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In Wisconsin Transcript #000612    Airdate: 11/22/2007
[Captioning made possible by U.S. Department of Education]
  SHARE Wisconsin
SHARE Wisconsin is a non-profit, food buying club which supplies discount groceries to communities from Northern Illinois to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In Wisconsin producer Art Hackett profiles Rosie Loser, the site coordinator for SHARE, and explains how the organization has managed to survive longer than most groups of this type.
Order a Christmas Dinner Package for yourself - or donate one to a family in need. Call SHARE Wisconsin toll-free: 1-800-548-2124.

related links
SHARE Wisconsin
Watch SHARE Wisconsin - Windows Media - 8:55
Watch SHARE Wisconsin - Real Media - 8:55
  John Motoviloff
John Motoviloff is a hunter, an angler and a writer. He finds his refuge in the driftless area near the Kickapoo River. John got the inspiration for his book, “Flyfisher’s Guide of Wisconsin,” from the landscape that touches his soul. Along with his faithful dog, John explores and hunts the Kickapoo Valley and speaks of a town plainly made. John Motoviloff’s latest novel "Bohemia"—about a woman boat builder in the Kickapoo Valley—is looking for a happy home with a publisher. He’s now working on a crime novel called "He Move About."

related links
Isthmus Article
Wisconsin Made
Watch John Motoviloff - Windows Media - 9:27
Watch John Motoviloff - Real Media - 9:27
  Robot Decoys
Some hunters give the sport a bad name by hunting out of season, or shooting from their cars. To combat this, game wardens have turned to using stuffed deer and game bird decoys to catch poachers and illegal hunters in the act. Brian Wolslegel and his company, Custom Robotic Wildlife, have built a better decoy by adding movement through robotics. In Wisconsin producer Andy Soth investigates how game wardens, armed with remote control units, can make a stuffed decoy seemingly come to life and better enforce hunting laws through sting operations.

related links
VOA News Article
Custom Robotic Wildlife
Marketplace Hunting website
Watch Robot Decoys - Windows Media - 3:48
Watch Robot Decoys - Real Media - 3:48
  Meyers Falls
Get ready for Thanksgiving by enjoying rich, beautiful autumn hues near this breathtaking waterfall.

related links
The Joy of Falling Water
Florence County Attractions
Watch Meyers Falls - Windows Media - 2:17
Watch Meyers Falls - Real Media - 2:17

Loew:
There's a bumper sticker you will see sometimes in farm country that reads “you're in trouble if you think food comes from a grocery store.” While some people may shop at a farmer's market or buy directly from a farmer, most people still do their shopping at the local supermarket. But there is another way. A food buying club. When the story was suggested by a viewer, reporter Art Hackett initially thought buying clubs were a relic of the past. As it turns out, one is thriving in Wisconsin and it's huge.

Art Hackett:
It's 5:00 Saturday morning, and Rosie Loser is tracking a semi full of groceries. Loser is host site coordinator for Share Wisconsin. She’s one of a handful of paid employees among an army of volunteers.

Rosie Loser:
We have 200 plus host sites in the state and within that, thousands of volunteer teams. So it's my job to oversee that all, make sure it's working, troubleshoot, support, cheer on, know everybody by name.
Hackett:
Share Wisconsin is a food buying club, serving an area from northern Illinois to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The group operates out of a warehouse in the Milwaukee suburb of Butler. Here is how it works. Every month, the group offers an assortment of meats, fresh fruits and vegetables and staple items for $18. Special meat, organic vegetable and other items are also offered on an as available basis. People placed orders for this food and paid for it by the 10th of the month, the orders were delivered about two weeks later.

Loser:
I knew it was my favorite trucker.

Hackett:
Several days each month it falls on Rosie Loser to follow semis as they carry food to customers. In less than an hour, food bound for 20 families in and around the Winnebago County community of Pickett, was off-loaded onto Rick Howe’s pick-up truck, moved to the local community center, sorted into individual orders, and readied for pick-up. Total sales of this location are around $1,200.

Hackett:
It's not the groceries that are different, pretty much what you find in any supermarket. But try and imagine several hundred small neighborhood grocery stores that appear out of nowhere in a church or community center, about the same time each month. Which then disappear and return one month later.

Kelly Robles:
If you go there, at the beginning of the month, when you usually have the money for your jobs or whatever, and get your food when you maybe need more, which is at the end of the month when you don't have the money to buy it.

Hackett:
Share Wisconsin is a non-profit organization. It claims to save 30% to 50% over grocery store prices. We checked the items on their order form and found some about the same, but others well below prices found at a discount supermarket.

Hackett:
Can these save money?

Ann Hoyt:
Absolutely.

