Picture this a day or two before the gun-deer season opens. Dozens of happy, anxious hunters crowd against counters in sports shops and Department of Natural Resources Service Centers across Wisconsin, to plop down money for their deer licenses.
Behind these counters are clerks who have said the same things hundreds, maybe thousands, of times this week, things about season lengths, new hunting rules and which tags to place on which deer carcasses.
But the employees are not complaining. Some are actually waiting for Saturday morning to arrive, too, so they can be off work and in the woods. Other clerks, if they are hunters, may have drawn a short straw and will spend Saturday selling more licenses to forgetful hunters.
Until last year, deer hunters had to purchase their licenses before the season began, but with a new law people can purchase a deer license during the season. About 10,000 hunters took advantage of the new regulation last year.
"I'm also a deer hunter, so I understand their excitement," said Joann Miller, DNR customer service representative in Dodgeville Service Center. "I enjoy selling licenses. We like to have hunters know the rules and obey them. This is part of my job."
Stories; every hunter has stories of last year's hunt and they are willing, even pushy, about telling these tales to anyone who even pretends to be listening.
"You have to stop and listen," said Wayne Whitemarsh, assistant sporting goods manager at Wilderness Fish and Game in Sauk City, who has gone through 25 years of busy week. "Everyone has seen the biggest buck of their lifetime and they have to tell about it."
In spite of slight license fee increases this year, hunters usually do not grumble to clerks about the cost during this special time of the year.
"This is their passion; they're going to pay almost whatever the cost is," Whitemarsh said. "They'll forget about the mortgage payment as long as they get to go deer hunting."
Other people stare at their computer screens and punch in numbers and letters while on line through the DNR's Web site, maybe telling last year's hunting tales to anyone who is listening in their home or office. Or maybe they just mumble the stories to themselves.
After everyone has spoken or punched in their name, age, address and other personal information to the clerk or computer screen, more than 650,000 licenses will be sold, each with a unique backtag number.
"Last year the biggest single sales location was our Web site," said Diane Brookbank, DNR Customer Service and Licensing Bureau Director in Madison. "In order for us to mail out the actual tags, which are necessary, we need about 10 days. But as we get close to the Saturday opener, we do offer Federal Express delivery to where ever the hunter is, even at his or her hunting camp in Northern Wisconsin. More and more hunters are asking us to do just that, too."
It would take dozens of employees behind counters to do what the DNR's license computer system is able to do. Better known as ALIS, for Automated License Issuance System, this computer system licenses about 40 hunters a minute during busy times the week before season.
"Hunters are beginning to learn the convenience of purchasing licenses on line," Brookbank said.
Still, part of Wisconsin's gun-deer hunting tradition is telling stories, at least a few of them are true, or at least parts of them are true. But no hunter has ever reported their computer screen smiling back to them when they tell about getting caught with their pants down when that biggest buck of a lifetime walked past their stand.
Only a real person, a clerk behind the license counter, would blush or let loose with a belly laugh when hearing deer tales.