Landscapes Endure Despite Their Varied Users and Abusers

   While hunting turkeys on public lands not far from Eau Claire in mid-May, I noticed a unique property-boundary sign nailed to a red oak.

   The old yellow sign read: “WILDLIFE SAFETY ZONE” in bold, black letters on the top two lines. The details followed: “NO HUNTING, FISHING, TRAPPING, OR MOTORIZED VEHICLES. HIKING, PHOTOGRAPHY AND NATURE STUDY PERMITTED.”

   The landowners’ names were at the bottom, but my onX Maps app listed a different name for the owner. Apparently, the property had been sold, presumably to a hiker, photographer or student of nature. Or, ideally, someone who’s all three.

   Still, the sign kind of confused me. No motorized vehicles? Duh. You need a sign to learn that? When I parked my truck a half-mile away at the road’s end, only a fool would have tried driving farther through the marsh, rocks, feeder creek, steep sidehills and impenetrable brush, vines and trees.

   Meanwhile, what about birders, mushroom hunters and ramp harvesters; or campers and dog-walkers? Did the sign-maker run out of room? Either way, what makes those outdoor pursuits harmless? Human intrusions for any purpose can pester and disturb nesting birds, fledglings and other wildlife during vulnerable periods in life.

Hunters, anglers and other hobbyists find infinite ways to use and abuse the lands we visit or occupy.     — Patrick Durkin photos

   Besides, that yellow sign seemed judgmental, maybe even prejudiced. After all, I fit every hobby it listed or overlooked. I’m a licensed hunter, angler and trapper; an unlicensed hiker, photographer and nature student; and an incompetent forager, birder and lepidopterist (butterfly chaser). Not only that, but I’m also a proud ophidiophobe (I fear and avoid snakes).

   And given my ankle-high success rates as a hunter and angler, it’s irrational to exclude me from any “safety zone,” be it for fish, game or furbearers. I probably hike farther, take more photos, and study more bird, mushroom and plant-ID apps with my iPhone than most folks.

   In fact, one reason for my mediocrity as a predator might be my curiosity about stuff I see or carry off while pursuing fish and wildlife. For instance, I noticed rusting staples driven almost haphazardly across the yellow sign’s plastic surface, holding it flat atop a thin aluminum sheet with a wooden backing. At the sign’s center, long nails held everything tightly to the oak’s trunk, whose bark was covered in lichens and moss.

This custom-made sign bordering public lands specifies which outdoor activity the landowners welcome on their property.

   Hmm. I have an app that identifies lichens, another for plants and trees, another for mushrooms, and yet another for birdcalls. I soon learned the bark’s fissures were covered with a crustose lichen – or Lecanora allophane, for folks who know Latin.

   My iPhone app also noticed the Lecanora allophane lichen was interspersed with a dark green moss and yet another lichen, the thallus, which highlights the bark’s deep ridges and furrows.

   Having satisfied that curiosity, I returned the smartphone to a cargo pocket and dwelled further on the sign’s slights. Then I got distracted again, realizing that every thrush, corvid, warbler and woodpecker native to Wisconsin seemed to be singing, except the one I was hunting: the wild turkey.

Patrick Durkin often hunts Wisconsin’s public lands for deer and wild turkeys.

   So, as I continued standing on the public’s side of the fence, I pulled my phone back out and pressed Cornell University’s “Merlin” bird ID app into service. Unfortunately, so many different birds were chirping and chipping that I couldn’t decipher which sound matched the bird lighting my app. And when I could match a song to a bird face, it was usually one I’ve known since childhood, whether it’s a cardinal’s tune or a robin’s gibberish. Learning new bird songs is much like remembering names of people I just met: I don’t.

   As I continued up the hill and down a dale, angling across a bottomlands of skunk cabbage, I noticed flowers I’ve seldom seen since childhood. I recalled my paternal grandmother, Ursula Fischenich Durkin, nurturing trilliums, lady slippers and jack-in-the-pulpits that bordered our woodlot on Madison’s west side. Though I’ve never seen a lady-slipper flower since the early 1970s, here was a jack-in-the-pulpit in the dale and trilliums a few yards uphill.

Trilliums, left, and a jack-in-the-pulpit are two beautiful flowers native to Wisconsin.

   Seeing those trilliums reminded me of the late great Harold C. “Bud” Jordahl (1926-2010), a talented government servant who shaped many state and national conservation policies. Whenever Jordahl heard Richland County’s hunters complain of too few deer in the years before chronic wasting disease, he asked when they last saw a trillium. Hungry deer alter landscapes, and lands without trilliums suggest deer overabundance.

   As I continued, I plucked a handful of morel and pheasant-back mushrooms, wrapping them in the indestructible mylar skins of birthday balloons I found earlier. Is it possible to spend a half-day in the woods – be it Wisconsin, Idaho or Arizona – without finding the forever remnants of birthday balloons littering our lands?

   This ancient, long-abandoned combine now rusts on public lands not far from Eau Claire, left behind when the one-time farm became state-owned property.

I smugly wondered how much more litter we’d find if not for hunters picking up soda cans, jerky wrappers and water bottles tossed by others. But then I conceded my fellow hunters were among those culprits as I picked up discarded handwarmers, deer-scent bottles and scent-wicks a few steps later. Why is it so hard to carry out wrappers and containers once we’ve used or consumed their contents?

   Later that day, while navigating my exit, I found the remnants of an ancient farm implement; a combine of some sort abandoned beside a former crop-field that nature was reclaiming with box elders, poplars, raspberry canes and sundry other early-successional shrubs and trees.

Pheasant-back and morels are popular targets for foragers and mushroom hunters in spring.

   I acknowledged the reminder: Whether we’re hunters, farmers, hikers or birders, all lands public or private eventually move on without us.

   Still, can’t we all respect them — and each other — no matter our interests?

Mylar birthday balloons litter Wisconsin’s woodlots and vast Northern forests.