Hackett:
Ann Hoyt of the UW-Madison Department of Consumer Science was a member of a similar buying club when she was in graduate school. She wound up writing her masters thesis on the subject.

Hoyt:
I found the average savings on food overall the products purchased was about 23% and ranged from zero for things that were marked as loss leaders in the grocery stores up as high as 40%.

Hackett:
The idea behind buying clubs appears to date back nearly 100 years, to Nova Scotia, Canada.

Hoyt:
They met around kitchen tables and small groups of neighbors would get together and set up these groups to buy food together.

Hackett:
They were also promoted during the Great Depression and in the early 1970s, as part of the federal government's war on poverty.

Hoyt:
I think when times get tight we see a rise in these things.

Hackett:
That was the situation in 1983 when Share Wisconsin's parent organization was started by the Catholic Church in California.

Paulette Hardin:
Think back to that time period, the country was in a very deep recession, we were feeling the effects of corporate downsizing. People were having a hard time making ends meet that had always worked, that never would have ever in their wildest imagination needed help. We had soup kitchens, we had pantries, there was welfare. But there wasn't anything at the time that allowed people to really use their own resources more effectively.

Hackett:
Share Wisconsin buys from the same wholesale grocers as supermarkets. The group is able to save money not so much by buying in bulk as by using volunteers to eliminate the labor costs in the food delivery system.

Loser:
This is Amy. She's a coordinator from Wabeno. They came all the way down from Wabeno. Do you know where wabeno is? It's north of --

Amy:
Everything.

Hackett:
Most of the people working in the warehouse also work at a local delivery site in their community.

Doris Squires:
I'm Doris Squires.

Hackett:
Doris Squires runs sites in Janesville and Milton.

Squires:
My daughter was in it once before and quit and started up again so I kind of knew what it was about. So I talk about Share wherever I go. I take papers with me wherever I go. I have my other son in it now.

Hackett:
Most of the people working at Share Wisconsin got into it through a friend or relative. Rosie Loser is no exception.

Loser:
One of their first host sites was St. Mary's Menominee Falls. And my mother-in-law happened to go to church there. She came home and she said to my husband, you know, they told us about Share at church today and this is something you could use, because we had four kids at the time.

Hackett:
Rosie's husband Bill volunteers as a forklift operator at the warehouse.

Bill Loser:
When we moved up to Phelps, Wisconsin, we thought the area needed the program. It was quite a depressed area, actually. A lot of people looking for work and there wasn't much jobs up there. And it just, we just thought it would help the people in the area to stretch your food budget.

Rosie Loser:
The first month, 75 people signed up. The site just flourished.

Hackett:
And at the time, the program only offered what were called share packages. They were a mystery until the time of delivery.

Rosie Loser:
When people signed up they were signing up for a share package, had no clue what was in the package, they paid their money a month in advance, they came on Saturday to get their food. It was like a christmas package, I thought. To me it was fun because that's when I first started at Share back then, it was just exciting.

Hackett:
The days rosie is at the warehouse are among the few when she's not on the road.

Bill Loser:
We are traveling around by ourselves. We always have Share newspapers in the car and if we are driving through a town where she hasn't got a site, she'll watch for libraries, laundromats, wherever she can lay a stack of the papers for people to read and get informed on the program.

Hackett:
Consumer Sciences Professor Ann Hoyt says most buying clubs die a natural death.

Hoyt:
It tends to appeal to people with small children, and as you grow older and your children leave home you aren't buying as much food and aren't necessarily needing the savings that you might have needed when you were younger.

Hackett:
Which is why Rosie Loser works constantly to broaden the program's base of participants.

Rosie Loser:
It was quickly understood by me that it wasn't just about the food. It was about what happens over separating the potatoes, a conversation, reconnecting, creating relationships, getting to know people by name. It's more to me than just saving money on food.

Loew:
This week, hundreds of Share volunteers will be distributing more than 10,000 Thanksgiving Dinner packages throughout the state. There is still plenty of time for people to order a Christmas Dinner package for themselves, or as a donation for a family in need. Details are on our website at wpt.org/inWisconsin.


Loew:
On this Thanksgiving weekend it's a good time to take stock of all the things we are thankful for. What's good about the world around us. With that in mind, we bring you the story of John Motoviloff. Like many people who live in the state, Motoviloff enjoys hunting and fishing but he's also a writer who celebrates how the pastimes connect him with the land. Motoviloff took producer Joanne Garrett on an autumn walk to introduce her to his muse.

John Motoviloff:
There is quite literally no separation between woods and water. I’ve really never really been to another place like it.

Motoviloff:
Come on, girl.

Motoviloff:
I haven't found anything that compares to it in beauty or diversity. It sort of has a gnarly, craggy sort of feel. Lots of little valleys and lost of secret hidden little places. It's stunning. It's stunning.

