Fencerows: Canoeing the Horicon Marsh
By John Luthens
Horicon Marsh straddled the southeastern Wisconsin Counties of Dodge and Fond du Lac and sprawled before us. From the outer boundaries, it was hard to tell where the cattails ended and the horizon began. Puffball clouds swept across a soft June sky, and the birds of summer called from hidden waters inside the marsh. It was a tailor-made day for a canoe exploration.
Tyler Luthens and Dominick Boon paddle along the main ditch of the Horicon Marsh.
Trekking into the expanse of its 32,000 acres, along with Boy Scout Troop 840 from Grafton, Wisconsin, we launched canoes from the northeastern end of the State Wildlife Area of the marsh, with a 6.5 mile canoe trail stretching before us into the city of Horicon. The launch point sat along a famous hunting area of the marsh, the Greenhead Impoundment, and was tucked neatly beside the gates of the Greenhead Hunting Club.
The Greenhead Club is the last-remaining private club in the marsh. It hearkens back to the foundations of Wisconsin duck hunting and offers a historic perspective on the early 1900’s, when the Horicon skies were black with migrant ducks and the booming sounds of market-hunting guns thundered from the blinds. Hunting clubs, such as Greenhead, were at the forefront of waterfowl conservation, leasing vast tracts of land, establishing bag limits and prohibiting hunting during the spring migration and breeding season.
To float a place like Horicon Marsh is to float history itself. We wound from the launch and through cattail and sedge-grass channels that had been dug out over a century ago in an effort to convert the marsh into farmland. The marsh proved to be too resilient, flooding in the spring to prevent planting, and staying too wet in the fall to make for decent harvesting. The farmers moved on, but the marsh and the ditch channels stayed behind to tell the tale.
We canoed away from civilization, floating back through the big years of duck flights, back to when the last Ice Age retreated and created the basins and islands of the marsh. Ducks and geese will always play a storied part but, with more than 300 other species of birds recorded, there was plenty more to see in the marsh.
Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 840, Steven LaMaster, shows his approval of a canoe excursion into the Horicon Marsh.
Terns, herons and hawks soared upon the high air currents. Red-winged blackbirds flitted from the tall grass and chirped displeasure at our intrusion. We drifted beneath cottonwoods and the cotton seedlings came down on the water like fine snow. A bald eagle circled to perch upon an island tree. While the sporadic and sunken trees along our canoe route were not mighty in stature, they sprang out of the marshy plain like water towers and could be seen from a far distance.
Stopping for lunch on a high-ground peninsula that separated the marsh ditch from the Rock River, we sat and talked and watched the cattails sway in the breeze. Bass splashed to the surface in a backwater bay of lily pads. We kicked up spent shells from an old blind. We pictured ducks skimming the point upon a northern, autumn wind and we could hear the sounding roar of shotguns.
Back in the water, it seemed we were at the boat landing take-out point in Horicon before our paddle arms had a chance to stiffen. It was only about a three-hour journey, but the history and scenery of the Horicon Marsh will remain etched in our memories much longer.