You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
This is Raised in the Woods Summertime Edition.
I'm Joel Clayfish.
I'm Jack to be here.
You know,
I think of summer in Wisconsin as the time to get out there, enjoy the ditch asparagus, pick yourself some lilies by the side of the road.
I know that anything I can grab to forage, fish or hunt.
Chef Lawton.
Chef Ellie Lawton can put it together in a gourmet meal, and she's also pretty good at hosting this radio stuff, Chef Lawton.
absolutely blown away with if you look and if you are curious and you want to get around this, the great states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, all the states that raised in the woods broadcasts into on Saturdays at 11 AM.
I'm just thrilled all the stuff we find to do at any time of the year blows my mind.
Geez, I don't know, take a walk outside, look around.
There's literally in the summer, you can walk into any store, any restaurant, any bar, cause there's one of those on every corner, and there are flyers posted everywhere for a thousand things to do.
And that's not even including social media.
We've got there is so much stuff to do.
It's so wonderful.
You've got you.
Here's what blows me away.
And I'm going to go right into the wilds of the week.
We're going to introduce our guests here.
And we're going to go right into the wilds of the week.
James Cooper is here from Haligan Outdoors.
He is the state's
only frog gigging guide, which blows my mind.
James, welcome back to the show.
Great to have you.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
It's great to be back.
right?
Halligan Outdoor Guide.
I do birthday parties, bachelorette parties, nursing
on the show.
She's back, yeah.
It's great.
It's fantastic.
So I was doing my regular job downtown Milwaukee.
I was seeing a client, I don't know, about a month ago.
It was a lovely afternoon.
And when I pulled up for my client meeting, I noticed their cars.
It's a migratory bird management.
And I said to my coworker,
What do you think those people do?
This is super exciting.
They're doing something with birds.
I'm gonna go talk to them after our meeting and they're like, oh my God, of course you would.
So luckily when we left the meeting, they were standing on the sidewalk and so I zoomed across the street and I'm like, hi.
Let's talk about birds.
I want to know everything that you do.
And they're like, what the heck is this
crazy lady?
Anything
This past week, I actually, I went to Lake Park in Milwaukee.
They were having a monarch planting event.
Whoa!
You guys,
there's so
things to do.
Yeah, I just saw it on Instagram.
My best friend sent it to me.
She couldn't come, so I dragged my husband.
Yeah, it was about 4,000.
and plants.
The event was from 10 to two.
We were done by 10 30 because there was just that many volunteers there ready to go.
Yep.
Exactly.
Yeah.
They're creating a really large flyway there.
There's a lot of native priority there already.
And we just added
4,000 more.
I
Did you know before we leave this topic, do you know the other words in other languages for butterflies?
Do you know any other words?
I don't think I do.
Okay.
Well, in German, it's called a fleeter mouse, which basically means a flying mouse and leave it to the Germans to have a clumsy word for
it.
I feel like that's the softest German word I've ever heard.
for more
so while we're
cool?
Nothing as exciting as Ava, but since we do work outside, a lot of rooftops downtown Milwaukee and a lot of bird poop on my head.
I've been told that for a long time.
I'm still waiting for it
lottery
condensed in one
I do lightning bugs.
Speaking of lightning bugs, does that fall under your jurisdiction?
No, no, they're not a game species.
Oh, they are, but they're really hard to hit.
Right.
I don't think they make a shotgun gauge small enough.
No, I'm kidding.
For those of you who are about to write in that was a joke, not out there.
haunting fireflies.
deal with
most of my job.
I'll just say it confidently and most people believe what I'm talking about.
Do you get out in the outdoors?
Canada goose banding season.
So so cool.
The time of the year.
So
Fortunately, after all the big concern about the bird
lab and reducing their funding.
Actually USGS ended up with more money than what was what they were asking for.
So a bunch of people, I think some really influential people that liked banding birds and shooting banded birds started talking to people and all of a sudden it got fully funded.
So yeah,
Oh my gosh, that's fantastic.
4,000 Canada geese.
That makes me very excited.
I have a proposal by the way to privatize the whole banding system.
By the way, I think it could be a great public-private partnership.
That's topic for a different show.
James Cooper, I'm not going to let you talk about your Wild of the Week because I think it's the same as Megan Salazar's, Megan's lover Dave, Ellie Lawton and mine.
Ellie, what's your Wild of the Week role
The Wild of the Week.
