Goodbye Deer Season, Hello Ice
“I thought the temperature was supposed to reach 19 degrees today,” I said to Lori on the cell phone as the truck moved north toward my last bowhunt of the year January 8th. “The thermometer says it’s 5-degrees and it’s already 9:00 in the morning.”
Ellis’s last stand for deer was spent in 4-degree temperatures Sunday, January 8th. Despite great sign and known movement by deer during mid-day hours recently, the four-hour vigil produced nothing but a frozen face.
As I moved closer to the northern unit of Kettle Moraine State Forest where I would close down my season Sunday, the digital reading actually did move. It dropped to 4-degrees; despite the fact that by design I was going to hunt mid-day hours in part to break the stranglehold of bitter cold that has gripped Wisconsin and made standing high on a small portable tree stand seem less than a sane plan.
The reason for the 10 am to 2 pm hunt was also because I thought there was a great chance of getting a crack at a buck. The day before, I had continued my duty as one of On Wisconsin Outdoors’ paperboys, handling the Milwaukee to Madison run, and had seen maybe 50 deer feeding in the farm fields in five or six groups right smack dab in mid-day. The thought of being on stand only in the sunshine with virtually no wind instead of watching the sun rise while freezing to death sealed the deal. Plus, I could be home for kick-off and watch the Packers bury the Giants.
I did spend those four planned hours on stand, fairly comfortably, and expected to see deer the whole time. Tracks could be seen everywhere from my Lone Wolf, from the long, dark cedar stand dead ahead, to the swamp that bordered the creek frozen solid and meandering behind me. If anything did move on the frozen tundra, there was no way it would surprise me. Every step of a deer would be announced by the cracking snow in an otherwise totally quiet environment.
It was not meant to be. When I watched the sun plod across the sky to finally touch the tops of the cedars, it was time to abandon ship. There was no way I was going to stand in the shade.
Goodbye deer season. It was fun. I’ll miss you.
Now, it’s on this week to the Wisconsin River to ice fish with one of the best guides in the state. Phil Schweik is hammering walleyes…during daylight hours yet. He usually likes to keep me away from a good bite, due to my ability to wreck it, but he’s taken a risk and invited me up to his Mosinee stomping grounds. I would recommend reading Phil’s entire report each week and view his unbelievable catches on this website at www.onwisconsinoutdoors.com under Inland Fishing. For now, here’s a teaser taken from the master and this week’s report:
Phil Schweik is finding an extraordinary, all day long walleye bite in central Wisconsin.
“Walleye fishing is off the grid followed by great crappie, perch, bluegill, and pike fishing,” Schweik writes. “The walleye bite has been nothing short of phenomenal. Most of our action has been by jigging spoons tipped with minnow heads but we have been picking up a few walleyes on tip-ups as well. Even though action is better earlier and late in the day, this has been an all-day bite which is contrary to what we had been seeing earlier in the year.”
100,000 copies of the On Wisconsin Outdoors’ January-February issue are now at your local Kwik Trip store, Gander Mountain, hardware, liquor store, grocery, rod & gun shop or so many other businesses. Thank you for connecting with On Wisconsin Outdoors.
Shoot straight.
Dick Ellis