Outdoor Wisconsin

(bright music) Something tells me it's all happening here at the zoo. So we've come out to the Milwaukee County Zoo for a look around. In just a few minutes we'll begin a two-part series on a barn restoration project on Elizabeth Cramer's Sheboygan County Farm. Then, Emmy Fink checks out the progress on the construction of a new Adventure Africa exhibit, right here at the zoo. But first, I'll take you muskie fishing on Lindeman Lake in Douglas County with guide Joe Shead. I'm Dan Small and it's time once again for "Outdoor Wisconsin". (gentle guitar music) Summer to fall, winter to spring From Green Bay to where the St. Croix sings From Kettle Moraine to Superior's shore "Outdoor Wisconsin" "Outdoor Wisconsin" You'll find a wide variety of native Wisconsin fishes here in the zoo's Lake Wisconsin exhibit. How many can you name? I know there's a muskie in here somewhere but they're pretty elusive. Especially in the wild and especially if you go after them with a camera crew in tow. Last fall, I enjoyed a day of muskie fishing on Lindeman Lake with guide Joe Shead. (birds chirping) (water sloshing) Okay. I'm out today on Lindeman Lake in Douglas County with Joe Shead. He's an outdoor writer and a guide, and Joe I like the name of your guide service Muskie Doom. Muskie Doom, yeah. We try to doom the muskies but a lot of times it's the anglers who are doomed, but we do the best we can. (laughs) Oh, well I hope we're not doomed today. (laughs) And operating our camera boat is Craig Mazurek, and he'll be fishing too. So, no telling which one of us will bring a fish in. We hope to get some action. (boat engine revs) What's the plan here today? Well the plan is, Lindeman is kind of known as a numbers lake. So hopefully, having said that, we can get something in the boat today. It's a native population of muskies. This is one of the three lakes in Douglas County where muskies were native. And it's got a long history of muskie fishing, and then there's also quite a few Tiger muskies out here too. -

Dan

Oh, cool. So maybe we'll get a shot at a tiger. -

Dan

All right. Well I brought my fly rods and I'm gonna actually try that cause it's nice and calm, but you like to throw buck tails, right? Yeah, usually, yep. Well, Joe this is a fly my brother ties called a hawg frawg. Okay. H-A-W-G F-R-A-W-G. I'm gonna use that a little later. I'm gonna start with an Enrico Puglisi, hard to pronounce his name. These are salt water flies. It looks like a perch, but boy the muskies really love them. It's easy to cast. I'm just gonna throw this White Marabou Buck Tail by Big Tooth, and it's brand new out of the package, so we'll put her to the test today. -

Dan

All right. Well, I just took this fly out of the package too, so-- - Perfect. Couple of virgin baits and we'll see if we get any hungry muskies out there. Sounds good. - But what have we got here? We've got a bull rush bed out here and there's gonna be some submersion weeds out there. It's real dark water so it's only about a three foot weed line. So, we're in five feet right now so we'll get up there a little closer, and see if we can't put one into the boat. -

Dan

All right. So what are they doing in here this time of year, Joe? Well, you know as the water starts to cool down a little bit, they should be kind of comin' shallower. Starting to kind of, you know we're not in that classic fall stage yet, but we're kind of coming up on it. Where they should really start to eat here quite heavily. So, I'm hoping that they'll be up shallow and starting to really feed. This whole lake is only 15 feet deep so they're always fairly shallow, but, and there's not a lot of weeds it's dark enough where we've got a three foot weed line and there's not a lot of areas that are shallow enough to provide weeds. So, this is one of those spots. So, it's usually, you know there should be a lot of bait fish up here, too, so-- -

Dan

Well, let's see. Now, Joe one of the reasons you suggested we fish Lindeman is because of the Gordon Macquarrie connection. Right, yeah, you've got the Gordan Macquarrie event you're attending this weekend, and this is one of the lakes that we actually know that Macquarrie was on. There's a story called "Muskies Larding Up" and it took place in November, at the time obviously Mr. President and Gordon Macquarrie were big duck hunters, that's what they're known for, but Mr. President being the conniver that he is, he fooled Macquarrie a little bit. Macquarrie assumed that they were gonna go duck hunting in the morning, on a cold November, and Mr. President's down in the basement whittling a muskie lure. He "hankered for a fish", he said. So, he made Macquarrie row all around this lake while he whipped this big homemade monstrosity of a lure. And meanwhile, of course, there's Blue Bills flying around and other ducks, and Macquarrie's totally disengaged from muskies. He feels like they have no chance, and low and behold Mr. President actually boats a fish. -

Dan

And literally boats a fish. -

Joe

Literally boated it, they didn't use a net. They literally leaned the boat to the side and the fish just spilled in along with, I think he said, two inches of Lindeman Lake water. -