It was all about the frog gigging.
James, I mean, I don't know.
That just made my life so much better.
I can't believe I've gone this many years without doing that.
We got right in the water.
We were grabbing those bullfrogs by our hands and using the double pitchforks.
Tritons.
I
think they're called gigan poles.
Gigan
or tritons.
Yeah, Dave and I, we were...
Waste.
For those of you out there thinking, what are you out there doing killing frogs?
I will say, every one of those frogs is going to end up on the dinner plate.
I had an absolute blast.
We were kind of picky about the frogs we harvested and making sure we were harvesting mature frogs.
And what a great time I had.
Halligan Guide Service, the only guide in the state for frog gaging.
And I'm telling you,
You don't think you can hunt in the summertime.
You don't think of hunting.
This is a cool combination hybrid of fishing, hunting, walking around in the swamp at night with headlamps.
There's an eeriness to it.
Yes.
So, contact James.
Music .
You're listening to Raised in the Woods, your number one stop and shop for the great outdoors of the great states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.
My name is Joel Clayfish.
I've been running this show for, geez.
Several years now if you can believe that and we keep expanding big appreciation to you our listeners out there Hey to Gary fluid our number one listener.
Hey, Gary and George Gary and George or
Well, then you're probably not going to find anything on the computer because that's about as easy as it gets.
We've got a crazy, fantastic lineup of folks here.
Taylor Finger, who is the chief game bird ecologist who's kind of riding along and he's coming back next week as well to talk about how birds
See, when you're hunting them, what they look
So make sure you stick around and come back next week to learn some real important secrets and tips as to how to hunt and how the flyways are doing through the Midwest.
Taylor Finger is an invaluable resource in Wisconsin, and we're thrilled to have him.
He came this week to kind of audit and hang out with us because this week,
We've got the folks from Migratory Bird Management and Wild Goose Chase,
which
Yeah, so what we do is we use science-based bird control is what we call it.
So we go out, one of our main things, why it's called Wild Goose Chase to begin with, our parent company, is we chase geese with Border Collies.
That's something that we love to do.
It's how a lot of us get into it.
I bet those dogs love to do it.
Oh, they are absolutely the happiest dogs I've ever met.
Wonderful.
Yes, they're so happy to do it.
So yeah, we use science.
We've been in the business since 19...
1998.
So we've used science to kind of develop and learn.
We've made a lot of mistakes and we've learned from those mistakes and we know what works and what doesn't.
Where
Yeah, so our migratory bird management company is based out of Brookfield, Wisconsin.
We have our sister company, Wild Goose Chase.
Our headquarters are in Chicago Ridge.
We also have a branch in Indianapolis and we just started our Detroit branch.
So that's brand new to the world.
Oh my gosh, so you're expanding.
it.
Yeah, we just got to
No, never
Yeah, so this started our owner of the company Sue.
She worked for a landscape company and she saw border collies chasing.
on some of the golf courses or landscape places.
And she
said, you know
what?
I bet I can do that.
So she got a couple of dogs, got a couple of people, and they've been chasing since, again, 1998.
So
Chase came first.
Yeah, migratory bird management came out of, we had a Wild Goose Chase in Wisconsin already.
So we came out of a legal title name.
That's where we get the difference there.
I
Yeah, you sound exactly like one of our clients.
So what it looks like.
Absolutely.
Beautiful.
Yes, beautiful.
Yeah, basically what we do is we'll pull up to a site.
If there are birds at that site and it is safe to do so, we'll get the dog out.
What our dogs do is it's called herding.
out.
So when you see sheep dogs kind of working the sheep, they're herding in, they're bringing that sheep
to
the farmer.
Our dogs herd out.
So basically they're going to see the geese.
They act as a natural predator almost like a coyote.
They're very closely related to those coyotes and they basically will act like a predator and it gets them out of there.
So they fly off into a place that's
better for them, better suited for them, where the property isn't basically.
The neighbors, exactly.
Also known as
next clients.
That's a business model,
just going right down the line.
So you
right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So basically the way that it works,
and why it works is we visit these sites every day for a certain amount of contracted time.
And
the
geese eventually learn, hey.
This isn't the place for us.
We're going to go somewhere where it's safe, where it's safe for both the birds and for the people that are on those sites.
On
It depends.
We've got clients that we've had for those 28 years that we're still clients.
I think some of those places were a little bit of an insurance policy, but it takes years.
