Contractors pick up road-kill deer YEARS AGO, picking up roadkilled deer was a job for conservation wardens. With the soaring number of car-deer collisions, the DNR decided the wardens had better things to do, so it turned it over to contractors. "Occasionally we still pick them up if there is a problem with a contract or if there is a deer in a bad location, like in the middle of downtown where it is a public eyesore," said Warden Barry Meister. But mostly a contractor does it. In fiscal year 1999-2000, said Meister, the contractor picked up 487 deer in Portage County, clearly a lot of venison. But by no means was that the roadkill total. Some injured deer wandered off into the woods to die, out of the sight of motorists and the roadkill contractor. Others were taken home by private citizens, which didn't used to be legal, but is now. What you do, said Meister, is get a free car-kill deer tag from a law enforcement officer at the scene of the accident. Or, after receiving authorization from the Sheriff's Department, you may haul it to the sheriff's office or to a cooperating station to get a tag. In Portage County, the stations are Harvey's Corner Pub in Ellis and Swan Oil in Almond. Also, Meister said he or Warden Roy Kubisiak will tag a roadkill if they're available and nearby. The list of roadkills that need picking up is kept by the Sheriff's Department. Anyone can report a dead deer, said Meister, but mostly they're called in by deputies, county highway crews and wardens. The list is faxed daily to the contractor, and he's supposed to pick up the roadkills in 24 to 48 hours, depending on the time of the year. "Most contractors dispose of the deer at a landfill, as does ours," Meister said. "In some counties they are taken to rendering plants and I'm sure there are other methods out there." * * * JOHN ROWE, WHO lives on the Wisconsin River above Stevens Point, says people have been catching sturgeons up there, but not the 60- and 70-inchers they spear on Lake Winnebago. More like 15-inchers. These are sturgeon the DNR planted over the last few years as fingerlings. Bigger ones, some around 40 inches long, were stocked 10 years ago. They came from the lower Wisconsin River, but that source dried up because of concerns that there were really no sturgeons to spare down there. So the DNR began using little ones from the Wild Rose hatchery. It's not clear how well sturgeons are doing here because they're hard to census. The ones John told me about are the first I'd heard of for some time. Sturgeons are very visible on the Wolf River during the spring spawning run. Too visible, in fact, and poachers used to snag them for their caviar until the DNR started stationing volunteer guards along the banks. The sturgeons in the Stevens Point Flowage, even the ones planted as 40-inchers, are probably too young to reproduce, although some of the older ones may be getting close, assuming they've survived. A female sturgeon may be as old as 25 years before it spawns the first time, and then it only spawns every four to six years. There's a limited hook-and-line sturgeon season in some parts of the state, but not here. Maybe someday, but it's a long way off. (John Rowe said the people who caught the sturgeons on the river here were fishing for something else with a gob of worms and released them unharmed.) Reintroduction of sturgeons is part of a DNR plan to return them to all parts of their historic range where there's a reasonable chance of developing a self-sustaining population. Plenty of sturgeon records exist in this part of the Wisconsin River from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sightings, some of which may have been authentic, were occasionally reported until fairly recent times. Pollution, dams which blocked access to spawning areas, and perhaps poaching wiped out the species in the upper stretches of the Wisconsin River. Today the Lower Wisconsin, a few other rivers and the Lake Winnebago system are about the only places in Wisconsin that have sturgeon. Sturgeon spawning takes place in rocky areas. Is there enough of that on the Wisconsin River between the DuBay and Stevens Point dams? Maybe not, but the habitat could be created. Sturgeons, comprised of many subspecies, are in trouble in much of the world, and the Wisconsin population is one of the healthier ones. The state's biggest concentration of sturgeons is in Lake Winnebago and connecting lakes. The ones we have here are called lake sturgeons, even though they're in a river. They may live close to a century and grow to enormous size. There was a report of one from Lake Michigan that was eight feet long and weighed 310 pounds. And that's small compared to the giants found in some parts of the world. Despite their size they're harmless, but it has to be a jarring experience for a swimmer to meet one face to face. Ask Kent Hall. A now-retired biology professor at UW-Stevens Point, Hall used to preserve animals for biological dissection. One day, while looking for fresh-water mussels on the Little Wolf River below the Manawa dam, he met a sturgeon. "I was diving in about 15 or 20 feet of water - quite murky," said Hall, "when I noted a form passing in front of my face mask. The fish completely passed in front of me with that 'shark-tail' going last. It was a huge fish, several feet long. I nearly swallowed my tongue - heart stopped beating on that one. Of course, they wouldn't hurt you, but the conditions in which I saw it were about as bad as meeting Godzilla in a dark alley." Sturgeons are known to travel. One planted above Stevens Point in 1991 wound up in Wisconsin Rapids, several intervening dams proving no obstacle. One from the Lake Winnebago system traveled down the Fox River into Green Bay and Lake Michigan and wound up in Lake St. Claire near Detroit, between Lakes Huron and Erie. * * * A BLOCKED PIPE resulted in a 185,000-gallon sewage spill into the Little Plover River in the village of Plover May 7. Yet it didn't affect fish or other aquatic life in this trout stream, according to Joseph Behlen, a DNR wastewater engineer. The reasons were two-fold. First, a lot of water was coming down the Little Plover at that time. "The high stream flows and rapid re-aeration in this area assimilated the bypass with no adverse effects," said Behlen. Also, the spill took place well downstream, not far from where it joins the Wisconsin River. It occurred at Okray Avenue, below Springville Pond. "The river at this point is a warm water sport fish classification and ranked 'very poor' even at this classification," Behlen said. "Upstream from Springville Pond the stream is a cold water fishery. So, in short, no trout habitat was impacted." * * * ANCIENT OUTDOOR HISTORY: A sturgeon weighing 49-1/2 pounds was caught here last week. It was caught in a mill rack and was pulled out with cant hooks by Arnie Shannon and an assistant. (Gazette, June 8, 1910)