a life of producing light, heat, and sound before falling as black ash.
Dave Lowe, of Blue Mounds, was walking a drip can (torch) through a tall grass prairie starting a prescribed burn to help the system.
The burn managers, just ending their nine-day gun deer season two days earlier, could imagine back centuries when fires were used and caused game to bound ahead, of this blaze orange enemy, and into the sights of hunter with a gun, bow or spear.
Modern day deer drives were productive, too, but were slowly abandoned for the sit and wait tactic. Many of the deer, it seems, were doing the same thing; sitting and waiting for the stationary hunters to leave after nine days. No hunters and no fire were driving.
Fires keep savannas, savannas; prairies, prairies; and some woods cleaner of invasive shrubs. Spring and fall prescribed burns tilt systems a bit one way or the other, but also have to be timed so as not to destroy ground nesting turkeys or winter pheasant cover.
Some fires were good back then. Some are good today, too.
Many of today’s gun deer hunters are not just good hunters but also nature and ecology-minded. They see the meadow mouse, the brown creeper, the evergreen fern, and the flowering witchhazel, as well as the white-tailed deer.
These hunters tell us that when we quiz them regarding their hunts. Deer may not enter the discussion until the second or third sentence, or the next paragraph or a day later.
Several deer seasons have wrapped up and more are to come.
Muzzleloader season ends (Dec. 8). An antlerless season follows immediately. The Holiday hunt, another nine-day season, begins Dec. 24. The archery/crossbow season ends Jan. 9, 2022 in most locations.
A grandfather, who had taken his grandson deer hunting, related that the lad had been sitting in a deer stand, saw no deer so walked home and came back to the stand with his squirrel gun and shot his limit of gray squirrels.
“The elk shot illegally in Central Wisconsin is still on many hunters’ minds. What a shame,” Doug Williams, at D W Sports Center in Portage. “Every kind of animal has been seen by hunters; bobcats, bears, squirrels, and rabbits and a host of birds and plants. They mentioned them all, sometimes before the deer stores.”
Two men were in Williams’ store gearing up to fish walleyes and bass from Wisconsin River sandbars. Six and seven-pound bass were being caught.
Don Martin, at Martin’s in Monroe, said the talk wasn’t about deer because in some cases there were no deer seen. “One guy hunted five days in Central Wisconsin without seeing a deer.”
Two guys were in getting bait to fish bluegills and crappies at Yellowstone Lake in Lafayette County, where they had caught their limit several days in a row.
In life and death matters; one Lafayette County hunter/trapper dropped his outdoors pursuits for nearly a year to care for his sick wife. She passed in late November, and a day after the service he set traps at Horicon Marsh.
“Next to deer, another animal hunters missed seeing was the wild turkeys” Wayne Smith, Blanchardville, said. “Squirrels are numerous, so are rabbits. Some hunters passed on deer for two or three days before realizing the season was half over. They might want to rethink that next time.”
When the season ended, Dan Storm, DNR research biologist, explained that the data from their five year study could shed some light on this “dead period” that seems to follow the rut some years.
Storm said they’ve tracked deer movements using collared deer and the days, times, and ranges, are all there to be analyzed.”
Maybe the deer just skinned up their ranges.
A total of 564,440 gun deer licenses were sold, some as patron or sports licenses. That figure was down 1.5 percent compared to 2020.
Registration of gun deer totaled 175,667 and was 7.9 percent lower than last year with antlerless deer dropping 13.2 percent and bucks down 1.3 percent, statewide.
Totaling all the deer registered since Sept. 18, the sum is 270,046, with archery/crossbow being 89,308 of that figure.
The drop in individual deer management units was mostly lower in the south with Columbia (-16.8%), Green (-24.1%), Iowa (-29.0%), La Crosse (-7.2%), Lafayette (-21.9%), and Sauk down (-20%).
Now’s the time to be thinking for Fraiser firs, filling bird feeders, cleaning hunting equipment, finding a sports shop receiving their ice fishing orders, and finding a patch of snow, ice or blue sky for a Christmas photograph.
— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.
