Hunting Season: Lulu Lake State Natural Area
December 1, 2025 | Topics: Places, Stories
By Eddee Daniel
To everything there is a season…, and right now it is hunting season. Some hunt for sport, some for subsistence. Some, perhaps less goal-oriented, head out into the woods in their high-visibility outerwear merely for the adventure, for an opportunity to spend a late autumn afternoon under the dwindling sunlight, breathing in the heady aroma of decaying leaves. Or so I want to believe, for it aligns with my own aspirations.
Gravel crunches under my tires as I pull into the small lot on the southeast corner of Lulu Lake State Natural Area. A large black pickup truck rests peacefully in one corner. Stepping out of my car, the air is surprisingly warm. I remove the sweater I expected to need under my light jacket and, replacing the jacket, cover it with the fluorescent yellow vest I keep in my trunk for these occasions. I top it off with a scarlet Wisconsin Badgers baseball cap to help announce the fact: I am not a deer. Then I grab my weapon of choice, a newly acquired Nikon Z6III mirrorless digital 35mm, and head into the woods ready for the hunt.
The trail, an old dirt road, descends through a young stand of plantation pines, thin and straight, like a regiment of eager new recruits. Blue water gleams in the distance through the trees, but the trail bends away from it, curves around a knoll bristling with the twisted trunks and barren branches of ancient hardwoods. Coming around the other side of the knoll, I discover the wetland stretching all the way around the far side. I leave the dirt track for a narrow footpath pressed into the grasses leading towards the cattails. At the edge a pale, rusted corrugated metal hunting blind sits, facing away towards open water. As I near it I wonder if I’ll chance upon a hunter. Then, even before I come around to its vacant, caved-in front, I kick myself for thinking I’d find a deer hunter in a duck blind.
Back on the trail I come to a place where it splits. Leaving the ravine, I take the fork leading up to the ridge that encircles the wetland, looking for picturesque views across its expanse, hoping for a glimpse of wildlife. The closest I come is a fur-threaded clump of coyote scat and the sight of numerous muskrat lodges that pimple the surface of the water. I count at least a dozen. I crunch down the slope through desiccated leaves, wrestling with briars, seeking the best vantage from which to shoot.
Later the trail leads me out of the woods to a vast treeless grassland, stunning in its breadth and uniformity. Leaving the trail that skirts the edge, I plunge into the chest-high grass. The stems sway with the breeze, the tassel-like seed heads blaze in the rays of the sun like thousands of tiny flares. Pawing the stems aside as I walk feels a bit like swimming. The prairie slopes gradually downhill as I wade to the west.
A few scraggly trees begin to pop up from among the grasses. Then towards the bottom, near where the prairie yields to another woodland, I spot a domed, camouflage-patterned hunting blind nestled between two trees; large enough, it seems to me, to sleep in. If it weren’t hunting season I might mistake it for a tent staked out in a backwoods campsite. Hesitant to trust entirely to my red cap and yellow vest in the tall grass, I wade my way back to the trail.
Far down the track two hunters are trudging slowly up the slight rise towards me, rifles slung casually across their shoulders. One, a gray-haired man with a jaunty mustache in a red-checked flannel shirt and camo pants, drags a cart behind him. His companion, a young woman in matching blaze orange sweatshirt and knit cap, I take to be his daughter, or more likely granddaughter. When they near, the man greets me pleasantly. I respond in kind and ask if they’ve gotten a deer, though by now I can see that his cart is empty save for an orange jacket. He confesses cheerfully to going home empty-handed.
He looks at me inquisitively, noting the absence of a rifle. I raise my camera and say, this is what I shoot with. He smiles. I don’t mention my quarry or that I’ve already taken several silent shots: the two of them already in the bag. I wonder aloud about the blind up against the trees. He’s here every weekend, the man tells me. Is he in there now, I ask. He shrugs. No way of knowing. We part. They keep on trudging. She never says a word.
After a while I decide that my hunt has been successful enough and head back using a different trail parallel to the one I have been following. Before long I spy, about thirty yards into the woods off to my right, a spot of blaze orange part way up a small tree. The hunter seems to be standing in a cage-like contraption. As I watch he somehow causes it to inch higher on the straight trunk. Crashing cautiously through the underbrush, I make my way closer. He turns at the noise. I wave. He waves in return. I ask if I can photograph his progress. (I do not say “I’d like to shoot you.”) He assents. Then continues to ratchet his temporary blind up the tree in painstakingly small increments. The sun shines obliquely through the pines, already low to the horizon in the mid-afternoon. The light dimming by the minute. I ask how long he plans to be up in the tree. He grins and says, a couple weeks. I crash back to the trail. The forest grows quiet again. The hunter rises inch by inch.
I often avoid popular hunting grounds like this during hunting season. Less out of fear for my own safety than out of a sense of propriety, of things being what they are rather than what we wish them to be. Hunters in their secret lairs, hikers wandering without reservation in parks that prohibit hunting. Both in country foreign to that other activity characteristic of the season: the frenzied hunt for bargains at the shopping mall. For we are alike in one respect, the hunter and the hiker, attuned as we are to the call of the wild, comfortable in solitary, patient pursuits while the tumult of society swirls around us like a distant but unrelenting storm. The trail leads me through a hollow between sheltering hills covered in oak, basswood, maple and hickory, all stripped bare by the season. Suddenly a sharp-shinned hawk swoops soundlessly from among them, strikes something invisible in the grass fifty yards ahead. In the afternoon twilight it lifts its wings, takes flight, a limp form dangling from its talons.
The black pickup has been replaced by a white pickup. Probably the grandfather/granddaughter team exchanged for the hunter with the self-climbing blind. From some distance away I hear the pop, pop of a rifle. Silence resumes. I savor it for a minute longer…, then turn my key in the ignition, breaking the spell.
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For more information about Lulu Lake State Natural Area go to our Find-a-Park page.
Related stories:
Restoring Lulu Lake State Natural Area’s Cherished Ecosystems (Lulu Lake)
Genesee Oak Opening and Fen SNA: Enchantment and adventure! (Hunting)
Eddee Daniel, writer/photographer, is a board member of Preserve Our Parks, the Project Director of A Wealth of Nature, and editor of The Natural Realm blog. Read more or subscribe at awealthofnature.org. Also available by arrangement for group presentations and guided tours.
The Natural Realm blog is part of A Wealth of Nature, which is a project of Preserve Our Parks.
About Preserve Our Parks
Preserve Our Parks, Inc. is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of parks and green spaces. Our mission: To advocate for and promote Milwaukee area parks and open spaces and to strive to protect the tenets of Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine.
For more than 25 years, we have been a leader in advocating for the protection of Milwaukee County park lands, halting many proposals to develop, privatize, or sell local parkland and lakefront spaces. More information about POP, including past accomplishments, is available at www.preserveourparks.org.