Dan

I don't think we'll do that. -

Joe

I'm hoping not. (laughs) (calm instrumental music) I guess the winds kind of picked up a little bit, which is kind of made it a little tough to fly fish, and we've been fishing for a while. We had one hit, haven't got anything in the boat yet. So, we're gonna try a little bit of kryptonite here. We're gonna try suckers. It's early September here so it's a little early for suckers, it's hard to get them. That's all we got for suckers, but hopefully it'll get some success. All right. We're gonna drag that? We're just gonna kind of drag it behind the boat and see what happens. But we can still cast? We're still gonna cast, yep. All right. Give it a try. We'll give it a try, yep. (drag clicking) Looks like it. I don't wanna touch my trolling motor because he's right on it. Yeah, he's swimming with it, okay. Yeah, go ahead, take up some slack and hit him. -

Man

Take the boat that way. -

Joe

Missed him. Leave it sit, leave it sit, leave it sit. -

Dan

Whoa! Did he come back at it? - No. Oh "Leave it sit" you said. - Yeah. -

Dan

Oh. (laughs) -

Joe

Yeah, a lot of times they'll come back for it. Well, so much for my hearing. (laughs) (gentle guitar music) (plug burbling) I hate to say it but it's another day of muskie fishing with no muskies in the boat. Joe, we really gave it today and had some action. We tried, we had a couple of fish hit and had a sucker hit and it just didn't happen. But I guess that's muskie fishing. Yeah, I guess so. Well, would you have me out again? Anytime, but make sure next time you just leave that camera bit at home. (laughs) Okay, you hear that guys? (laughs) (boat engine revs) So you really think the cameras a jinx, huh? -

Joe

(laughs) I think everything is a jinx. I think I'm the jinx. -

Dan

(laughs) You're the jinx. Maybe you need to change doom into zoom or boom or-- -

Joe

Something, something. -

Dan

And of course, wouldn't you know it, shortly after we left, Craig caught a 39" muskie. I guess Joe was right about the camera jinx. -

Cameraman

All right, that's a beauty. -

Craig

Nice fish. Well, this coming season I hope we can buck that trend of no muskies when the TV cameras are rolling. At least we'll give it another try. Right now we're here in the Milwaukee County Zoo's family farm exhibit. These Holsteins have a pretty good life, and they tell me this is the only working dairy farm left in the city of Milwaukee. Let's head up to a farm in Sheboygan County now for part one of a two-part visit to Elizabeth Cramer's barn to look at some of the restoration done on the barn last summer. It had been a dream for a long time. I grew up on a farm surrounded by wildlife and knew that someday I wanted to give back to the country. I wanted goats and ponies and the classic big red barn. My own little piece of outdoor Wisconsin. This is a photo of the barn from our wedding day. It was beautiful. Our sign was hanging and it was just such a beautiful day. To see the barn so damaged from the storm was absolutely heartbreaking. (wind howling) The barn was damaged on August 28th of last year. There were tornado warnings and some reports of touch-downs in the area. I think we just thought "Okay, it's gonna be a bad storm "but it's not going to destroy our property." (laughs) I was in Milwaukee at the time, working and my husband was at work in Plymouth, which is fairly close. He called me and said "It's actually looking really bad, "and I'm gonna run home just to check on the animals." So, I kind of waited at work and got a play-by-play from Luke as it was happening. And it was one of the worst phone calls I have ever gotten in my life. Basically, it started with the doors. One door blew off of the barn and landed over in the yard about 20 feet away. Another door blew off and landed over by the animal pasture. At that time, that really opened up the barn and the wind just gusted through creating kind of a whirl-wind inside, and tilted the barn. The animal door came off of its tracking. They were just kind of huddled inside of the barn, luckily safe, but there were no doors left to protect them. I drove home and the first thing that I saw as I was driving toward our property was all of the trees were somehow cut in half. Branches everywhere. Our entire road was just trees, and driving around all of these broken branches in the road. Police cars everywhere trying to move these branches and get people through, and surveying the damage. It was terrifying. Luckily, the barn was standing and our animals were okay, but then you just kind of realize that now you have so many issues. (hammer pounding) (drill whirring) (sawing rasping) (drill whirring) So, today we are here fixing the barn, finally repairing the storm damage, and I'm here with Kyle Bender, from Bender Builders and he's gonna walk us through a little bit of what we're doing today. Go ahead, Kyle. - Okay. Well, first we're starting here with removing the old doors. That was kind of the start of the problem, with the storm. The wind came and actually pushed two of the doors in. As you can see the bottom is actually stuck on the barn floor. And in the process, it damages the track and the rollers, so we're taking the old doors down. And new tracks, correct? Yep, exactly, and that's actually on the trailer here. I don't know if you wanna-- Sure! See what it is but it's actually a galvanized covered track so it keeps the water out, and it's totally enclosed and the rollers actually slide through the end there. Now, how is this different than the rollers, we had old fashioned wheel rollers up there. Right, part of the track like that part that's still up there is actually it's still the same design. The rollers that were on there were kind of a hodge-podge of pieces gathered over the years. (laughs) (laughs) Old barn, 1800s barn. We're not quite sure what it was. Right, exactly, so we're gonna put up all continuous track and new rollers on all the doors and they'll work like they should. Okay, awesome! It was actually so badly damaged that this is all that is left of our. -

