An Outdoorsman’s Journal

By: Mark Walters

A Place Called Fall Camp

Hello friends, The long haul that I call my busy season which runs from April until the last day of deer gun season is about over. I am about as long term tired as a mature buck when the rut is over. I dedicated this November to spending as much time as possible at my hunting camp which is located on public land in the Meadow Valley Wildlife Area and enjoyed every minute of it.

The first half of the month it was just the pups and myself and I either bow or duck hunted, cut firewood or explored on foot and by canoe.

Saturday, November 16 High 46, low 30

This must be the fall where I am not supposed to make much meat. The last couple of days I gave duck hunting a solid effort on two separate bodies of water and did not fire a shot. I remember when I was a kid and addicted to reading every edition of Outdoor Life, the disappointment I felt when I read one of my favorite writer’s columns and he wrote about how as you hit the area of walking this planet for six decades that harvesting is not near as important as it used to be. “That it’s all about the experience.”

I vowed that would never happen to me as I read that column fifty years ago and now I am aware of exactly how correct the writer was.

Today what mattered was a strong wind that made it a challenge to paddle my canoe. Just as I was getting a shot at a flock of geese that instead flew to and landed with another flock of geese and I watched a lot of beaver. I marveled at a massive beaver hut. In case you are not aware, in most cases beavers build a hut out of sticks and mud. A beaver hut can easily be the size of a pickup truck and the beaver swim to their bedroom from under water or ice and then above the water level where they live in family units. That can also sometimes mean a visiting otter or a muskrat in a very dark, damp and cold world, well away from the wolf. The beaver lives between 4 to 6 months of the year under the ice and I have always wondered, how do they feel when the change comes and you are swimming under the ice versus on top of the water. Then there are the tributaries that they create with mud and sticks so that they raise the water level to safely swim with feed (as in aspen or willow branches) and to be in deep enough water to be safe from the wolf. A beaver on land and they often are, is easy prey for a wolf.

When I was a young man and would be here at my camp, which in the beginning was a canvas tent that evolved into a camper, I supplemented my writer’s income by trapping beaver, mink, raccoon and muskrat. In my opinion, trappers were in a large way like a biologist, to be good at what you were trying to catch, you had to understand the environment that you were in.

It is a terrible thing that fur prices have crashed for the last 5 years. For those that disagree think about a ground nesting bird trying to sit on a clutch of eggs for 25 days and a raccoon population that is much higher because the trappers are gone.

Another example would be the damage that beaver are doing to our roads and in some cases trout streams. An unregulated population blocks every culvert that they can to raise the water level, and in some cases in trout streams, they block current movement which in the summer heats up the water, something trout simply cannot handle.

When I first came to Meadow Valley with my dad and brothers, Tom and Mike, which was 53-years ago, I fell in love on day one. I feel that due to the fact that the fall I graduated from high school, I had to camp, trap and hunt here for 60-days is part of the reason I became an outdoor writer. I simply had to spend as much time as possible here and that has never changed.

Many outdoorsmen are evolving away from this area because the wolf has demolished deer hunting. The deer population in a non-agricultural area like this 200-square mile piece of paradise called Wisconsin’s Central Forest is picked off one by one, 365 days a year and the wolf numbers just keep growing.

For me, I placed my stake in the ground 53 years ago. The fun never ends, you just adjust!

Sunset

The Red Brush Gang’s camp has evolved from a 10x10 canvas tent to this 18x36 pole barn.

Red and Ruby enjoying their day on a recent duck hunt.

Bucks like this are hard to find in northern Juneau County due to a large wolf population.