As Deer Disease Spreads, County Hunters 'Quietly Reassessing' Fall Plans

WAUKESHA — I have hunted the same quarter-mile of woods off Highway 67 since 1994, and until this month I would have told you nothing short of a tornado could get me off it for opening weekend. Then I read that this year's epizootic hemorrhagic disease outbreak is the largest ever recorded in Wisconsin, and I did something I have never done before. I called my cousin in Shawano and asked if his couch was still a pull-out.

I am not alone. The Waukesha County UW-Extension office says its phone has been ringing steadily for three weeks with hunters asking some version of the same question: is my spot still good, or did I just spend twenty years scouting a graveyard.

The math has changed

"It fundamentally changes the math," said Rick Dobrinski, 54, a millwright from the town of Vernon who has hunted the same stretch of bottomland near the Vernon Marsh for eleven straight seasons. Dobrinski said he is now looking at a unit near Shawano, a five-hour round trip that he previously would have considered an unreasonable amount of driving for the privilege of sitting in a tree. "Five hours each way used to sound insane to me. Now it sounds like insurance."

Gary Fenske, 47, who hunts land off Rolling Ridge Road outside North Prairie, is taking a different approach. Rather than relocate, he is simply moving up his personal timeline, planning to hunt the very first legal hour of opening morning rather than his usual habit of sleeping in until 7 a.m. and arriving with coffee. "If the deer are dying off anyway, I'd at least like to see one before it happens," Fenske said.

Extension office fields the calls

Carol Bosacki, a wildlife outreach coordinator with the Waukesha County UW-Extension office, said staff have been directing callers to the Wisconsin DNR's weekly disease update maps and recommending hunters scout their usual locations ahead of time for signs of sick or dead deer before committing a weekend to them.

"We're telling people the same thing we'd tell them about any deer health issue: check the weekly map, walk your property before you hunt it, and don't assume this year looks like last year."

— Carol Bosacki, wildlife outreach coordinator, Waukesha County UW-Extension office

Bosacki added that the office has started keeping a running tally of EHD-related calls on a legal pad next to the fax machine, and that as of Tuesday the count stood at 61, a figure she described as "not normal for us in any October I can remember."

Nobody wants to say it out loud

What strikes me most is how quietly this is happening. Nobody at the gas station on County Road F is standing around announcing that they're abandoning their family's traditional stand for the first time since the Clinton administration. They're doing it the way you'd quietly change banks after one bounced check: no announcement, just a new location and a vague story if anyone asks why.

Fenske put it more bluntly than most when I ran into him at Piggly Wiggly buying scent-killer spray he admitted he probably didn't need anymore. "You don't want to be the guy who says out loud that he's scared of a deer disease. You just quietly start looking at property fifteen miles further north and let people assume you got a better offer on land."

For what it's worth, my cousin's couch is available, and I've decided five hours of driving is a reasonable price for not finding out the hard way that my quarter-mile off Highway 67 had a bad summer. The DNR's weekly disease update maps are free to check. My pride, apparently, was not.