They got to learn to not be there.
Right.
And
but I've had hunting applications in this area before because I have some businesses who will invite us in to come hunt and birds learn very quickly when you hunt them.
The rest of the group ends up moving on somewhere else and where there are geese or ducks or, you know, waterfowl pigeons.
who are a nuisance to a business when you hunt a portion of them.
They learn fairly quickly to move on from there.
I can't wait.
We're going to talk about some of the methods they use to do that, who they're servicing.
in
This is Raised in the Woods, that show that takes everything from the great outdoors of the Midwest
It tells you what you can do with it, how to work it, and one of my favorite things always is how to put it on the dinner table because food is my favorite dish.
And this week, our time, Taylor Finger, chief game bird ecologist, thinks that's funny.
Yep.
I did cook tonight and it just goes to show that you can take just about any game animal and make
palatable and eat it.
And one of the things that we love to talk about on this show is the ethics and morality of making sure you use whatever your harvest is to the best of your ability.
And that's why I eat nearly only wild game.
I will definitely go to the Italian market and get a fine mortadella once in
Hey, when I have tennis shoes on and downtown Milwaukee, you don't know where you're going to see me.
I mean, I'm scooting around that place like crazy.
And it just goes to show you, you know what, sometimes just step out and say hi to somebody.
You know, everybody has a story to tell.
Everybody has a cool path to share.
Sometimes they don't want to share it and that's cool too.
But just go and talk to people.
And I don't think people realize how many businesses and folks out there actually have problems with nuisance birds.
Travis and Ava are here.
Who are the people calling you guys and what are some of the problems you encounter?
With some of these birds and birds are all beautiful and we want to keep their populations in check No doubt and keep healthy populations But I don't think people realize some of these birds can be mean or even dangerous.
Mm-hmm.
They can be you know, we kind of When we approach a company or a business or a client, you know, we like to say that we're a science-based
Bird management company that focuses on human health and safety and we build site specific management plans to mitigate some of the nuisance bird issues they're having whether it's droppings or Attacks bird attacks things like that nesting you know unsightly signage things like that keeping properties clean keeping people safe and healthy I
So my office, a couple of years in a row, we've had geese make nests right outside the main door and they got so aggressive that they had to divert all the foot traffic around the whole building on the other side of the docks because they literally were like hurting people.
So you guys come across that, I'm sure every spring.
So how do you handle that?
So back to your question, Joel, a lot of our customers are commercial clients.
some industry, some agriculture.
But we, a lot of times what we try to do initially is harass the birds.
Like Ava said with border collies.
But we also do what's called depredation.
So we get permits from any state and local or government officials.
Sometimes it has to be like U.S.
Fish and Wildlife nationally to do the depredation.
go through the depredation process.
A lot of times what that involves in a situation like urine is oiling or addling the eggs once we get the proper permits.
mean?
Addling, by definition, is shaking.
So you
so they don't develop.
So we like to...
There's a process to it.
You can float test the eggs to see what stage of development they're in.
You want to catch them early so you're not, you know, there's not a chick developing in there.
Sure.
But a lot of times what we do is we oil that stops that oxygen exchange from the outside air to the inside of the egg and prevents the development.
So a lot of times, you know, people get worked up about what we're doing there and the
the timing of it, but really it's like if you crack open a chicken egg that you get from the grocery store.
It's still a yule.
right?
And I'll be honest, it's the most effective way to do it because a lot of times, oh, I'll just take the eggs away or break them like you're saying.
You don't want to do that because she'll still sit on the eggs and won't re-nest.
because if she thinks the eggs are gone, she'll re-nest and you'll have a problem again in two
I'm glad you jumped in here, Taylor Finger, the chief game bird ecologist for the DNR, because I'm curious about this.
Now, I know and we preach on this show that healthy populations make healthy populations, which means in some cases populations do need to be reduced and the DNR and others watching these species are
up on that, extremely high up on that, there's got to be birds that are reduced in numbers in order to continue having healthy populations.
So I just want to be clear, for those of you out there who may be uncomfortable about bird populations being reduced, this is all done within specific numbers, is it not?
Yeah, again, and this is a process that's just not state.
as well.
Like for us, we manage this as a federal species because it's a migratory bird species.
