Posted on 10/07/2002 10:39:19 AM PDT by SJackson
Tommy Schulenberg eases his old Ford pickup onto the narrow shoulder of County Road J, just north of Mt. Horeb, Wis., and points down the grassy embankment to a line of trees about 50 yards away.
"That's where he was shot," he tells me with the self-conscious grin of someone unaccustomed to much fuss. "We heard three shots and then I heard T.J. get on the walkie-talkie, breathing real hard, you know, and he said, 'Dad, I got a big one, get down here.' "
The buck was a dandy all right. His rack was a perfect 12-pointer, a rarity in southern Wisconsin, where hunters are so plentiful and efficient that most bucks don't make it beyond their second birthday. It was by far the largest deer the 18-year-old had ever bagged.
But Schulenberg, a wiry dairy farmer who sports a tiny mustache and wastes no words, took one look at the deer and told his son the venison off this one wasn't going in the family's freezer.
"It was skinny, eyeballs sunk in," recalls Schulenberg, who suspected the deer had been injured before it was shot. "I told the boy, just load the whole deer up, don't take the guts out or nothing and show it to the DNR."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
WI DNR:Chronic Wasting Disease and Wisconsin Deer
In a way, this week's cover can be traced to a man who lived 5,000 years ago. He was, of course, the fabled Iceman, and his was the oldest naturally preserved human body ever discovered. It was found in Italy in 1991, and the episode was brilliantly chronicled by Brenda Fowler in her book "Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man Found in an Alpine Glacier." Brenda's fascination with prehistoric hunting rituals and weapons led her to explore the culture of deer hunting in Wisconsin, where she had spent her high school years.
Brenda is the kind of reporter who gets excited by weird words like "prion." "They're just proteins," she says. They are also the agents that attack the nervous system of deer and cause chronic wasting disease, which showed up in Wisconsin's herd last year. "The million-dollar question is whether people can get sick from eating venison infected with the disease," says Brenda.
She went deep into deer-hunting country to document how the state and landowners are trying to eradicate the disease by killing tens of thousands of deer. "I just love stories where science and society interact," says Brenda.
The intersection of different worlds is very much what Leah Eskin's column "Sum of the Parts" is all about. For more than a year now, Leah's page has pondered the mysteries of our age--Barbie's compliant boyfriend, the secret life of mauve, the false cheer of photo albums. This week Leah begins summing things up on our closing page. She also pulls double duty in the absence of the vacationing Bill Rice and brings us into the universe of dumplings. In Leah's world, of course, dumplings aren't in the soup, soup is in the dumplings.
..................................
Illinois and Wisconsin both have bans on wildlife feeders because of chronic wasting disease. But some hunters and wildlife watchers are ignoring the states' new ban on baiting and feeding white-tailed deer, prompting state conservation wardens to gear up to begin issuing more citations for violations of the baiting and feeding regulations. Tom Harelson, the chief warden with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said, "Any practice that concentrates deer, including baiting and feeding, is likely to increase the spread of CWD." Violation of the rule could result in fines of up to $300 for feeding and up to $2,091 for baiting, plus loss of hunting, fishing and trapping privileges for up to three years.
.........
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.