In the hills of northwest Wisconsin, there’s a modern-day Don Quixote.
But instead of a noble steed, he rides a creaky old side-by-side. Instead of a lance, a beloved old rifle. And instead of giants and windmills as his biggest foes:
“The deer have pretty well trashed my dream.”
Deer. Eating his wildflowers, chomping on his trees.
But in this version of the story, the threat is real. Deer are altering forests across the Midwest. What does one guy in Wisconsin want to do about it?
Credits:
Producer: Ellie Katz
Editor: Morgan Springer
Host: Dan Wanschura
Music: Blue Dot Sessions, Ed Ronco, Christy L’Esperance, Mitch Leigh, Joe Darion
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, HOST: The tale of Don Quixote goes like this: A man is living a normal life in the Spanish countryside. He’s well-read and well-respected. But then, he becomes obsessed with tales of chivalry and knights on valiant missions, and he’s galvanized into action. He sets out with his armor and his trusty horse in search of wrongs to right and damsels in distress. The only problem is that almost everyone else thinks he’s crazy. Now instead of the dry plains of La Mancha, picture the rolling hills of northwest Wisconsin. And in place of a noble steed, a creaky old side-by-side.
DAVE CLAUSEN: I’ll back up a little bit.
WANSCHURA: Instead of a lance…
[gun cocking]
WANSCHURA: A beloved old rifle. And rather than giants to slay…
CLAUSEN: Those are pretty nice deer.
WANSCHURA: Some of the Midwest’s most familiar mammals. And finally, instead of the name Don Quixote: a good, solid Wisconsin name.
CLAUSEN: My name is Dave Clausen, David or Dave, and, uh, you can call me anything but late for dinner.
WANSCHURA: Dave is a farmer, a reader, a thinker. A lover of animals and the land. After long days as a veterinarian caring for other people’s cattle, he’d come home to his own farm. He grew corn. Raised beef. But since he retired, Dave’s been onto a new project: turning his old farm into an oasis.
[bird sounds]
CLAUSEN: You know, that's been my dream.
WANSCHURA: A butterfly and bird-filled patch of native flowers and trees and grasses — a 200 acre ecological haven in farm country.
CLAUSEN: This is a pollinator prairie that I planted last fall. Probably 30 different kinds of prairie flowers. Probably 20 birdhouses around here, and I have swallows and bluebirds and- These are golden Alexanders. I like seeing everything growing here.
WANSCHURA: One by one, he nurtured the wildflowers that sprung up: lupines and trilliums. He planted even more native flowers and grasses. Put in thousands of red oak seedlings. But in the last decade, there’s been one big problem.
CLAUSEN: The deer have pretty well trashed my dream.
WANSCHURA: The deer. Dave’s got a plan for his land. But lately, he’s been running into a wall.
CLAUSEN: I am s- I am scared at how out of control the deer are, and I am scared what might happen from it.
WANSCHURA: This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura. Today, what is the Don Quixote of Wisconsin so afraid of? Ellie Katz takes it from here.
[sound of UTV driving]
ELLIE KATZ, BYLINE: As Dave drives his side-by-side across his property, two familiar heads pop up out of the grass at the sound of us coming.
KATZ: Oh, look! It’s a fawn. Is that a doe and a fawn?
CLAUSEN: Yeah.
KATZ: Prancing through your prairie.
CLAUSEN: Yep.
KATZ: Dave is not happy about this. He rounds his shoulders and lifts up his arms like he’s holding an invisible rifle. And then he pretends to shoot the deer.
CLAUSEN: Bang, bang, bang!
KATZ: They do look beautiful.
CLAUSEN: They are. There's no doubt about that. But if a really handsome man or a beautiful woman kills one of your relatives, they can look beautiful, but their actions are not consistent with their looks.
KATZ: Dave is 80. He’s got white hair and thick white eyebrows. Glasses. And blue eyes that twinkle mischievously whenever he cracks a joke. But he gets pretty serious when he talks about deer. He took his first big swing against deerkind about five years ago. It all started one spring, on a drive around his property with his wife.
CLAUSEN: And we counted 52 deer on that drive, which amounts to about two miles or so. So we saw 52 deer in about two miles. I thought, "That is way too many deer."
KATZ: No problem, though. He’d just apply for some permits to kill extra deer outside of hunting season. But Dave only knew one way to get those extra permits: he had to prove the deer were damaging his crops. The issue was he no longer had crops. So he was gonna have to plant some and then let the deer mow them down on purpose.
CLAUSEN: So I bought $2,000 worth of Christmas trees and hybrid poplars. And the deer started eating them almost right away. And I called the, uh–
KATZ: He called up the assessors.
