Gun Deer Season in Wisconsin - 1923

A LETTER FROM 90 YEARS AGO (Letter #3)

This weekend, rural Wisconsin is a busy place.  It is the opening of the gun whitetail deer season.  Highways are filled with hunters commuting to their hunting cabins and deer stands; dashboards are decorated with blaze orange caps.  Along with a recent train trip to visit her boys in prison, Caroline Krueger also mentioned the gun dear season in the following letter I have transcribed.  There have been so many changes for safety's sake since then, and they have paid off.  

Let this be a look back into rural Wisconsin in 1923, a small history lesson, a little spotlight into the past.  Maybe we can learn something from it all...  Maybe not.  

But remember... this is real, not fiction, an actual person's penciled thoughts... a letter from a mother to her son in prison.



To Leslie Krueger, Waupun Wis. Box C

Inspected Nov 22, 1923

From Withee Wis  11/21/23

Dear Leslie, 

Your letter received today but not Frank's    Well I see you have asked me some questions.  No I did not go to Green Bay, I felt as if I shouldn't and I read in the paper that the place I always stop at, Fred's sister, they lost their youngest child 5 years old with Dyptharea so that accounts for me not feeling as if I should go their.   I left their at 12:30 o'clock , got to Fondulac about 1:30, the bus, he took me to the Calumet Hotel and that is only a little ways to the Soo Depot so I got the 2:28 train and was here [home] at 8 in the evening so wasn't gone quite 23 hours.  

Got a letter from the Lawy[er] it wasn't just as I liked it but he said he would know for sure by the end of this week. Something happened that he didn't intend or should have come that way, so I don't know, no doubt he will be here one of these days.

I see the first Wild Geese and ducks fly south today, it is very cold too... Not many deer are killed, only 3 went by here [Caroline watched the highway in front of her house and could see hunter's deer on their vehicles as they passed.] but an offul lot of people were killed , three this hunting season, the day I come home one was killed near Colby and another near Medford, 13 deaths before hunting season opened.  

You can get candy now too I see.  You have a very good warden, I talked with him a few minutes.  Well perhaps next week I can tell you more about this affair, at any rate it is started and it has to go on now if not this time then the next.  

Well hope this finds you well, I remain your Mother, Mrs. Krueger

(I'm not sure what Caroline was referring to when she said there were 13 deaths before the season opened.  I'm hoping those were not from folks siting in their rifles, etc.  We have come a long way in regards to teaching hunter safety.)

Clark County, Wisconsin whitetails - (author's photo)

"The Wisconsin Krueger Family Tragedy - 16 Years of Letters From Prison" 

published by Big Earth Publishing/ Trail Press - author Kay Scholtz  

(Letters posted in my blog are from the Krueger family letter collection.

Some of the transcriptions found here are not in my book, especially if they are not as detailed about the Krueger tragedy itself, but are more of day to day living 

at the Krueger family farm and community.)