Biologist Keith McCaffery Left His Mark in Wisconsin’s Deer Woods

   American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “If a single man plants himself on his convictions and then abides, the huge world will come ’round to him.”

   Maybe so, but Keith McCaffery, 86, of Rhinelander, is still waiting for many hunters to rally around his faith in scientific deer management.

   McCaffery staked deer biology’s flag into Wisconsin’s forests, woodlots and farmlands as a young man. And though he defended that banner with keen humor and fierce fairness the past 60-plus years, he’ll never know his won-loss record in the court of public opinion. Either way, since the early 1960s, no one in the Department of Natural Resources rivals McCaffery for the scorn and praise he garnered in deer-management.

   Tim Van Deelen, a professor of wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, considers McCaffery “the living institutional memory of Wisconsin’s professional deer-management programs.” Van Deelen thinks the DNR’s deer program remains “a legacy of Keith McCaffery’s influence in its design and traditions.”

   The Wisconsin Conservation Department hired McCaffery in 1963 to study forest habitats. By the 1970s, after the WCD became the DNR, McCaffery helped develop and improve the agency’s methods for monitoring deer herds through trail surveys, road-kill indexes, pellet counts, winter-loss surveys, and the “sex-age-kill” population model. As part of that effort, he coordinated statewide surveys on deer aging, winter severity, deer densities, browsing impacts on trees, and summer fawn sightings.

Former Wisconsin deer biologist Keith McCaffery, seen here in 2010 in his Rhinelander office, endured many contentious disputes over white-tailed deer during his long career, which began in 1963. — Patrick Durkin photos

   McCaffery retired as Wisconsin’s state deer biologist in 2000 after 37 years of public service. By then he had written nearly 90 scientific reports and publications to help guide wildlife policies.

   But then he failed miserably at retirement.

   Each weekday the next 20 years, McCaffery kept walking that half-mile between home and his DNR desk in Rhinelander. He spent those two decades as an unpaid deer expert, loyally answering his DNR landline. If he stepped away, callers heard his voice-mail greeting: “This is McCaffery. If you want to talk deer, leave a message.”

   Not until COVID-19 shuttered all DNR offices in 2020 did McCaffery stay home, but he still talks deer if you call.

   During his failed retirement, McCaffery wrote nearly 60 deer-management articles for newspapers, magazines and online publications. He also helped prepare six deer-focused books and peer-reviewed manuscripts for Wildlife Monographs, the Wildlife Society Bulletin, Natural Areas Journal, and Journal of Wildlife Management. In between, he helped study forest habitats, flying squirrels, spruce grouse and ruffed grouse.

   “I had sympathetic supervisors who knew I didn’t have many hobbies,” McCaffery said. “But I had institutional memory, so they gave me other things to work on.”

These signs from Wisconsin’s Northwoods in the 1950s and ’60s show that deer management often pits science and research against popular beliefs.

   Not everyone appreciated McCaffery’s volunteerism, of course. From 2007 to 2010, he survived two attempts by Assembly Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, to bar him from his DNR desk in Rhinelander. McCaffery credits then DNR Secretary Matt Frank for shielding him from Gundy’s wrath.

   McCaffery was a battle-tested biologist by then. During the 1980s and ’90s, he endured withering attacks by Francis “Bill” Murphy, longtime chairman of the 360-citizen Wisconsin Conservation Congress. Though Murphy often promised McCaffery’s pelt to WCC delegates, his knife never broke skin.

   Why such spite? Partly because McCaffery simply smiled and stood behind the DNR’s deer-population estimates. He calmly defended DNR deer data, explained why hunters should shoot more female deer, and encouraged them to shoot whatever buck they pleased, no matter its age or antler size.

   Some folks never appreciated McCaffery’s wit and calm self-confidence. In fact, his supervisors sometimes forbid him from attending WCC workshops, fearing his humor and unflappable nature would further fluster Murphy and his toadies.

   Plus, the WCC couldn’t dismiss him as an outsider. McCaffery was one of them; a lifelong hunter who understood hunting’s passions and lived its traditions. He was a serious bowhunter, he owns hunting land near Rhinelander, and for 60 years he hunted November’s gun season with his family from a tent camp in the Price County Forest.

   Still, McCaffery was never a big-buck hunter. He’s not interested in stalking mythical monster bucks he calls “Schlaupus,” which carry 17 points per antler. He treasures a 3-pound coffee can crammed with the spikes and small forked antlers of young Northwoods bucks he’s shot.

   McCaffery also opposes managing deer herds for older, bigger-antlered bucks. And he scorns the “antler porn” and “hornography” of hunting’s TV shows and magazines. He especially dislikes magazines featuring “monster bucks,” with cover blurbs peddling false promises like “5 Tips for Bagging Big Bucks.”

   McCaffery says it reminds him of newsstand tabloids from his teens. “Those headlines screamed things like, ‘Triple Your Sex Life!’” McCaffery said. “I’d reach for the magazine but stop myself, realizing 3 times 0 is still zero. That’s about the same odds hunters have of shooting record-book bucks.”

   McCaffery also seems oblivious to antler scores, whether it’s for the Boone and Crockett Club or archery’s Pope and Young Club. Lou Cornicelli, a fellow deer biologist, jokes that McCaffery cares more about the “Button and Crock-Pot Club.”

   Throughout his career, McCaffery never dodged media interviews, even when reporters doubted the DNR’s deer-population estimates. During the 1990s an Associated Press reporter said DNR estimates suggest there’s a deer behind every tree in Wisconsin. McCaffery smiled and paused. Being a trained forester, he made a quick calculation and jokingly responded: “It’s probably closer to one deer for every 3,000 trees.”

   The reporter printed the quote, earning McCaffery a rebuke from DNR brass in Madison. “My supervisor said I should’ve sanitized my comments and stayed above the fray,” McCaffery said. “But another guy in Madison thought it was a great answer, and found some humor in it.”

   McCaffery said he loved his 57 years of DNR work, but concedes feeling frustrated after 2010 as governors Scott Walker and Tony Evers squelched DNR communications. “I was hoping things would improve when Evers won in 2018, but he’s kind of kept the gag policies Walker imposed,” McCaffery said.

   In other words, Wisconsin is lucky McCaffery served when he did. Though politics and chronic wasting disease have darkened Wisconsin’s once proud deer-management program this century, they haven’t erased McCaffery’s legacy.

   It still abides, awaiting a lasting embrace by future generations of hunter-conservationists.