I crossed paths with the old man at a logging museum in Hayward, a small town in Sawyer County situated on the banks of the Namekagon River, one summer afternoon in 1982. I was in my early twenties and between my junior and senior years at UW–Stevens Point (UWSP), where I was studying wildlife biology. I remember thinking the old man was about the same age as my grandparents—my primary reference point for very old people at the time—who were in their eighties. He was stooped from what I imagined was a life of hard labor, and suspenders held up his pants.
I had been to this logging museum once or twice before that summer as Hayward was a grocery shopping destination for me and several other college students who were working as summer volunteers for the Chequamegon National Forest (now part of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest), stationed at a relatively remote Forest Service camp north of the tiny community of Clam Lake. Volunteering was about the only way to get experience to put on job applications and résumés in the midst of a poor economy and equally poor job prospects in the field of natural resources management.
I liked the museum and its collection of turn-of-the-century north Wisconsin logging artifacts. I was just beginning to become aware of north Wisconsin's big pine logging era history. While tramping the woods of the Chequamegon I often came across silver gray skeletons of what had once been enormous pine stumps—the only remnants of the old-growth trees that had been felled by loggers working two-man crosscut saws. After nearly a century most were no more than the outer wood, the center having decayed, but their shape and great diameter (perhaps four to five feet across) were obvious. In the open hardwood forest that had replaced the pine stand I could see wide spacing of the stumps and imagine the trees that had once stretched 150 feet or more toward the sky. I had the same feeling at the museum—the feeling of being connected to the past through the artifacts that have survived.
Through time I've lost the detailed memories of the man—his name, where he was from, why he was there at the museum on that day. What I do remember is that he had stories to tell, and he wasn't shy about telling them to me. He latched onto me as I was walking through the outdoor area of the museum, where the ragtag collection of old logging equipment could be found. He not only told me about each item—what it was called and what it did—he had a story attached to each one, stories that usually involved himself or someone he knew. He told me things I really didn't want to know as well, such as the very detailed description of how he developed a groin “rupture” or hernia while working on a farm.
What I didn't fully realize or appreciate at the time was that I was lucky enough to have an old-timer—someone who may at sometime in his life have been a white pine logger, or at least certainly was well acquainted with turn-of-the-century loggers—giving me a private, guided tour of a logging museum. Thinking back on that experience today, I regret not having asked the man more questions or better understanding the opportunity to learn about northwoods Wisconsin history from a person who had lived it.
A few years later, after graduating from UWSP and bouncing around the country from one short-term job to another—always trying to get that field experience that would help me land a permanent job—I found myself back in school, this time graduate school at New Mexico State University (NMSU). My graduate fieldwork took me to a remote national forest in the very corner, the boot heel, of southwest New Mexico, along the Arizona and Mexican borders. The Peloncillo Mountains, a narrow desert range that straddles the Arizona–New Mexico border and stretches north from the Mexican border up to the Gila River, were my study area as I researched the Gould's turkey, the largest of the five subspecies of wild turkey found in North America, and it was here that I ran into another old-timer.
Vernon lived in a small trailer on a cattle ranch located near the mountain pass where the only travel route, a dusty gravel road known as the Geronimo Trail, dropped down into Arizona. Like the man in Wisconsin, Vernon was in his eighties and also had tales to share and was happy to share them with me.
Vernon, as I recall, had retired long ago from a job in the city and was working as a hired hand on the ranch, mostly in return for a place to park his trailer. He seemed to have plenty of time for his greatest passion, exploring the mountains with his pack of blue heeler dogs. More than once the loyal and feisty heelers had protected Vernon from rattlesnakes and attacks from javelinas (the collared peccary, which possesses razor-sharp tusks).
Vernon's trailer was filled with the prizes he had discovered on his explorations, and he would describe each item's historical significance—a little glass bottle that he told me had once held grape juice for the U.S. Army soldiers on the trail of Geronimo (Geronimo had surrendered to the army in Skeleton Canyon, just to the north). Grape juice was given to soldiers to prevent scurvy. He also had found a lever-action rifle dating back to the 1800s wedged in the crook of a tree, as well as rifle cartridges, cannonballs, military belt buckles, and some pottery and silverware from early settlers. The little trailer was like a museum of the Peloncillo Mountains. Once again I was lucky to have an old-timer teach me a little history.
It wasn't until many years later and after I moved to Rhinelander that I was able to put the great resources of an old-timer to pen and paper. In 2000 I began writing for Wisconsin Outdoor News (WON), a biweekly hunting and fishing newspaper, when my interest in writing about outdoors and sporting history brought me together with WON editor Dean Bortz. My first major contribution to WON was a decade-by-decade series on the history of deer hunting in Wisconsin from 1900 through the end of the century (the genesis of my first book, On the Hunt: The History of Deer Hunting in Wisconsin).
As I stared at microfilms of old newspapers at the Rhinelander District Library one evening while researching deer hunting history, a middle-aged man, Rich Devlin, struck up a conversation. As we discussed what I was doing he told me the story of his grandfather, and what a story it was. Edward Keeler was the son of the first white settlers of the area that would become the Town of Enterprise, one of the Oneida County townships south of Rhinelander. Keeler was an interesting man, a prominent citizen in the township—he farmed in the summer, as well as operating a large boat on Pelican Lake (which delivered tourists and supplies to the resorts on the lake), the largest natural lake in Oneida County. In the winter he enjoyed fur trapping.
