Tiffany Can’t Tell Trivial from Crucial on Wisconsin's Conservation Issues
Unlike some politicians who pander to hunters when seeking their votes, gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany doesn’t pretend to be a hunter or angler.
He’s to be commended for that. President Bill Clinton and wannabe president John Kerry once play-acted as waterfowlers, and former Gov. Scott Walker feigned interest in deer hunting. Walker bought his first deer hunting license at age 39 in 2007, three years before running for governor. Two years after losing that job, he bought his last deer license on Nov. 20, 2020, and shot his only deer the next day.
Walker also pretended to like fishing, but is best remembered for holding a spinning rod upside and reeling backward while hosting the 2012 Wisconsin Governor’s Fishing Opener.
But Tiffany? Though he passionately panders to the hunting and fishing communities, he concedes he’s no hunter or angler. He isn’t just being modest. According to Wisconsin’s automated license issuance system, Tiffany’s latest purchases were a “sports” hunting license in 2008, a one-day fishing license in 2022, and three pontoon-boat registrations and transfers from 2018 to 2022.
Tiffany’s opponent in November’s election, David Crowley, also has a thin outdoors resume. ALIS records, which date to 1999, show Crowley has never held a hunting license, but he bought his first fishing license in 2016, and his first spousal fishing license in 2025. Safe to say, Crowley seldom, if ever, wears camo, drives walleye boats, or airs out blaze-orange coveralls on the porch before gun season.
Politicians often try to win support from hunters, even when they have little personal knowledge of hunting or its conservation heritage. — Patrick Durkin photo
He probably doesn’t have a go-to taxidermist in his contacts, either. Crowley seems like your typical Wisconsin Democrat. He likely eats deer sausage when offered a chunk, but hopes you won’t ask about his plans for handling chronic wasting disease. He does, however, support well-regulated wolf hunts.
Free advice, Mr. Crowley: Continue to not pander to outdoorsmen, but remind everyone that the Department of Natural Resources expertly administered three wolf hunting/trapping seasons in 2012, 2013 and 2014 after President Obama's administration removed gray wolves from the federal Endangered Species List.
Though Tiffany acknowledges his shallow outdoors interests, he has especially loved demagoguing about deer and wolves the past 15 years. He’s done it as an assemblyman, state senator and U.S. congressman. Tiffany impulsively pushes laws and ideas that are big on emotion and sparse on reason. Consider:
-- In 2011, Tiffany led efforts to outlaw earn-a-buck regulations and four-day October gun-hunts to control deer herds and slow CWD’s spread. But he never worried how that would unleash both across Wisconsin’s farm country. Without those targeted rules and hunts, Wisconsin’s statewide herd nearly doubled, surging from midwinter estimates of 1.06 million deer in 2011 to 1.9 million in 2025, while CWD now infects wild deer in 51 of 72 counties.
-- In 2012, Tiffany co-signed a law that nine years later forced the DNR to hastily hold the February 2021 wolf hunt that killed 218 wolves, exceeding not only the state’s quota of 119 wolves but also the Ojibwe tribe’s allotment of 81. Ever since, wolf-hunting critics nationwide cite that failure as the prime example of why state wildlife agencies can’t be trusted to manage wolves. In contrast, when the DNR had time to plan and administer the 2012, 2013 and 2014 wolf seasons, hunters and trappers exceeded their quotas by a combined total of 11 wolves: one in 2012, six in 2013 and four in 2014.
-- In 2013, in response to anti-mining protests near Mellen, Tiffany wrote a bill to forbid public access to the mine site, even though the land was enrolled in Wisconsin’s forest management program. As such, the site’s landowners were receiving nearly $892,000 in tax breaks in exchange for public access by hunters, hikers, anglers and campers. Tiffany’s bill would have closed that access in exchange for a $7,604 annual tax on the 3,520 acres, or 46 cents per acre. Tiffany’s bill went nowhere.
-- In 2012, in response to deer czar James Kroll’s report on deer management, Tiffany issued a press release calling for “replacement of the DNR’s Big Game Management Unit,” but didn’t specify what constitutes the “unit,” its membership, or who should do the firing.
-- In 2015, Tiffany led efforts that eliminated 18 Ph.D. research jobs in the DNR while claiming he had no vendetta against the agency’s science services bureau. “I’m not saying they should be fired,” he told me in an interview. “I’m just saying those people should be integrated into the field.” When reminded he called for firing the agency’s “big-game unit” three years earlier, he denied it until I read him his July 11, 2012, press release bearing his letterhead.
-- In 2022, Tiffany co-signed a bill by Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Alabama, to eliminate the popular Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Conservation Act, which had provided Wisconsin a record $43.7 million that year, up from $32.4 million in 2021. The P-R Act imposes an 11% tax on firearms, ammunition and archery equipment, and redistributes the revenues to states for conservation work, shooting ranges and outdoor education. During its history, the act has generated over $15 billion for conservation funding nationwide. Wisconsin received nearly $23.5 million in P-R funding this year.
When interviewed in July 2022 and asked why he co-signed Clyde’s so-called “RETURN our Constitutional Rights Act,” Tiffany told me he viewed it as “pushback against those who are trying to take away gun rights.” Tiffany acknowledged he didn’t know the P-R Act dated to 1937, and that it has long been supported by the NRA, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Archery Trade Association, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and countless other outdoors organizations.
Fellow Wisconsin congressman Glenn Grothman also co-signed Clyde’s bill, but soon removed his name from it. Grothman likely learned the act’s popularity with the hunting community, as did five other GOP congressmen who removed their signatures, including Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin, now the U.S. secretary of homeland security.
Tiffany, however, remained a co-sponsor when the bill was referred to committee, where it died when the 117thCongress closed in January 2023.
And now, as he runs for governor, Tiffany says he will consider splitting the DNR to remove fishing, hunting, trapping and wildlife from the agency’s environmental programs.
Yawn.
Much like dead gizzard shad fouling Lake Winnebago, this tired, wasteful idea has washed ashore regularly the past 45 years during gubernatorial elections.
As usual, Tiffany’s weak grasp of conservation matters causes him to parrot complaints and recycle bad ideas that benefit no one.
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