CLAUSEN: And they came out and looked at it, and they said, "Well, you know those deer are going to eat all of those trees." And I said, "I know they are." And I said, "And I've got more than $1,000 worth of damage then, and so I can have kill permits." So I got 10 kill permits….
KATZ: To kill 10 deer.
CLAUSEN: And I spent the summer killing deer.
KATZ: And then, once hunting season rolled around in the fall, he kept killing deer. He invited his friends to kill deer too. Dave says they ended up killing almost 30 deer altogether.
CLAUSEN: So I thought, "Ah, at last we're gonna have less deer damage." The next spring, we went on that same drive.
KATZ: Instead of 52 deer… he counted 73.
CLAUSEN: I had ruined my summer sitting in a deer stand, and it didn’t do a damn bit of good because the deer had just moved in from the surrounding areas.
KATZ: Dave went from annoyed to pissed to obsessed. Obsessed with bringing down deer numbers on his farm and in his woods. Obsessed with protecting this little oasis – this butterfly, bird-filled patch of wildflowers, trees and grasses he’d been pouring his energy and dreams into. He eventually figured out how to get nuisance permits, so he wouldn’t have to plant Christmas trees every year to get kill permits. And he kept shooting deer. His friends kept shooting deer. He put cages around precious wildflowers. Sprayed plants with deer repellent. None of it worked how he’d hoped. The deer kept mowing things down.
CLAUSEN: I can't possibly control it. I am not capable of doing this by myself.
KATZ: This was so aggravating to Dave. But also energizing. Recently, Dave got an idea. Maybe he, one guy, could do something about this — something a little crazy. That’s after the break.
[sponsorship break]
KATZ: It’s not just Dave’s farm. In many pockets of the Great Lakes, deer are unintentionally rewiring the world around them. Sarah Johnson moved to northern Wisconsin to study plant biology. And her classes took her out into the heart of the Northwoods.
SARAH JOHNSON: I remember really lush understories of these spring flowers.
KATZ: Carpets bursting with color.
JOHNSON: The very dainty, soft–
KATZ: Trilliums. Hepaticas.
JOHNSON: Little white flowers, little pink flowers.
KATZ: It was like a scene out of a fairytale. With names out of a fairytale.
JOHNSON: Blooming bellworts and blue-bead lilies and violets and solomon's seal.
KATZ: Years later, Sarah returned to those same forests as a professor of plant biology, hoping to see the delicate carpets of color she remembered. But it was completely different. Many of the flowers and plants in the understory were gone.
JOHNSON: That's concerning to me as an ecologist.
KATZ: Sarah’s not the only ecologist who’s noticed this.
JOHNSON: Many studies are showing very significant declines in some of these species.
KATZ: And it’s not like these plants are rare or endangered. They’re just really delicious to deer. Like a tender little salad. Deer also love oak trees, sugar maples, cedars, hemlocks. And in some areas, these slow-growing species are not growing at all.
JOHNSON: So essentially, these are forests of the living dead.
KATZ: Like take certain white cedar swamps and hemlock stands
JOHNSON: There are beautiful stately trees in the canopy, but they are not regenerating well. … Those are pretty drastic shifts in many of our upper northern Great Lakes forests.
KATZ: This isn’t just a problem for people who like looking at plants. It’s likely a problem for other animals too.
JOHNSON: Many pollinator species.
KATZ: Plus other insects. A forest floor that’s been chomped by deer means less insect abundance and diversity overall, according to one study.
JOHNSON: Ground nesting birds and midstory birds.
KATZ: Wood thrushes, ovenbirds. They’re getting hit too. Once the flowers are eaten and the saplings are devoured … certain plants have a hard time recovering. And the forest starts changing in ways most people can’t even see.
JOHNSON: I don't think future generations will necessarily understand what's been lost.
KATZ: Invasive species can move in and the forest might not be able to store as much carbon. To be clear, deer are not sprinkled evenly across the landscape. There are lots in some areas, like Dave Clausen’s land and very few in others, like parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And deer are definitely not the only factor changing the forests.
JOHNSON: But the records do show that deer are a widespread issue.
KATZ: Last spring, Wisconsin biologists estimated a record deer population. About 1.8 million. It beat the record set the year before. Other estimates also put deer populations at over a million in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. So how did we get here? In Wisconsin, it’s kind of a feisty story.
PAT DURKIN: I have a little saying I came up with a number of years ago where: “Deer make people stupid.” And this is consistently the case in Wisconsin.
