Hunting for conservation

Of the 78 deer I’ve harvested in Wisconsin, a dozen tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). If I had not ended their lives in a single moment, they would have become the walking dead, and they would have unknowingly spread the always-fatal disease to dozens, or more likely hundreds of other animals.

It’s hard to fathom that something as simple as a little, misshapen protein could cause so much suffering, that something so small could cause one of North America’s most majestic creatures to drool and stumble dumbly through the woods. A deer infected with CWD will eventually waste away to skin and bones, its hip joints jutting out at strange angles, its ribs pronounced, its ears, which normally scan the world for any sign of danger with such agility, drooping low, its head and legs strange and wrong. They will collapse, little more than a sack, or stumble into a road and be struck by a passing vehicle.

Deer spread CWD to one another through contact with saliva, blood, urine or feces. In places where deer are overpopulated, it spreads rapidly, and in the southern part of the state, places like Dane, Green, Sauk and Iowa counties, the disease is ubiquitous. At any given time, Wisconsin is home to between 1 million and 2 million deer, but they are threatened by this insidious contagion.

On the frontlines of the fight to save deer are hunters. All hunters who ethically and legally harvest an animal help stem the tide of this disease. Hunters who harvest antlerless deer are particularly helpful in the fight.

Wisconsin offers several seasons in which people can take antlerless deer, starting and ending with archery season, which runs from September into January, and also including multiple antlerless-only gun hunts.

Those who venture out to hunt does after November’s nine-day gun season ends get to experience something magical. Deep winter is a time of year in Wisconsin when the wildlife suspects the fragility of human beings will prevent us from entering their realm. When the skeletonized trees crackle with hoarfrost and the nights are so long and cold that the light of day feels like a brief gasp rather than a full breath. When bobcats stalk on padded feet through powdered, snowy forest floors. When an entire world becomes suddenly visible: tracks in the snow, breath in the air, even sounds change in the depth of winter. The fields and forests lie beneath a crystalline glaze in which we bipedal, hairless apes seem like ill-equipped visitors from another planet.

As we sit in the snow on the edge of fields, as we wiggle our toes inside our wool socks and rubber boots in our tree stands, we see all manner of beauty. Coyotes, weasels, possums, rabbits, and of course, deer.

For so long, they have thrived here. With their tawny coats, thick layers of hard white fat, and incredible senses, they are not merely visitors here. They are this place, because they and this landscape evolved together.

Evolution gives every creature on Earth some special gift to help it survive on this hostile planet. Seals have thick blubber against the frigid ocean. Giraffes have long necks to reach their food. Cheetahs have their unique speed to catch their meals. And of course, we humans have our stories, which is how we survive our strange places and times.

Deer have received some of the most beautiful gifts of all. They smell, listen, look, and move with unimaginable grace and speed. When people try to live in the moment and be mindful of the world around them, they would do well to follow the deer, which spend their entire lives actively experiencing the environment. They have no past or future, only the present. Nothing is so completely connected to the world. They hear every footstep, smell every breath, see every single flake of snow as it swings in an invisible cradle to the ground. When they walk, their smooth black hooves tread on the very deep foundation of this world.

Compared to us, they are superior in nearly every way. They are stronger and faster. They can hear and smell far better. They can withstand cold and ice and rain and wind that would shatter our delicate constitutions. They live in this world naked, from birth until death, and they thrive, because, as my friend Jasmine Banks, a Madison grandmother who took part in last year’s Cazenovia Doe Derby after taking up hunting later in life, said, “this is their world.”

Deer are so strong that for 15,000 years we would have died without them. Without the protein, fat, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, niacin, B vitamins, fatty acids and more that they gave us, we would have perished. Without them we would not be here.

Perhaps it’s time to repay the favor. Perhaps, after all those thousands of years, the deer need us to eat them. They helped us survive this harsh and alien landscape, using their special gifts to walk through winters, and summers, and autumns and springs, so that we could walk here, too. Now we can help them by fighting an invisible enemy, a malformed prion, from which they cannot run no matter how beautiful and swift they are.

We don’t have their senses or their speed or their strength. But evolution has given us something special, too. It has given us our stories. We hunters of antlerless deer have a story to tell. It is one of people and animals who are citizens in the same world, as Aldo Leopold said, and whose fates are inexorably linked.

The story takes place deep in winter. Pull up a chair by the hearth and hear it. It’s not a game, or a sport, or a product, or a competition. It’s a tale of the place we live. It’s not about conquering it. It’s about heading out into the woods and being part of it.

Wisconsin’s antlerless deer hunters are an army, and they are fighting a good fight, not against anything, but for deer, and for everything we love.

Leopold wanted to change the role of humans from “conquerors” of the natural world to members and citizens of it. He was a prolific hunter, and he knew how important our role is. And each winter, antlerless deer hunters take to the woods to help restore some balance to the state’s ecosystem. We do it for meat: 100 pounds of venison contains 60,000 calories and 12,000 grams of protein. But we also do it to stem the tide of CWD.

We do it because we owe this much, at the very least, to the creatures whose hooves thrum their ancient rhythm on the very deep foundation of our world.

The Caz Doe Derby: Where fun and conservation meet
Hunters who shoot a doe with any weapon can drop off the head for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) testing at self-serve kiosks at the Duren Farm in Cazenovia, in La Valle, in Reedsburg, or at additional soon-to-be-announced locations around this region. Each head earns the hunter an opportunity to enter the Cazenovia Doe Derby’s drawings for a chance to win big prizes. The raffle, organized by the non-profit Sharing the Land initiative, incentivizes hunters to shoot antlerless deer and help monitor and curb the spread of CWD, they said.  Dropping off a single doe head for testing gets the hunter two entries in the Doe Derby Raffle. Prizes are donated by companies that support Sharing the Land. For more information visit www.sharingtheland.com/doederby.