Joanne Garrett:
Some call it the driftless area. The large chunk of southwestern Wisconsin, a place of woods and water where the Kickapoo River snakes through.

Motoviloff:
What is it? Go on, go on. Go on, go on, Tasha.

Garrett:
A place of rolling hills.

Motoviloff:
She may be on to a bird; I don’t know.

Garrett:
And deep valleys. The part of the state that escaped those steam rolling glaciers thousands of years ago. Hunter, angler and writer John Motoviloff.

Motoviloff:
The driftless area is no continuous unbroken expanse of either you know water or woods or sky or even farms, everything is sort of on a small, somewhat broken up scale, a patchwork of his and farms, creeks and rivers. And there is always this feeling that there is kind of cover there is someplace to take refuge, a sense of secrecy and tied to that a sense of discovering these secret things. Whether they are trout streams or little cabins, it’s full of secrets I think, full of secrets waiting to be discovered. There was a barn owl calling. It's a very rich kind of area, very rich in fish and game and flora and fauna.

Garrett:
It was the wildlife, the hunting, the fishing that called to him, that helped shape his connection to this place.

Motoviloff:
And in a wet year this would likely have water standing in it so there would be, you know, the possibility of ducks jumping up all around us.

Motoviloff:
I think it's my place, I really do. You know I like to go up north and I sort of like that Piney Birch landscape, but it doesn't weigh on me in the way that this landscape weighs on me. This sort of is very, very unique mix of woods and water.

Garrett:
The way a landscape touches you. Hunting and fishing are avocations. Motoviloff makes his living as a writer. So when this wordsmith who penned the nearly 500 page the Fly Fisher's Guide to Wisconsin found himself pulled in by the driftless area, he and his wife bought a cabin here. And from the time spent soaking up this landscape, emerged a collection of essays. Driftless stories, all about hunting, fishing, and their cabin, and places nearby.

Motoviloff:
The place is Gays Mills, its apples won first prize in the 1905 State Fair and by 1911 the State Horticultural Society was urging large scale production. 90 years later one can see they were right. Fist-sized apples hang from the trees in September and now this hill country produce apples of national repute. Like a model village visible from the scenic overlook, Gays Mills spreads out below. River, Main Street, steeples, butcher, barber, tavern, gas station, a town plainly made.

Garrett:
A town plainly made. Not far from the Motoviloff cabin, also plainly made.

Motoviloff:
No one is going to call this a second home. I'd like to think that it's a step above a shack, kind of inching toward cabin. We don't have any electricity at all, or water for that matter. It's kind of beautiful in a rough kind of way, I guess, a diamond in the rough. Come on, girl.

Garrett:
Really rough.

Motoviloff:
We are going to fix this siding.

Motoviloff:
It looks like heck but basically what we are trying to do is keep animals from getting underneath the porch. We had a squirrel and a mink that ended a game of chase in the cabin, and we came back to find the results of it. And it was, I'll tell you, it was one of the most disgusting things I have ever smelled. A proper door needs to be built here but in lieu of that, if I don't get to it this winter, this, I guess, will do.

Garrett:
But in other ways, it's perfect.

Motoviloff:
Does it get any better than this? A beer would improve things, but a ham sandwich, the Kickapoo
Valley, a fall day and my dog, it’s pretty good.

Motoviloff:
Mostly it's a place where things move slowly. A downed tree limb needs cutting, the porch needs a board, as the rest of the world moves at a pace bent on implosion. It's a refuge, a quiet hole in the woods. But also a get away.

Motoviloff:
What do you smell out there? Are birdies out there?

Garrett:
A writer's retreat and a hunter's refuge.

Motoviloff:
The view makes up for the lack of fine cuisine. But that said, there have been some gourmet meals on this porch, like wood duck cooked with sauerkraut, venison grilled over maple sticks, and trout that have been caught only just a few hours before.

Garrett:
Writing ideas percolate on the back porch.

Motoviloff:
Let's go hunting, Tasha.

Garrett:
Hunting opportunities beckon from the back yard.

Motoviloff:
When paddling a skiff or walking in the woods I find myself asking where is the spirit of the animal gone? Stone age man inscribed caves with fears, hopes, and dreams of the hunt. Bringing this reverence to the duck marsh and deer woods make the hunt a richer thing.

Motoviloff:
Over here girl, Tasha.

Motoviloff:
I remember kneeling in a corn field and crossing myself after taking my first wood duck. The earth was black and warm. This lovely bird lay beside me, everything seems fertile, generous, and good. By asking blessing you would recognize that the animal did not die in vain, that it lives on in you.