KATZ: Pat Durkin has been an outdoors writer in Wisconsin since the 80s.
DURKIN: I describe myself all the time as a Wisconsin chauvinist. I just think Wisconsin's the greatest state there ever has been or ever will be. And I think Wisconsinites have this passion for things that I don't think it can be matched in some ways.
KATZ: Take deer. Back in the 80s and 90s, deer numbers ballooned across Wisconsin. The herd crept past one million deer for the first time. Farmers were pissed about their crops getting damaged. So the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources implemented something called Earn-A-Buck. In certain areas, hunters had to shoot an antlerless deer first – like a doe or a fawn – before shooting a buck, the kind of deer most hunters want.
DURKIN: And it was really an effective method for pushing deer herds down and keeping them down.
KATZ: Really one of the most effective ways to control deer populations. Effective or not, most hunters hated Earn-A-Buck. They thought it was too restrictive and they also argued the deer population was just fine. But the DNR kept bringing Earn-A-Buck back.
DURKIN: So by 2010, there was a real growing anger among a lot of hunters about Earn-A-Buck.
KATZ: 2010 was a big election year in Wisconsin. And one hopeful politician, who was also a hunter, made a bid for governor for the Republican Party.
[montage of Scott Walker campaign footage]
DURKIN: They had these various talking points for his campaign. You know, Scott's plan for this and Scott's plan for that. And Scott had a plan for deer hunting and deer management. … You saw signs around Wisconsin … Sportsmen for Walker. And Walker was on the stump talking about how he's tired of sitting on his deer stand and not seeing deer.
SCOTT WALKER: I gotta find out where your tree stand is because last year, camera or not, I couldn’t see any deer, and that really bothered me.
KATZ: Walker won. And a passionate group of hunters lobbied to change things. So almost exactly a year after Scott Walker was first elected, he signed a bill repealing Earn-A-Buck. Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly voted almost unanimously for it. Earn-A-Buck became illegal in most of Wisconsin: the tool was no longer even an option for wildlife managers. (It’s not illegal in the other Great Lakes states, but none of them use it right now.) And Pat says that bill, there’s been no going back for Wisconsin.
DURKIN: Last 15, 16 years, the herd has been overall growing larger and larger.
KATZ: From just over one million in 2010 to just under 2 million now. There are a few reasons why that might be. Policy has to do with it. But Pat also says more frequent mild winters mean more deer too.
DURKIN: And so the herd is building, but what's also happening at the same time, the hunter population has been dwindling.
KATZ: So here’s the situation: in some places, there are so many deer that it’s harming the rest of the ecosystem. There’s a lot about this that’s really hard to control, like climate change. But several experts told me this: the deer herd is one part of the equation we do have a little more control over. And it’s not necessarily pretty, but we can kill more antlerless deer. States and hunters just have to decide to do it. Dave Clausen, with his wildflowers and his trees and his farm in Amery, is living proof of that problem. And it became personal for him. Dave wrote to the DNR. Nothing changed. He sat on a county board that sets local deer quotas. He couldn’t get the deer numbers down there. He’s voted for politicians who might do more to control the deer. But that hasn’t worked either. Dave says it feels like he’s just shouting into the void. And there are definitely people who think he’s a little crazy.
KATZ: People from the outside maybe kinda just see you as, like, shaking your fist-
CLAUSEN: Mm-hmm.
KATZ: …for no good reason. Does that feel true?
CLAUSEN: I really, uh, don't think about that much.
KATZ: So Dave – not one to be deterred – cooked up a new idea. Could he sue someone about this? And then like any 21st century knight in shining armor, he took to the internet.
CLAUSEN: I Googled, uh, taking arguments, uh, from the Supreme Court. … And I found three cases.
KATZ: Let’s follow Dave down this rabbit hole for a moment. The takings clause is in the U.S. constitution in the 5th amendment. That clause says the government cannot take private property for public use without fair compensation. Dave thought about that. And he thought about his forest land. His private property.
CLAUSEN: 240 acres of forest.
KATZ: Then he thought about this idea of public use. Because in order to get permits to kill extra deer in his woods, he had to let the public come hunt his land.
CLAUSEN: That was a taking.
KATZ: And, he argues, it’s totally hypocritical. Farmers whose crops are damaged by deer and want extra kill permits… they don’t have to do that. But a guy with a bunch of timber … does.
CLAUSEN: So why should I have to allow the public in on my land when I'm just trying to protect what I've got?
KATZ: Now you might say, “Okay, well, more people hunting your land means more deer killed. Problem solved.” And Dave might agree with you on that. But he’s a principles guy. And this inconsistency — it really annoys him. He thinks he’s onto something with this legal argument.
