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I n 1979, an editor for the La Farge Epitaph made verbal war on deer hunters. “The deer season has come and gone,” he stated flatly. “The red shirts, the four wheel drives, the vans, no longer creep by my farm with rifles ready and eyeballs staring at the hillsides. Strangers, people from God knows where, keeping me pinned down beneath my rock as the boom-boom-boom of high powered rifles blast all around for nine tedious days.” The annual deer hunt was a fact of rural life, yet remarkably here was a local farmer questioning the ritual. “Why must I wear a blaze orange jacket and shiver in abject fear as I journey out to spread a load of cow poop on my rocky acres?” he asked. “Where in the hell were those trespassers and hillside scanners when it was tax paying time?”1 Property boundaries are essential but not sufficient for answering this editorial. They are essential because part of the answer lay in the complicated relationship of the new Corps land to the land surrounding it. From the beginning this involved private and public property whose boundaries were at once geographical, legal, and as the La Farge Epitaph made crystal clear, psychological. Property boundaries were also natural in that they manifested themselves on the landscape. But property boundaries cannot fully explain a property dynamic in which people wear blaze orange every fall to signal their presence on the land. Nor are they sufficient for understanding property dynamics as inherently ecological. This chapter will explore another form of land tenure—common property . Though not a household word, common property is nonetheless an essential part of the answer to “why?” and “where in the hell?” Initially the chapter sets a broad context for change on and off the Corps land. But its central focus will be on fusions: of the human-influenced landscape to the 154 7 Deer Unlimited wildlife-influenced landscape, and of common property regimes to wild game regulation. Almost immediately after the Corps of Engineers had acquired land for the La Farge dam, fields and woodlots on the property began reverting to a wilder condition. The herbaceous layer of the forest floor rebounded from a history of cattle grazing.2 Jack in the Pulpit, a spring ephemeral, enjoyed a comeback, as did bloodroot, wild ginger, dutchman’s breeches, and large trillium. Wild geranium became a common sight under stands of oak in early summer, while hog peanut showed itself in August and September. In the bottomlands, pasture and cropland regenerated to wet meadow and riparian forests, whose silvery soft maples, cottonwoods, and droopy willows created a new buffer along the river. An aggressive mix of goldenrod and quackgrass colonized old agricultural fields in the drier uplands. Competing with forbs and grasses were woody plants—aspen, elm, box elder, and staghorn sumac on the sunny edges between fields and roads. Led by these hardy pioneers, a process of old field succession Deer Unlimited 155 Riparian regeneration on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property along the Kickapoo River. Much of the Corps land reverted to a wilder condition. (Courtesy of Wolfgang Hoffmann) began. A few relicts remained of old private property boundaries. The occasional gnarled apple tree stood its ground. A Norway spruce looked out of place without a house and yard to shade. These were touchstones for another era. While the forest grew wilder, it was not left alone. The Corps land had a real presence in the region. “The Fed” some people started to call it, but nickname aside, no authority enforced rules there. The Corps of Engineers had jurisdiction, but without a dam to build the agency largely withdrew from the scene. Many people started to blaze paths across the land. During winter months snowmobilers roared through, and cross-country skiers whooshed up and down hills, across old fields, and into the woods. Come early spring, hikers and horseback riders tested how passable the paths were. By summer they could fully enjoy the shade of the forest. Bow hunters opened deer season in the fall, followed by rifle hunters. Then the place reverberated with gunshots. Gutted deer hung by vehicles parked at the forest’s edge. Among the first people to make a place for themselves in the forest were thrill seekers in pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles. For twenty years after the demise of the dam, they were the designated forest...

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