It’s purely a coincidence, of course, but it’s amazing how often excellent hunting and fishing are to be had in close proximity to places my wife and I vacation at. She’d like to go to, say, England, or spend a week touring continental Europe by rail, but what has tended to happen over the years has gone something like this:
     “Hey Lori, can you believe that the brown trout are in shallow and Lake Michigan is RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET?”
or
     “Honey, turns out that Park Falls calls itself  The Ruffed Grouse Capital of the World. Bet you’re glad I brought that 20-gauge now.”
     Heck, even part of our honeymoon seven years ago was spent in…Algoma. Now, Algoma is a gorgeous town, and need not take a back seat to anyplace. But I’m guessing that most little girls don’t dream of the day they marry and their prince whisks them there. Which is why, in the wedding announcements of your local paper, you read things like “The couple honeymooned in St.-Tropez and will reside in Shorewood,” and not “The bride spent her honeymoon staring out a hotel room window while the groom caught two bass and a walleye and speared a really big carp.”
     But Algoma is where my wife found herself, on the first morning of our honeymoon, with a bad case of the flu. This presented her husband with an ethical dilemma: stay and tend to his sick bride, or cast for staging salmon just a few blocks away from the bed-and-breakfast?
     In a word, I owe her. Which is why we are going on a cruise this December where there will be no fishing at all, unless I can talk the captain into letting me troll. I won’t lie to you—cruises are expensive—but we saved money by avoiding the popular ships with names like Jubilation, Excitement, etc. Our itinerary aboard the Apathy (the Trepidation was already booked):
*Day One: Embark (or not)
*Day Two: Lunch served, if steward is in the mood.
*Days Three-Six: Mill around in the middle of the ocean.
*Day Seven: Return to port; disembark. Possibly. Whatever.
     I bring all of this up to point out, in a very roundabout way, that our cruise will cause me to miss one of my favorite activities: hunting deer during the muzzleloader season. I will of course be on hand for the really big show, the nine-day gun season, which I spend partly in Adams County and partly in other areas of the state. But no matter where I go, from Superior to Sinsinawa and from Gills Rock to Lone Rock, there is one question I am constantly asked, and that is, “Kurt, how can I be more like you?”
     It’s certainly a fair question.
     Well, I’ll tell you. You can start be hunting like me. The following two tips ought to give you a start.
Be ever vigilant.
     I hunt mostly in Deer Management Unit 54A, with my friends Jack, Tom, Ted and Zach, and our buddies Nick, Mike and Dan from the neighboring camp. Two years ago I walked out to Tom’s stand after sitting for about four hours on the morning of the day after Thanksgiving.
     “See anything?” I asked.
     “Nope. You?”
     “Me, either,” I replied.
     Tom’s stand is at the edge of a huge meadow, and you can literally see for a mile. Which is about how far away we’d have been able to see the group of does from as they approached, had we not been talking and laughing and thinking up risque alternative lyrics to country music songs.
     “Hey, check it out. Deer,” I said. We watched, slackjawed, with our rifles slung, as the animals covered the last few yards before they disappeared into the woods.
You’ll hunt better with proper nutrition
     As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in charge of our night-before-opener fish fry, not because I possess an abundance of culinary skills, but because it’s my fryer. Most years I bring bluegill or white bass fillets from the Madison lakes, with maybe some walleye fillets from Lake Winnebago thrown in, and my friend Tom’s folks send down bass and crappies from the Lac du Flambeau area. But on this particular year we had already eaten our catches and had empty freezers.
     “That’s alright,” I said. “I’ll pick up something from the store.”
     The only problem was that I had a hellacious week at work and was too tired to go to the store when I returned late from my job the night before we were to leave for camp.
     “I’ll take care of it in the morning for you,” my wife Lori said. “That way you guys can just take off when you get back from work. What would you like?”
    “Lake perch,” I said.
     How was she to know that the perch were not yellow perch, from the Canadian waters of Lake Erie, but Nile perch, from, I’m guessing, Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria isn’t anywhere near, say, Lac Courte Oreilles, but is in Africa. Anyone who has stopped for ice twice on the way home from a trip in order to keep fillets fresh can imagine the difficulty involved in having a fish from Africa arrive in Wisconsin in reasonably palatable condition. The “perch” looked gray, mottled with spots of white, and smelled like a long-dead carp pushed up on the rocks in August.
     Even though I was frying the fish outside, the smell preceded me into the cabin, and I will never forget the looks on the faces as I came in through the door with the platter of reeking slabs. Tasting them did not improve the overall experience any, and we all agreed that the fish tasted exactly like soap (a taste some of us are intimately familiar with.) Everyone went to bed hungry, and the looks of recrimination kept me awake all night.
     Well, not really. But they could have.
     Hope the tips help. Best of luck to you, and me, this deer season. I’ll raise a sundowner to you in December as I sit on a balcony overlooking the Caribbean Sea. I might even throw in an extra shot of rum.
     I’m pretty sure you’d do the same for me.