CLAUSEN: Oh, yes. I have a case. I very definitely have a case.
KATZ: I talked to a property rights attorney who said this argument is bubbling up in places where there’s wildlife conflict. One case in Montana argued something similar but it got dismissed on other grounds before a judge could rule on it. It makes sense that Dave Clausen is the person who arrived here at this idea.
DURKIN: Clausen's a fascinating guy. He makes some interesting, interesting arguments.
KATZ: Pat, the writer, used to interview Dave.
DURKIN: He's that guy that has some real fixed principles, and he stands by them, you know? And I love when I get these emails from him about what his latest effort might be, you know?
KATZ: I learned about Dave’s lawsuit idea when someone copied me on one of those emails. And I was curious. Because Dave isn’t just some random retired veterinarian turning his old farm fields into prairies and slowly inching his way closer and closer to a version of Don Quixote.
He’s done a lot in his corner of the world. He was recognized by an environmental law firm for his conservation work. He’s an advisor on wildlife disease for a research center at the University of Minnesota. And he used to be the chair of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board. He was appointed by a former governor to that role. The statewide group helps review and set policy for the DNR, including deer management. Pat would always see Dave at those meetings.
DURKIN: And Clausen would always show up and sometimes annoy you, but he's just– he's one of those wonderful people that you think you cannot take away from him that he gives a shit, you know? And I– That matters.
CLAUSEN: Yes, I think most of my life I have not been bashful about trying to make good trouble.
KATZ: Dave believed in his lawsuit. So he got in touch with a private attorney about it.
CLAUSEN: Spent a few thousand dollars having that researched.
KATZ: She said it might be possible. So he tried to get an environmental law firm to take it on pro bono but they weren’t interested. That left Dave with one option: take on the case himself. Spend a couple hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. If he won, he’d get to kill extra deer in his woods without giving the public access, which would make him very happy. And he thinks it could also encourage more private property owners to control deer in their forests. That could help bring down the deer population. But Dave isn’t gonna do it.
CLAUSEN: As I've gotten older, uh, I just am not sure that I have the desire or stamina to– if I'm only gonna live 10 more years, I don't wanna spend four or five of it in court.
KATZ: Especially given there’s a pretty high likelihood it wouldn’t work out. This lawsuit was Dave’s last, best, most creative solution. Better than the letters to the DNR. Better than trying to vote his guys into office. Better than the deer repellent and the cages he put around his lupines. It was one big, loud thing that he – one guy in northwest Wisconsin – could do to make people pay attention to this problem. It was one last charge with his lance at the giant lurking in the hills. It’s just that the enemy isn’t actually the deer. They’ve always been here trying, like all living things do, to just live. It’s us people who make things difficult.
CLAUSEN: It's like sitting up on a high hill looking down into a valley where there's a single railroad track. And when you look to the east, you see a train coming down that track, and then you look to the west, and you see a train coming down that track. And you know there's gonna be a hell of a crash, and you're completely powerless to do anything about it.
KATZ: Don Quixote invented obstacles — saw things that weren’t there. That’s where Dave Clausen is different.
DURKIN: He's not crazy. He raises a very legitimate question. … These resources are held in public trust for the public good, and they're supposed to be managed by these agencies for the public good, not just to provide recreation for people like me who like to deer hunt.
KATZ: And in this case, Pat argues, that’s not happening.
[sound of Dave’s living room]
KATZ: So what's your routine?
CLAUSEN: My routine is…
KATZ: Dave’s in his living room.
CLAUSEN: There are no screens on these two windows.
KATZ: You open the window?
CLAUSEN: I open the window. I'm, uh, leaning against the window and I'm on a shooting stick here. And, uh, at 80 years old, I'm not quite as steady as I used to be.
KATZ: He’s holding his beloved old rifle.
CLAUSEN: This is a model, a Savage Model 99 284. It's a rare, uh, rare gun. They quit making these in the ‘60s.
KATZ: If a deer walked by right now, Dave could shoot it.
KATZ: So how often do you do this?
CLAUSEN: Three times this year so far. Uh, but I missed one.
KATZ: Right now, there’s nothing. Just a little breeze and some signs of trouble only Dave notices: the lupines that don’t grow, the stunted red oaks, the invasive buckthorn that’s spreading. Even Dave says he feels like Don Quixote sometimes: fighting a nearly impossible fight, trying to take down windmills that seem like giants.
CLAUSEN: Oh, yeah. But, you know, if I keep at it, someday I'm gonna knock one over.
