Warden sees 'Deer Dumpsters' as one answer to carcass littering
By: Joanne M. Haas/Bureau of Law Enforcement
They’re known as the Deer Dumpsters.
The Fall Creek Technical Education Class and the two carcass boxes they built.
And this handy collaborative answer from a community team led by DNR Conservation Warden Ken Thomson is aimed at helping to prevent the littering of deer carcasses in Eau Claire County Parks near Fall Creek during the gun-deer season.
It all started about five years ago as Warden Thomson was fielding another round of littering complaints. “The complaints were coming in about people dumping their deer carcasses out in the county parks. It got to be a nonstop thing,” Thomson says.
Fall Creek students build boxes for the deer dumpsters.
Thomson had an idea to stop the littering and he took the brainstorm to the rod and gun clubs in Eau Claire and nearby Augusta. The idea was to create a system in the county parks where deer carcasses could be dropped. Club members liked it and agreed to help fund the costs of placing two dumpsters in two county parks. The dumpsters were provided by Advanced Disposal.
This proved to be a solid start by community-minded organizations and a business. “The idea was the hides of the deer left in these dumpsters would be sold to keep the program going,” Thomson says. However, that funding idea went south when the hides started disappearing from the dumpsters.
This meant the promising project needed another angle.
Fall Creek students worked in teams to design the boxes.
Enter the Fall Creek School District and the technical education classes taught by Jed Watters. The students took up the call for an assist and turned it into a fun, creative project to benefit the community. Watters says the students went through a six-step design process. Together the students considered all the design proposals from their teammates, and agreed to take the best ideas overall and get busy building two boxes. Plenty of testing followed.
Under Watters’ direction, the class first tried making the boxes out of old pallets to work in concert with the dumpsters. Those didn’t stop the thefts. So this year, the class used big plastic tubs and other materials. Their new renditions seem to fit the bill.
“These boxes make it all but impossible to remove the hides,” Thomson says. “This is a great example of partnership and people working together on behalf of their community and the natural resources – and in this case, that’s the deer.”
If you have information regarding natural resource violations, please call: VIOLATION HOTLINE: 1-800-TIP-WDNR or 1-800-847-9367. The hotline is in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Trained staff relay reported information to conservation wardens. Anyone who calls the Violation Hotline or provides information can remain anonymous.