![]() ![]() The first managed elk hunt in Wisconsin history opened Oct. It’s just one of those things I’ll never forget, especially because of the people I met along the way on my journey and the things I got to experience.” Because I’ll never get to hunt elk in Wisconsin again. Then after a few minutes, it made me think - you know what, I’m a little bit sad. “And then when I shot it and it went down, I was very excited because I knew I had a nice elk. You’re looking through the sights and … I’ve hunted enough deer where you calm yourself and don’t rush the shot. You just see it’s a very nice animal out there. 300 Winchester Short Magnum rifle at that moment, Vandertie said, “You’re not thinking about getting the first legal elk in the state hunt. ![]() The 6X6 bull (six points on each side of its antlers) weighed roughly 800 pounds and fell just 40 feet from where it was first shot. 8, while hunting near Clam Lake in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Vandertie used a pair of perfectly placed shots to down an impressive bull elk from 160 yards away. Vandertie, who along with his wife, Julie, owns Doorco Holsteins in the Door County town of Brussels, earned his place in Wisconsin lore this month by harvesting the first legal elk in the state’s inaugural managed elk hunt. Now, the 56-year-old Vandertie finds himself with a new claim to fame, and it doesn’t have anything to do with dairy farming. ![]() Doorco Holsteins’ honors started when Dan’s parents owned the farm. The Holstein Association USA’s longest-running award honors top registered Holstein homebred herds based on elite milk production and classification scores. The landscape has changed, Spiegel says, but with careful attention, the once native elk population could be restored in the state of Wisconsin.For years, Dan Vandertie’s claim to fame were the 43 consecutive awards his Doorco Holsteins dairy farm received as Progressive Breeders’ Registry honorees. Elk are still relatively new in the state of Wisconsin, so we’re trying to grow them slowly so that we can adjust to conflicts that occur on the landscape.” “We’re trying to set it up like a marathon,” he says. Spiegel says it’ll take a while to reach that goal, but that’s okay. Spiegel says the herd grows by about 10 to 20 percent each year, which slowly pushes the state closer to its population goal of 1,400 animals for the Clam Lake herd. There are now about 460 elk in Wisconsin. That’s when the state imported 25 elk from Yellowstone to establish a herd near Clam Lake. However, another attempt decades later in 1995 proved successful. That resource was very valuable to the people living in the area from a sustainability standpoint.” “So, you’ve got a large animal on the landscape that could feed a lot of mouths or a few mouths for a long period of time. “Part of that issue was that was happening right during the Great Depression,” Spiegel says. The first time, in 1910, failed because of overharvest. Since elk were extirpated from the state in the 1800s, the government has tried several times to reintroduce the species. “The reason we know this is because it actually had a shipping receipt for a meat market that was attached to that animal.” ![]() “The last known elk in the state of Wisconsin was killed in 1886, and that would have been west of the Stevens Point area,” says wildlife biologist Josh Spiegel, who manages elk for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Before European settlers made their way to the Midwest, elk roamed Wisconsin much like they do now in the Great Plains.īut as pioneers built homes, they wiped the animal out of the state. ![]()
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