What made Keeler's story unique was that he met a strange and untimely death, shot in the woods near his trapping cabin, the murderer never found. This was early 1930s northern Wisconsin, where moonshiners and gangsters were not uncommon. Devlin encouraged me to write about the incident and suggested I talk to a man named John Mistely, who lived near Pelican Lake. Mistely had not only been friends with Edward Keeler, he remembered firsthand the details of when Keeler went missing—Mistely had participated in the search party that eventually found his body.
I met Mistely at his rural home, and although he was ninety-four years old, his mind was sharp and he delighted in discussing the nearly seventy-year-old crime with me. This time I realized right off the bat how amazing it was to hear about this unique tidbit of northwoods history from someone who was actually there. Through this old-timer I was able to make a direct connection to early Oneida County history.
Edward Keeler's story appeared in Wisconsin Outdoor News January 7, 2000, and is a part of this book. The Keeler story and the deer hunting history pieces led to a regular column in WON that focused on Wisconsin's outdoors and sporting history. I called the column “History Afield.” In the introduction to the first official “History Afield” column, I wrote:
There is a great importance for a society to know its history. Without learning history we run the risk of believing that what is now has always been. We run the risk of believing that the world has always had cable television and cell phones and endless fast food restaurants. I believe the importance of hunting, fishing, and trapping history is even more important as we rocket into the new century. The pioneers that settled Wisconsin, the ancient Indian hunters, the old guides, and the long past woodsmen didn't leave much of a written record, and each new generation becomes further isolated from the land and our incredible sporting heritage. It is important to remind ourselves that people were once satisfied with simple things, and outdoor pursuits—hunting, fishing, trapping—were important components of the quality of life. The decisions made by generations long ago have given us the world we live in today—the public lands we enjoy, the ideas of scientific wildlife management, the freedom to possess firearms in pursuit of game. Through this column I plan to revisit the events, people, and places of a Wisconsin that used to be.
As I began accumulating stories for the column I quickly began to realize what an incredible sporting and outdoors history Wisconsin lays claim to. And just as quickly I began to realize how relatively little of it is recorded for future generations to learn from and enjoy. In addition, what is out there isn't always easily accessible for the average person, such as self-published local books that might exist in only one library or material archived at a local museum (many of which in small towns, particularly those in northern Wisconsin, are open only part of the year).
To be sure, some great outdoor writing from years past has preserved portions of the way Wisconsin sporting life once was, and some of this is very accessible. The most prominent examples are several published collections of “Old Duck Hunters Association” stories by Gordon MacQuarrie.
MacQuarrie was one of Wisconsin's most prolific and best-known outdoor writers of the 1930s, '40s, and early '50s, and he served as the Milwaukee Journal's first outdoors editor, accepting the job in 1935. Keith Crowley in Gordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duck Hunter wrote: “When MacQuarrie began at the Journal on April 19 he didn't have an official title, but he was in effect becoming the first full-time professional outdoor writer in the nation.”
Although MacQuarrie wrote hundreds of articles about a wide variety of sporting subjects for both the Journal and the big national outdoor magazines, it is his nearly sixty “Old Duck Hunters” stories that hold the greatest significance for Wisconsin-based readers and Wisconsin history. MacQuarrie created the fictional organization The Old Duck Hunters Association, Inc. (the “Inc.” was short for incorrigible) as a vehicle to present the reader the very best he had to offer. In the ODHA stories he brilliantly pulled together his love of his favorite places on earth (most notably northwest Wisconsin, where the Bois Brule River and the Eau Claire Chain of Lakes could be found), his favorite sporting activities (trout fishing the Brule and waterfowl hunting the area's lakes and bays and potholes), and an admiration for the people who lived in his favorite places.
MacQuarrie completely understood the importance of the old-timer, and his ODHA stories were populated by a host of them, foremost his father-in-law, Al Peck, but also a contingent of other characters whom MacQuarrie skillfully used to tell the stories. After reading a few ODHA stories one cannot help but be transported back to MacQuarrie's time—you begin to know exactly what it felt like to be fishing the Brule River on a springtime opening day or late-season hunting for bluebills on a storm-tossed lake. I don't know if MacQuarrie ever had posterity in mind while writing an ODHA story, but nevertheless he documented a sporting way of life that we will never see again.
The publication dates for the stories in History Afield span about a decade. The columns I wrote that focused on deer hunting history ended up in some form, usually the theme of a sidebar, in On the Hunt. This book, which includes one previously unpublished piece, is a collection of the best of those that did not appear in On the Hunt.
These pieces range far and wide—from the Indians and voyageurs who accessed the Mississippi River via the Fox-Wisconsin waterway and portage to the resort men who lured tourists to the northwoods through the promise of sometimes-rustic, sometimes-elegant accommodations and a chance to forget about the world for a week or two; from remembrances of hunting with live duck decoys to the little-known connection between New York's Cornell University and the old-growth white pine forest of Wisconsin's Chippewa River watershed; from sporting goods stores with rich histories of providing the gear for sports enthusiasts as well as a gathering place to show off a trophy musky or blue-ribbon whitetail to the presidents, Cal and Ike, who visited Wisconsin to pursue a sporting life, if only for a little while.
Documenting Wisconsin's incredibly rich sporting heritage—keeping these stories close at hand, remembering them, rereading them—reminds us that simple outdoor pursuits were once very important to great numbers of individuals and to the development of Wisconsin society and culture. Perhaps these stories will inspire current and future generations to take up trout fishing or duck hunting or to realize that a vacation to the northwoods can be as satisfying as a vacation to anywhere else in the world.
I think the old-timers would like that.