An Outdoorsman’s Journal

By: Mark Walters

Fifty-One Falls in the Valley

Hello friends: This week I am writing to you about a three-day experience that I had the weekend before Wisconsin’s deer gun season at my hunting camp in northern Juneau County. Our camp is on public land and together, with up to 25 friends and family called The Red Brush Gang, we build an 18x36 foot pole barn that is home for two weeks and then dismantled on the last Sunday of deer gun season.

Friday, November 11 High 53, low 30 The history of much of my life, especially in the fall, has taken place in Wisconsin’s Central Forest which in reality, goes from Tomah to Marshfield and over to Black River Falls. Today along with my golden retrievers Ruby and Red I will hunt ducks on The Meadow Valley Flowage. From the age of 22 to 27 I was a steel fabricator at Bar Bel Fabricating in Mauston. I lived in New Lisbon and had a duck blind on the MVF. I had my first two golden retrievers at the time, and they were Ranger and her pup Ben.

At that time there were no wolves, bear, or fisher, and the wild turkey population was just being introduced. I have legally harvested bear, turkey, and wolf since their return.

It was 51 opening days of the deer gun season when I first hunted here and I have never missed an opening day. Back in ‘87 I attempted to canoe up the entire Mississippi River. I made it 980 miles before an injury to my left wrist ended that journey. That fall I purchased a camper and started what I call fall camp which in reality, replaced the canvas tent The Red Brush Gang used. Adjacent to the camper I created a 12x 14 foot shed and I loved the life I created while staying at “Fall Camp” for over 90 days and well into the winter for the next 10 years. Simply put, I hunted with a bow and gun for deer; shotgun for ducks, geese, and grouse, and when the local waters froze over I ice fished. I also trapped for beaver, muskrat, mink, and raccoon. At night I would cross country ski and ice skate on the flowages. The way I was able to pull this off was that I began writing the column that you are reading in 1989 for The Poynette Press for $10.00 per week. I self-syndicated in ‘91 and added five more papers for a paycheck of $60.00 per week. My life was simple. I would do 5-7 day trips, hand write my column, snail mail it to Dick and Molly Emerson and they would make sure the system worked. I would take photos, go to a one-hour film developer and snail mail them to my papers whose numbers steadily grew to a peak of 70 in 1999.

The Red Brush Gang is made up of family and friends of whom almost all of the elders went to Poynette High School. We started having kids and by about the year 2005 we had 17 in our group, and they were allowed to come camp build weekend as soon as they were done filling their diapers.

Another very interesting story is that until about the year 2000 almost all of our bucks that we harvested were 6-pointers and under. In our big buck contest, a typical winner was a fork horn with a 8-inch spread. In reality, we did not care, there were so many deer that our hunts were loaded with action. Once the wolves became pack to pack, two things happened: we started seeing a significantly smaller amount of deer and the bucks started getting much larger racks.

All of our hunting after opening weekend is done by driving deer on large tracts of forest and marsh. Since I have the biggest mouth and was willing to do it, I became the boss of enforcing and creating drives where many of the pushers were 12-year-olds in the must wear hip boots. I was harsh but fair and the kids and adults became a mobile unit that was very effective at killing deer.

Our theory has always been to push away from the road at the start of the day and on the trek back, at dark, start dragging deer.

I love this area so much that I moved here in ‘99 and for 33-years I have made it as an outdoor writer in the newspaper industry through thick and thin.

Back to my duck hunt, I did not see a bird today, did not care!

Sunset

The return of the gray wolf to Wisconsin’s central forests has been the subject of many interesting conversations.

Red Brush hunters are initiated at a young age.

The Red Brush Gang building their shack about 15 years ago.