Hunter Nation Rally Draws 500 To Fairgrounds; Overflow Parking Called 'Orderly Chaos'

WAUKESHA — Hunter Nation, a national hunting advocacy and conservation group, will bring its "Waukesha Sportsmen's Rally" to the county fairgrounds this Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the organization's biggest logistical hurdle so far has nothing to do with firearms, ammunition, or the roughly 40 vendor booths it's lining up. It's parking.

Organizers expect between 450 and 550 attendees, a number fairgrounds manager Dana Torres said forced her to dust off a lot normally reserved for county-fair RVs and livestock trailers. The west lot, usually full of horse trailers and the occasional goat pen in late July, will instead take on a steady stream of F-150s and Silverados with gun-store parking permits dangling from the rearview mirror.

"We're mirroring county fair protocols, only with more firearms and significantly less fried food," Torres said, describing a traffic flow plan that relies on the same orange cones used during the fair's demolition derby weekend, repositioned to funnel trucks instead of tractors.

A rehearsed chaos

Torres said the fairgrounds staff ran a dry walk-through Thursday evening using 14 volunteers standing in for vehicles, a method she called "not scientific, but it's what we had the manpower for." The exercise revealed that the west lot's single entrance, a 22-foot-wide gravel cut normally wide enough for a hay wagon, will need a part-time flagger for the morning rush between 7:45 and 9 a.m.

That flagger will be Earl Dykstra, 63, a retired fairgrounds grounds crew member who has directed traffic during the fair's tractor pull for the last 11 years and agreed to come back for one Sunday. Dykstra said the main difference between tractors and trucks is stopping distance. "A tractor pull entrant knows he's heavy and slow. A guy in a lifted Ram doesn't always know that," he said.

"We're mirroring county fair protocols, only with more firearms and significantly less fried food."

— Dana Torres, Waukesha County Fairgrounds manager

What's inside

Once parked, attendees will find hunter-safety certification workshops running on the hour in the fairgrounds' 4-H building, led by a rotating slate of Wisconsin DNR-certified instructors, and a state hunting-season briefing scheduled for 11:30 a.m. covering firearm deer season dates, antlerless tag quotas, and what organizers are calling "a frank discussion of this year's CWD testing stations." Roughly 40 vendor booths will sell firearms, ammunition, tree stands, and camouflage gear, with at least one booth, Big Buck Trading Co. of Oconomowoc, bringing a to-scale cardboard cutout of a 10-point buck for photo opportunities.

Hunter Nation staff did not respond to requests for an interview before Sunday's event. A spokesperson for the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office said two deputies will be on site during peak arrival hours, primarily to assist with the west lot entrance and to field what the department is calling "the usual number of people who park in the livestock judging ring because the signage is unclear."

Early arrivals

Walt Previc, 58, of Mukwonago, said he plans to arrive at 6:45 a.m. in his 2019 Ford F-250, towing an empty trailer he intends to fill with vendor purchases by lunch. Previc said he attended a similar Hunter Nation rally in Oshkosh last year and considers himself something of an expert on overflow lots. "You want to be in the first 20 cars or the last 20," he said. "Middle of the pack, you're boxed in till 2 o'clock."

Torres said the fairgrounds will reopen the west lot's second gravel exit, closed since a 2024 county fair incident involving a wayward pig, specifically for Sunday's rally. "It's been a pig-free three years," she said. "We're confident it'll hold up to pickup trucks."

Admission to the rally is free. Parking, Torres said, will also be free, though she declined to promise it would be fast.