Bryan Muche, left, talks with Jim Henning during a Sept. 25 hunt at Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg. The Wisconsin north zone duck hunting season opened the previous day.
GRANTSBURG – Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg is one of my favorite state properties.
Not only do the 30,000 acres of restored wetland and brush prairie offer a lot of space for wildlife and people, its shallow waters make it unsuitable for most power boats.
It leads to a quieter, more natural recreational experience, one that has for many years drawn me to Crex for the opening of Wisconsin’s north zone duck hunting season.
Other public properties echo with the harsh rattling of mud motors on hunters’ boats at 0-dark-thirty on any day of the waterfowl seasons. If you didn’t know better, you’d think a caravan of Harley riders were coursing through the marsh.
But along with a cadre of like-minded friends at Crex it’s been canoes and kayaks and dogs and waterfowl in a sprawling marsh.
We camp at a rest area on the northern portion of the property and eat around a fire pit.
Our group included Jim Henning and his Labrador retriever Tess, both of Grafton, and his son-in-law Ramsey Kammerzelt of Kiel, as well as Bob Hunt of Dundee, Illinois, Ryan Kantorowicz of Fox River Grove, Illinois, Bryan Muche of Barrington Hills, Illinois, and me.
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