And so even though the population may be higher in Wisconsin or higher in Minnesota, we share that population with Ontario, with Illinois, with all those other states.
we have to manage the population together so we can't say oh well we got to reduce the population here in wisconsin so we're going to increase the bag limit to drive it down well that may negatively affect the opportunity for the states that are south of us or these birds migrate to and so we have made changes i mean for example i think back 2016 2017 there was only our canada goose bag limit was two
and now we're up to three and then in some cases at the end of the year we're all the way up to five because we know based on harvest and based on banding analysis that
those birds early in the season and those birds late in the season, over 90% of those harvested are locally grown birds.
So we know that we can affect our own local population without negatively affecting the migratory population.
And next week, we're going to have you back and we're going to talk about the banding program because that was in jeopardy of losing that.
And we're going to talk about healthy populations.
But I'm really excited to talk about how birds see and what they're looking at when they're coming into a spread from a hunting perspective.
Because man, you know that I love waterfowl hunting and spend a lot of time doing it and and Taylor fingers coming back next week.
But Travis, you were talking before the show about some interesting ways you have of moving birds from areas to areas.
Tell me about some of those.
Yeah,
absolutely.
So kind of that was a great segue with with how birds see a lot of people don't realize they see also in the U V spectrum.
That we don't see
So they see different wavelengths than we do so
a lot of
the new technology company out, we utilize lasers quite a bit to move birds.
We've been using them pretty much since the company started in 98.
that.
Yeah, and that's how we explain it to people is...
Basically, we see the end point of the laser.
We just see the dot across the room.
This isn't a laser that harms anything.
It's a
a light laser fully humane.
There's handheld versions.
There's automatic versions.
The handheld versions we've been using since the company started moving the geese around properties off of properties.
They the we like I said they see the
We see the endpoint, the bird sees the whole beam because they see in that
they feel as though it's a like a moving wall or something.
A predator
predator, correct.
Coming at them.
Depending on the source.
If it's a handheld laser, that's usually getting used after the birds have landed.
We do also install automatic lasers.
depends on the setting.
they're very effective.
It works a lot better on flockier birds than individual birds.
And a lot of times we're using them in agriculture settings where it's sweet corn farms, vineyards.
Sure,
destroyed.
Dairy barns, poultry farms, things like that, where we can set the laser
install the laser, program it, set it so it's running based on our parameters and you really reduce the labor and it's just super effective to chase them out of there.
This is all full circle, right?
We're talking about healthy populations.
We're talking about keeping our farmers and our crops Balanced and healthy as well.
I mean to our listeners who may hear this and might think well, that's mean to do to the birds Well, listen the birds aren't really getting harmed in these methods and we need to keep our crops and our farmers happy too I mean that's that's high up on the list.
Ironic that often somebody complaining about maintaining populations of wild game are the same folks who are going to complain when the prices go up at the grocery store and there is an inevitable link between healthy populations and Agriculture Taylor you've got to see that quite a bit I
mean we've been dealing heavily with even influenza for the last two three years now
And again, wild birds, waterfowl tend to be the primary carrier for that.
And then some of these smaller songbirds, passerines in these chicken operations and turkey operations, they tend to be the sources for those types of things.
So yeah, it's interesting from a...
opportunity for a hunting opportunity.
It's like, okay, well, this is really important.
Then we have other people that are calling us complaining about $7 or a dozen eggs.
And I mean, like, we got to kill every goose we ever see because they're the reason why I'm paying more at the grocery store.
I mean, you're managing healthy populations.
You guys are helping farmers.
I mean, we're hunters.
We all play our role here.
And I think to just have that balance and to see the full circle of how everybody works together to maintain these populations, a lot of work goes into it, a lot of science goes into it, a lot of time and resources go into this stuff.
It's not just people out there wanting to kill these birds.
Yeah.
Again, we work with, I mean, people don't think about St.
Jude's as being a wildlife issue, but there's an operation out of St.
Jude's that they're like doing state-of-the-art testing for even influenza that you can get within
hours of testing and so they can say, okay, hey, we don't band here because we don't want to concentrate all of these birds in one area or this
is
showing a hot spot.
Let's try to stay away from that.
Whereas prior to that, you send in a sample might take a month and a half or two months to get something back.
So again, it's right in the technology with these issues is really, it's really come a long way.
You know, this show raised in the woods, which goes to the heart of the Midwest states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.
That is the bread basket of this entire country.
The agriculture here doesn't just feed those five states.
The agriculture here feeds the entire United States.
And people don't often realize that the wildlife populations drastically and severely affect agriculture in those states.
