Ned England To Document Wisconsin Hunting Season From Backslide Way Lawn Chair; "Comprehensive Observation Protocol" Planned

WAUKESHA — Wisconsin's rifle deer season opens Monday, and while most of the state's attention will be on the woods, Ned England's attention will be on Backslide Way, where he has announced plans to run what he is calling a "comprehensive observation protocol" for the opening week.

England, 70, said the project grew out of a simple question he could not answer to his own satisfaction: how much hunting-related activity actually passes through a residential street that does not border any public hunting land.

"Nobody has this data," England said Thursday, adjusting the lawn chair three degrees toward the stop sign at the end of the block. "The DNR has harvest numbers. They don't have me. I intend to close that gap."

The monitoring station, which is the same lawn chair England has previously used to track hospital-bound traffic speeds and a neighbor's Honda, will run from Monday's opener through the following Sunday, weather permitting. England said his tracked categories will include hunter mobility patterns, vehicle count by hour, blaze orange compliance percentages, and what he termed "overall neighborhood hunting infrastructure utilization," a category he said covers pickup trucks with gun racks, trailers hitched for deer transport, and "anyone who looks like they're headed somewhere with trees."

The Methodology

England said blaze orange compliance will be tallied as a simple percentage: visible hunters or hunting-adjacent pedestrians wearing the legally required blaze orange, divided by total visible hunters or hunting-adjacent pedestrians, multiplied by 100. He acknowledged the sample size on a residential street not adjacent to hunting land "may be small some hours and zero other hours," but said a zero is still a data point.

"A zero tells you something," England said. "It tells you nobody hunted past my house that hour. That's not nothing. That's an hour accounted for."

Vehicle staging will be logged by make, approximate model year, and whether a trailer or truck bed is "visibly configured for deer transport," a determination England said he will make using binoculars purchased in 2019 for the Honda investigation and never returned to the manufacturer despite what he described as "some issues with the left lens."

"The data collected will be invaluable for understanding how rural Waukesha is actually using its recreational hunting privileges."

— Ned England, on the nine-day project

England was asked whether Backslide Way, which sits within the city limits and is not classified as rural by any municipal document, qualifies as "rural Waukesha." He said the term was "more of a feeling."

A Family Concern

England's son Trevor, who lives at home and has been recruited for prior data-collection efforts, expressed mild concern about the plan's duration.

"Nine days is a long time to sit outside," Trevor England said. "I told him that. He said the season doesn't care what's a long time. I don't have a response to that."

Trevor said he will not be assigned shift duty for this project, as the tape-measure and radar-gun operations of past investigations do not translate to a monitoring effort he described as "mostly Dad looking at the road."

What The City Actually Expects

Wisconsin's Department of Transportation issues routine seasonal traffic advisories ahead of the opener, largely concerning increased activity on state highways and county trunk roads near public hunting grounds, none of which include Backslide Way. A Waukesha Police Department spokesperson said the department has "no specific concerns" about hunting-related traffic in city residential neighborhoods and was not aware of any prior incidents on England's street.

England said he found the department's lack of concern "interesting, given that I have concerns," and added that the absence of a documented problem is "exactly the kind of thing a nine-day study is supposed to establish one way or the other."

As of Thursday, England had pre-labeled seven pages of a new notebook, one per day, plus an eighth page marked "OVERFLOW / ADDITIONAL FINDINGS." He said the lawn chair itself would not be moved for the duration of the project, "so the data stays consistent," and confirmed he has arranged for Trevor to bring meals outside as needed.

Wisconsin's rifle deer season opens September 28. Ned England's observation protocol is expected to run through the following Sunday. No video had been uploaded detailing the full methodology as of press time.