Deer hunting is an annual tradition for countless area families. I bagged a couple of deer in younger days but have not hunted since 1980 when my father died.
I did not take my boys hunting as they grew up in Waukesha, but my brother’s son has continued the tradition and returns to the Bartel farm about six miles east of Princeton each season to try his luck. He has scored several deer over the years and now is very selective in his targets. His son is too young to hunt but has checked out the heated stand and, I expect, the tradition will survive another generation.
I think many deer hunters today would be surprised to learn there was no deer hunt, and relatively few deer, in Green Lake County until 1943.
Until 1933 Wisconsin hunting regulations were established by the state Legislature. That changed when lawmakers passed that authority to the Wisconsin Conservation Commission. In 1934 the commission created the Conservation Congress to serve in an advisory capacity. Each county elected its own conservation committee; sportsmen met annually to voice opinions and vote on proposed bag limits and other regulations.
Herman O. “Butz” Giese, of Princeton, chaired the Green Lake County committee from 1931-1946. He declined the nomination in 1947.
Grant Gagliardi, DNR wildlife biologist for Green Lake and Marquette counties, provided the maps below that indicate 15 deer in Green Lake County in 1929 and only isolated cases of deer in 1938. The counts were based on surveys conducted by conservation wardens.
Locals, however, might have disagreed with the 1938 survey.
“Local sportsmen are looking forward to the day when there will be an open season for deer hunting in Green Lake and Marquette counties,” Princeton Times editor Harry Hobart observed in his Seen and Heard Around Town column in April 1937. “Judging from the large number of deer seen in this vicinity in recent weeks, that time is not so many years distant.”
Until then, however, the most ardent local hunters would have to continue traveling “Up North” for venison, as they had for years. And they did.
The Princeton Times-Republic in November 1938 reported G.J. Knaack, George Sauerbreit, Art Luedtke, Henry Grams and Crofty Freihart brought home bucks from northern Wisconsin. Freihart’s eight-pointer weighed about 175 pounds.
State officials opened Marquette County to deer hunting in 1939. High-powered rifles were barred, and shooting was limited to shotguns with lead balls.
Reports of deer activity in the Princeton area had grown steadily from year to year. Farmers, whose cows a decade or two earlier would spook at the sight of a deer, now said the deer were damaging crops, but most farmers opposed an open season.
Crofty Freiheit told the Times-Republic in March 1940 that he saw 27 deer on a drive with family and friends through the Pines. The deer were in groups of three to six. “All enjoyed seeing those beautiful specimens of Wisconsin wildlife,” the newspaper said.
The newspaper defined “the Pines” as roughly the area east of County Road C and south of state Highway 23.
“The large number of deer in the Pines a few miles south of here, has aroused considerable interest,” Times-Republic editor Hobart noted a week later. “Many are driving out to see them, and it is said by some that they have seen more deer in the Pines than in several trips through the so-called deer country in the northern part of the state.”
The Times-Republic reported its first car-deer accident in March 1940.
“Deer are evidently becoming more and more plentiful in this area,” Hobart observed in August 1941 amid reports of accidents on County Road C and County Road D.
There was a bow season in Green Lake and Marquette counties in 1941 when about 1,400 permits were issued statewide. Clayton Miller, of Princeton, was among the archers who stalked the Pines.
At the annual county conservation committee meeting in 1942, sportsmen said the county “should fall in line with Marquette County” if it approved a gun deer season.
Hunters could shoot deer with a gun – shotguns, only – in Green Lake County for the first time in November 1943, the same year “Bambi” played at the Princeton Theatre.
But the hunt was limited to land west of the Fox River.
“The battle of the Pines opened last Thursday morning according to schedule and from every indication it was quite a successful affair,” the Times-Republic reported on November 25. “Over one hundred deer were shot according to estimates of game wardens and others who had an opportunity to observe the slaughter of bucks. Whole families were represented in some hunting parties, practically every member of the family securing a buck for his or her tag.”
Mrs. Henry (Adeline) Grams was the first successful female hunter listed in the paper. Henry Grams and H.O. Grams Sr. made it a whitetail trifecta for the family.
“It was quite a thrilling affair, in some instances herds of from ten to thirty deer being surrounded by hunters who had an opportunity to pick out their bucks at an easy gunshot range,” the newspaper said. “… In many instances small herds of them were seen swimming the Fox in a desperate attempt to escape encirclement by the hundreds of hunters.”
Successful hunters from Princeton listed in the newspaper included Leo Oestreich, Harold Bierman, Donald Gongorek, Henry Manthei, Dan Trainer, Querine Rutkowski, Chris Dreger, Bernard Dalka, Harold Wegner, Frank Roguske, Edmund Zuehls, Edwin Klingbeil, and Walter Krause.
Carley Zimmerman told the newspaper he shot at a buck but missed, and just as he was about to take another shot a doe came along and knocked his gun from his hands.
Nobert Lese bagged the biggest buck of the hunt.
“Bambi, the big buck that so many of our farmers have come to know quite well during the past few years, and no doubt the grandpa of a large share of the younger generation of deer in this section, is dead,” the Times-Republic reported on December 2. “His days of keeping his herd out of trouble are over. ‘Bambi’ was killed by Nobert Lese near the Dych farm west of Princeton and dressed out at 284 pounds. This is undoubtedly the largest buck killed in this section and might be the record for the state. His antlers had 16 points, two of which had been broken off.”
A doe season, the first in Wisconsin in twenty-four years, followed the buck season. Hobart did not see much sport in the hunt.
“No one will ever know how many deer were killed in this territory during the hunting season, but it is a conservative guess that there were at least 300 bucks and antlerless deer killed,” he wrote. “The hunt almost amounted to a last roundup of the local deer population. It is doubtful if anything like this will ever occur again in this part of the state. We hope not … because it turned out to be anything but a sporting proposition.
“The buck season was bad enough, but when the antlerless season opened on Thanksgiving Day it found a small sized army in the Pines country and other deer sections, each man determined to get his deer regardless. They shot pigs. They nearly shot each other. They shot at most anything. If a lone hunter brought down a deer and was not right on the spot to tag it, he was quite liable to lose it to gangster hunters.”
The newspaper said 191 cars passed through Princeton in 21 minutes on Thanksgiving morning, and over 90 percent of them turned onto the Montello Road.
“They were driving almost bumper to bumper,” Hobart observed. “Some said that it resembled a funeral procession – and it apparently was.”
The conservation committee also did not like what it saw. Marquette County held deer hunts in 1945 and 1946, but the gun deer hunt did not return to Green Lake County until November 1948, when it was countywide.
The deer hunt has been an annual tradition here since that time.
Happy hunting! Be safe.
Thank you for caring and reading about local history.