Kyle

You can see the handle on there. Yeah, you can still see, there's the roller. There's the roller and there's the handle. So, this is all that's left. We're actually gonna try and salvage some of this material, too, and use it for piecing in parts of the siding that are missing. It's actually a ship-lap, which is hard to replicate. We actually make it because you can't really buy it anymore. Yeah, and then as you can see boards are blown off here, too. It's the same thing when the doors get blown in, the wind gets into the barn and it doesn't have anywhere to go. So, it exits however it can. It blows boards off or takes walls out. It actually shifts the structure. If you eyeball down the length of this barn you can actually see it's leaning pretty good this direction. -

Elizabeth

Coming along to the east side of the barn is where the wind really started to tilt things. It actually pushed this corner post away, out. It actually exited here. Shifted the sealed corner post, everything out. Which in turn, took the rocks with it. So, we have our jack up here. We're gonna raise this corner up to the proper height, and re-lay these stone with a lime-mortar mix and tuck-point that up, it will be as good as new. So, you can actually get a view from here. The barn has actually shifted this direction, to the south a little bit, as well. Which is not near as common as sideways. Length-wise is hardly ever do barns lean that direction, but there was enough of a force that it just shoved the whole thing, whole thing over. So, we're gonna attempt to pull that back, get that straightened out and based up, as well. (drills whirring) This is actually 3/8 inch aviation cable that we use, and we installed this last winter, again when we were talking about the barn shifting, we installed that so that it would make it through the winter and a snow load on the roof wouldn't collapse it. We actually, these are big come-alongs that we use. This is how we pull things back together. We probably have about a dozen of these in here at a time. Just to pull a back plum and also pull it together. And literally pulling from either side, right? So this is hooked up to a cable? -

Kyle

Exactly, to the loop on this cable here or chains. We use chains a lot, but since we're leaving equipment in, we actually clamped off the cables. But it'd hook to this loop and then up at the other end, and then it just cinches together. So, by doing that it shortens the distance between the rafter plate and the sill plate and it plums the building. It's literally holding the barn together. (laughs) Yep, exactly, exactly. It's pulling it together so that it pushes the roof system this direction. Which straightens it out. So, today you guys are going to be taking this out? Yes, today we brought actually a four by four bracing. As what used to be here, but fell out as the barn shifted. And we'll put those back in, we'll probably add a couple extras, and then re-nail the existing. Just to give it a little added reinforcement. Okay, sounds like a plan. -

Worker

We're not gonna need that one. -

Elizabeth

What's to say another storm isn't going to do the same damage? How do you prevent further storm damage? Well, keeping doors on and closed is a big part of it. I mean, obviously you can't prevent a tornado. If you have a direct hit or 100 mile an hour winds there isn't really anything you can do. I mean it'll take down the house just the same as if it's in the direct path, but keeping things enclosed and doors latched and just trying to keep the wind and elements out. I mean just basic maintenance. Keeping a good roof on, keeping the water out, keeping the weather out and it'll last another 100 years. -

Elizabeth

Awesome, thank you. (drill whirring) (hammer pounding) Day one of the barn repair has come to an end, but we'll be checking back in a few days to see how this project wraps up. We'll tell you how to learn more about all the exhibits here at the zoo a little later in the show. Including the Hippo Haven that's still under construction here. Emmy Fink was here last fall for a closer look at some of the work being done here. Well, Mr. Hippo behind me is moving up in the world. He's getting a brand new house. It's the biggest change to the Milwaukee County Zoo in decades. Adventure Africa, a three-phase project. Brand new houses for so many wonderful animals here at the zoo. (playful music) The Zoological Society of Milwaukee, of the Milwaukee County Zoo, partnered together to develop a master plan to help reimagine our zoo over the next 25 years. Out of that came a high interest from our visitors and the community and a need to renovate some of the oldest areas of the zoo, and that led us to create the Adventure Africa Campaign to renovate the areas of the zoos that house our elephants, hippos, rhinos and African hoof stock. And that renovation will represent one of the largest transformations at the zoo, because it's about 25% of the developed footprint of the zoo, including some of the oldest areas at the Milwaukee County Zoo. We have been so blessed and I think that's demonstrated in our fundraising results. To date, the community has contributed more than 19.5 million dollars towards our 25 million dollar goal. And that's a combination of small gifts of five dollars from people who love coming to visit the zoo, to big corporations and foundations who've made multi-year and multi-million dollar commitments. Well we are lucky enough today to spend the day with the zoo's head honcho, Mr. Chuck, the zoo director himself, is gonna take us on a behind-the-scenes tour that no one is gonna get to see. How exciting is this for you, before we even get started? To see this project come to life? It's great, really indescribable, as far as I'm concerned. With the first phase having been finished for the elephants, and then to get this. This has been in planning for 10 years, to get this done, and finally with the help of the Zoological Society, we were able to get the funding and now we're gonna build it. One of the spectacular things from a zoo aspect is all of the plumbing that is in this exhibit. Just notice the number of pipes, the number of valves. So outside of that, then over against the wall, that's the beach area, and that's where the hippos will be able to come out and sun themselves, if they choose or go down a ramp and be in the pool, right inside here. -