Motoviloff:
Geez, I mean, that's like a point. This is just an ancient partnership. Man and then dog, and then the beasts below them, you know. And it just sort of, the dog is kind of your conduit into that world. Somehow this element, you know, brings up like old spirits in this place.

Motoviloff:
Off to the sloughs.

Garrett:
The way the spirit of a landscape enters us.

Motoviloff:
Never thought swamp could smell so good.

Garrett:
The ways we form a connection to a place, to the land.

Motoviloff:
I'll always come out here as long as I live. Silly dog, you have cattail on your nose.

Motoviloff:
It's part of me, just the way a Burr Oak looks, or the way the sunset is out here, or the way a trout stream looks, those are the kind of things I'll think about on my death bed and I'll real realize in some way I'm taking them with me. They are really the most profound thing. You can own land but you can't own those sensations. They own you. In the end, we are all on the same arc, body and spirit, man and nature dissolve, Ezpinosa said into infinite substance, rivers are the veins, land is the body, and in the gathering dark of harvest the fate of man and that of wild fowl appear the same, haunting the ends of the earth forever in flight.

Loew:
When we caught up with John Motoviloff for an update on his writing, he told us he's shopping a new novel around to publishers. It's called Bohemia and features a woman boat builder in the Kickapoo Valley. He's also at work on a new crime novel. And that’s our program. Join us next week when Joanne Garrett takes us deep into the Wisconsin Northwoods to meet a logging chain made up of a grandfather, father, and sons. Frederica Freyberg explains what we can do at home to help keep our food healthy. And Andy Soth takes us into a tiny world that has big possibilities.


Loew:
Wisconsin's gun hunting season for deer continues through this Sunday. Most hunters follow the rules. But every year there are some that get busted by wardens for illegal hunting practices. Reporter Andy Soth found that wardens are now using a type of deer to hunt down these outlaw hunters.

Andy Soth:
It happens all the time. Seeing a deer along the roadside. But it can also be a tempting target for illegal hunting as this DNR surveillance video shows.

Warden:
Conservation warden, you are under arrest.

Soth:
That's not hunting, that's a drive-by shooting. This buck had better watch out. This is not a real deer, it's actually a robot. A decoy made by Custom Robotic Wildlife.

Soth:
This Mosinee business looks like a mix of Frankenstein's Lab and Red Green's Possum Lodge. Brian Wolslegel makes and sells robotic decoys to game wardens across the US and Canada.

Wolslegel:
One officer would be across the road with the remote control and probably a radio, and then the officers would go down to the end of the road so that when the poacher comes down, you don't have to have a chase occur.

Soth:
Game wardens have used decoys for many years to catch poachers.

Wolslegel:
Some guys are still up in Canada--there are some guys still using a deer head, a saw horse and a burlap bag and people are shooting at it. There are still plenty of places that haven’t gotten our technology to start with.

Soth:
But for wardens who have switched to his robotic decoys, Wolslegel says it has paid off.

Wolslegel:
They make a lot of money on these things. The average deer that goes out is $1,200 to $1,500, and they’re going to probably generate $20,000 to $30,000 off of that deer, most of them.

Soth:
Although in Wisconsin, the fines are not as high because shooting a decoy is not the same as shooting an animal.

Wolslegel:
Wisconsin does not recognize this as an animal. Other states have changed their laws to say attempted to take a wild animal or facsimile of, so then they’ll stick em’ with a $2,000 fine.

Soth:
Wisconsin Game Wardens can assess fines for shooting from the road or trespassing and hunting at night, so the decoy has become and important tool for Wildlife Managers.

Wolslegel:
Every time somebody drives down the road at night and pulls the trigger on a really nice deer with good genetics, he doesn’t just take that deer, he’s also robbed the deer from breeding does and providing the genetics for more trophy deer.

Soth:
Wolslegel is diversifying his business, selling robotic animals to ski lodges, sporting goods stores, and nature centers.

Wolslegel:
A bear with a robotic head welcomed people into a museum.
Soth:
This Wylie Coyote is the latest product.

Wolslegel:
Mount a coyote on a track system to keep geese off of people's yards.

Soth:
Just as in any business, it's about providing customers with what they want.

Wolslegel:
I had a warden in Oklahoma that had our standing deer, and he was after one specific guy who was trophy hunting, basically shooting the deer and cutting the antlers off. Years in the making, one guy. Finally he sent me a big rack, and I said well let’s do a lame one. So we did a lame one with a huge rack on it, and he got him in three days, he got the guy.

Soth:
And hunters who follow the rules got more trophy bucks.

Loew:
The owner of Custom Robotic Wildlife tells us that this year they expect to turn between 100 and 150 hides into decoys.


Loew:
For now, we leave you with a beautiful golden autumn day near Meyers Falls in Florence County. For "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving weekend.

 
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