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Mornin’ to Gary Meister of Eagle River. In 2012 he hiked his first stretch of the Ice Age Trail and decided to keep going. On Oct. 6, now 83, he finished all 1,200 miles at Potawatomi State Park. The Ice Age Trail Alliance says he’s only the sixth person over 80 to do it. He gave himself the trail name “Long Timer.” Our card-table puzzle is on year six.
This is the Wiscampsin Weekly, the email that gets you in the know on the Wisconsin outdoors in 5 minutes or less. New reader? Subscribe here.
This week’s weekly:
🎣 Two new state-record fish
🌳 A trail made for blind and low-vision hikers
🚗 Your park pass can ride along with your plates
💥 STORY OF THE WEEK: The Goose Wars of Horicon Marsh
🎣 Two new state-record fish LINK
Austin Schiefer, 29, pulled a 9-pound, 11.5-ounce smallmouth out of Green Bay off Oconto County. The DNR certified it Nov. 3. It beats a 1950 state record by more than 10 ounces.
He kept it overnight in a cooler borrowed from his grandpa, then met the DNR in the morning to make it official. Best thing that cooler’s ever held.
On Yellow Lake in Burnett County, Jake Huntington fought a lake sturgeon for about 40 minutes, measured it at 89.5 inches and let it go. That’s a new catch-and-release record, a foot past the old one. A month later, DNR crews netted an 88-incher in Sawyer County that may be 100 years old.
🌳 A trail made for blind and low-vision hikers LINK
Havenwoods State Forest in Milwaukee just opened Wisconsin’s first trail built for people who are blind or have low vision. It’s a ⅓-mile loop with a guideline to trace, open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The line connects 97 posts with audio, braille and things to touch, like molds of a toad and of a real dragonfly from the park. DNR staff and volunteers made most of it by hand.
They left the roots and twigs in on purpose. Xinyue Hippe, who is blind and helped plan it, says being allowed to trip like anyone else means a lot. Welcome to the club. We trip on every root in the state.
🚗 Your park pass can ride along with your plates LINK
This year Wisconsin started letting you add a state park pass when you renew your vehicle registration online. More than 51,000 people have, about 12% of the 415,000 passes sold through Oct. 1.
One payment, one envelope: the pass, your stickers and your registration show up together in 7 to 10 business days. Finally, something fun in the DMV envelope.
A resident pass is $28, or $13 at 65 and up. Add it during online renewal or at a self-service kiosk inside a DMV service center. Mail-in renewals don’t qualify, and neither do reduced-rate passes for a second car.
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💥 STORY OF THE WEEK: The Goose Wars of Horicon Marsh LINK
Picture Horicon Marsh in the fall of 1974. A quarter million Canada geese. Cannons booming. Airboats roaring across the water.
That was the Goose Wars, when the federal government spent years trying to scare geese off the marsh.
How it got so crowded. Farmers drained Horicon in the early 1900s. It became a wildlife refuge in 1927, and in the 1950s and ’60s managers planted food plots to lure the geese back. It worked a little too well: 121,000 geese stopped there in the fall of 1965, almost triple the 1958 count.
Why they wanted them gone. Some biologists feared that many birds in one spot would spark a disease outbreak. Farmers were losing crops. And the refuge manager told the New York Times in 1966 that spreading the geese out would give more hunters down south a shot at them.
Round one. In the mid-1960s, state and federal agencies teamed up to chase the geese with airplanes, exploders and airboats. By September 1966, Wisconsin had pulled out and sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing the racket broke a state rule against frightening waterfowl. Wisconsin, suing on behalf of geese.
Round two. The feds tried again in the mid-’70s. By then about 250,000 geese used the marsh, roughly two thirds of the whole regional flock, says Bill Volkert, a longtime DNR naturalist there. The crowds stopping to gawk at one goose food plot off Highway 49 got so thick that police had to direct traffic.
People loved the geese. Volkert started giving goose talks from a fence ledge, and his boss once counted 600 to 800 people listening. “I owe my job to the geese,” he says.
How it ended. After about five years, it stopped. Volkert and Scott Craven, a retired UW wildlife ecologist who studied the geese back then, figure cost was the main reason. Public anger didn’t help. And the geese never left: Craven found some coming back to the same corner of the marsh for a decade. He compares them to road trippers who know the best gas stations.
Today 100,000 to 200,000 geese still stop at Horicon each fall, by DNR numbers. Mid-October is the most popular time to see them, per the Friends of Horicon Marsh. The Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center on Highway 28 is open weekdays, 9 to 4.
Now get out ’der!
WISCAMPSIN WEEKLY POLL
Last Week's Trivia Check
We asked what triggers the violent "Gales of November" across the Great Lakes. You guys crushed this one! Nearly 75% of you nailed the weather science. As one reader celebrated in the comments: "Whew finally got one right. 'The Gales of November' book I read paid off! I highly recommend that book."
The Correct Answer: Frigid Arctic air colliding with big lake water that is still holding onto summer warmth.
The Takeaway: Lake Superior and Lake Michigan are so deep that they hold onto summer heat well into late fall. When the first blasts of freezing Canadian air hit that warm water in November, the temperature clash acts like rocket fuel. Warm air rises rapidly off the surface, sucking in hurricane-force winds and building 30-foot waves in hours.
This Week's Trivia
Mid-November is the absolute peak of the whitetail rut in Wisconsin, and bucks are running themselves ragged right before next weekend's gun deer opener. Before a summer buck turns into a heavyweight contender, he grows a brand-new set of antlers from scratch at up to a quarter-inch per day, making them the fastest-growing bone in the animal kingdom.
Growing a full rack in just a few months takes more calcium and phosphorus than a buck can possibly eat at once. How does his body pull it off?
- He eats shed antlers, old bones, and limestone gravel off the forest floor all spring
- His four-chambered stomach ferments woody browse into high-density bone calcium
- His liver stockpiles minerals all winter and dumps them into his bloodstream in May
- He temporarily steals minerals from his own ribs and skeleton, giving himself short-term osteoporosis
A review from the trail…
Five cheeses. We’d tell Geo, but she’s back in the lake till next fall.