So people like migratory bird management and people like Taylor finger who's the chief game bird ecologist those things work hand in hand and make no mistake hunters Anglers outdoor users in the state of Wisconsin are that third leg of the chair and without them
These other folks wouldn't be able to do their jobs as well.
And it would certainly harm farms too.
What a fascinating topic.
This is Raised in the Woods.
We're back with
Cooking.
of wild
lasers,
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, definitely.
People love birds.
We love birds.
I mean, that's something that we like to say is we're bird nerds, too.
Can you use the lasers on the people?
Oh,
Yeah, you know, we try to train in deescalation techniques.
We try not to get to a point where somebody is screaming in your face.
I always tell my handlers, hey, if you are uncomfortable, walk away.
your safety, the dog's safety, that's most important.
We get people who don't like what we do just because they think that we're harming the birds.
Legally, we cannot even touch them, including our dogs.
Interesting.
Yeah, we'll retire a dog if they touch a bird.
That's 100% not okay.
Do
Yeah, absolutely.
You just have to read the situation.
If they seem like they're open and willing, I go right in.
I'm so happy to talk to anybody about birds.
I'm the biggest bird nerd ever.
What are
And it's always so funny because even yourself, I think we talked about it afterwards.
Oh, that went in a good direction.
Because
sometimes we get people who come up.
She can't stomp in like she was on a mission.
She was ready.
And you weren't the first one to talk to us when we were standing there.
We were looking around like, we got to get out of here.
People keep talking to us.
I love it.
Yeah.
No, I mean, you get good conversation sometimes.
And, you know, a lot of the times I really do see that people walk away understanding, knowing what we do, knowing why we do it, and, you know, knowing that we use the best science
possible and lethal control is absolutely the last effort that we do.
like to say though, I mean, so many people get so stubborn, especially in today's society, being addicted to social media and everything.
Never stop learning.
Learning is the.
biggest joy in life experiencing learning.
So I think that's great advice.
I
Our food tip, our recipe tip of the week is gonna be about the source of your food.
And now is the time to be planting in gardens and getting your gardening going so you can have pizza toppings for the fall
Yes, so if you have problems with deer, bunnies, any other rodents that are eating your vegetables and your flowers,
You're not going to call this team over here.
Get out of here.
But you can buy a perennial and it's called lamb's ear and it's a silver gray leaf and it's really fuzzy and it really freaks the deer out and rodents because when they eat on it, it's really fuzzy and they don't like it.
I
Here's what I'm curious about as we wrap up the show.
Taylor Finger, the chief game bird ecologist, like the number one dude at the DNR watching migratory birds and game bird species, which is honestly no joke, a fascinating topic for me.
And I never have enough time to ask him all the questions.
Are you intrigued by what we learned about those folks who are going out and.
you know, pushing and moving nuisance
birds?
Absolutely.
It's something that I've just been getting increasing phone calls from the public because they think that that's the DNR's responsibility to handle those things.
And so fortunately, because they're federally managed and controlled, I can usually ship them off to USDA Wildlife Service and say, not my playground.
And
Wildlife
Service works with these
guys here
to get
the job.
We just kind of...
to get to the people on the ground who actually do the job.
I mean, we're government people, right?
Yeah, of course.
Who in government doesn't like to pass the buck?
Exactly.
But no, yeah, it is becoming a larger and larger issue as we see, again, it can be whose populations increase, but they change their behavior to reflect places where they're not going to get shot or harvested into these more urban areas where that lethal control can't necessarily take place.
Again, people love to see Canada geese.
They hate Canada goose poop, but they don't want to see him die.
And so that's where your guys' role
in.
It's like, okay, well, I don't, I don't want to see him ever again, but don't kill him.
that's usually how we wrap it up.
Yeah.
Well, there's
a
reason
you
for over 20 years doing what you've been doing.
Absolutely.
And fun fact of the day is a single goose can produce about two pounds of poop a day.
Oh my gosh.
And there are some
as well.
Anything you can learn about migratory populations is going to make you play better in the sandbox with those who are out there.
Be kind to folks, get them interested in hunting and fishing.
Remember, anybody who's interested in the outdoors is worthwhile to be kind to and to invite them along because there's going to be someone who's doing it who doesn't know as much as you and plenty who know more than you.
And so, sitting somewhere in the middle is a good place to be.
See you next week on Raised in the Woods.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.