Emmy

They're not gonna believe this new haven. It's perfectly named The Hippo Haven. Yeah, it's gonna be great for them. This wall that you see right here that goes back and forth at an angle, that's the foundation and that's where the glass will sit. So, the pool will be a few feet just below that and you'll see the top six or seven feet of the pool. -

Emmy

Okay, and this is so important because up to 16 hours a day these hippos are spending under water, and now zoo lovers are gonna actually be able to actually see what's going on. Before, in the small pool that they had you might see their ears and their nose come out, or the hump on their back and that's about it, or if they were out eating hay. But this, you'll be able to see them. See that they're not actually swimming, they're kind of walking along the bottom of this and we've got certain rest areas that are raised rock work, so they'll be able to sit or lay right on top of that rock and just be comfortable and then just lift their head up if they want or just lay there. So we've just left the sidewalk where the visitors are going to be and they'll be able to look in at the beach and then at a few other areas, little scenic turnouts, we call them. Then you'll come into the exhibit area this way and over here we've got some photo opportunities. They're actually artificial hippos, so to speak. That appear to be partially submerged. One of them has its mouth open and you can see the tusks and everything, so kids can run. Oh, cool! Get inside of that, have their picture taken or sit on top of them. Love it. Gotta at least have something fun in the exhibit. So, this is the basement area where all of the filters and the pipes will go for this huge tub that they're gonna have. Yes, not too long from now they'll start bringing in the big sand filter. So those are those big canister-like things You can imagine your swimming pool which has one that's about 20 gallons or something. This is a lot larger. But we'll put a series of about five of those right along this wall and the controls will be right here. That's what they're running all of this electrical conduit underneath the floor right now to help control it. The plumbing has already been installed and is buried and early next week they'll come in and they'll pour a concrete floor over this entire surface. We have special equipment that is being built just for us that really is like a filter in itself. The heavy particles of the manure will get filtered off. Augured out into containers and then will come back over to this area and then be lifted outside. Something that you've never had in the past. Right. - Wow. This is all brand new and with only a few of those in the United States, exhibits like this, each one is an advancement as far as the technology and everything that goes into it. -

Emmy

So, you've been here for 30 years. You are a big part of the make up of what is the Milwaukee County Zoo. I mean are you, this is just crazy, this is so much change. It is. We're changing about 25% of the developed footprint in the zoo. Some of the oldest things that we've had here, something that's been on my mind for a long time. Not only just for a visitor experience, but animal welfare and how that's changed over these last 30 years, well actually since the late 50s, we wanna make sure we have the best possible area to keep elephants, rhinos, hippos, and the best possible working conditions for the people that are taking care of them. Well, this summer in June is where the zoo lovers are going to be congregating because is one of the viewing areas. Yes, this is where visitors will come. Right around the corner here under the shade structure and the glass wall of the pool will be along that wall right over there. And we'll have benches on the backside here for people to sit and watch. It'll be cool under the shade, but something that's gonna be so interesting they're just gonna wanna really see it. Thank you so much for the tour. This has been really, really fun. Thank you so much, Chuck. (upbeat music) To learn more about the zoo's new Adventure Africa Exhibit and this week's other features, log on to milwaukeepbs.org and search local programs for "Outdoor Wisconsin", or visit the Milwaukee PBS Facebook page. I'll be at the "Outdoor Life" "Field and Stream" Expo at the Alive Energy Center in Madison, through Sunday, April 5th. So, stop by our booth and say hello. Well, next time we'll do some hunting dog training tips from Tim Nader, of Bluegrass Kennels. We'll go back to Elizabeth Cramer's farm in Sheboygan County to see how her barn restoration turned out, and we'll meet a woman who plans to circumnavigate all five Great Lakes in one year, by kayak. Saying goodbye from the giraffe exhibit here at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I'm Dan Small. Join us again next week for "Outdoor Wisconsin". (bright music)