Old Tamarack Lodge

01/01/2025

The new year is under way, prompting me to look at some 2024 photos to remind me of some great people and stories, and why they’ll always matter. Yep. My weekly column — https://bit.ly/4gB6O2c — shares another story involving Tom Heberlein and his Northwoods shack/property.

10/27/2024

I spent two days in Ashland County last week, doing chores and eating well at Old T — the late Tom Heberlein’s hunting shack in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. I had a good time visiting with a group of Heberlein’s old friends and colleagues, who were there to chase grouse and woodcock, brag about their dogs, and bitch about the ticks and hot weather — mid 70s each afternoon. The camp’s heir and new “captain,” Rich Stedman, played host and oversaw a giveaway of old hunting clothes that Heberlein left behind. Stedman also showed us that “straight-arming” for photos isn’t just for making fish look bigger. It works for woodcock, too.

10/07/2024

Tom Heberlein, the longtime owner and “captain” of the Old Tamarack hunting camp on the Conley Road in Wisconsin’s Ashland County, died Jan. 4 of this year. We buried him four days later on a knoll at Old T. In September, Tom’s wife, Betty Thomsen, asked their pastor, Eldonna Hazen, for a prayer. Eldonna remembered the struggles Tom and Betty faced. Betty appreciated her words so much that she shared them with Tom’s friends. We think you’ll like the prayer, too:
“Loving God, You meet us in this holy and natural space in Your creation. We are grateful this piece of creation has become Tom's holy home, as he returns to nature. We give thanks for those who braved the weather to dig into the land, carry him to this place, and lay him among the trees, bushes, and animal habitat. We also give thanks for all Tom did to honor and protect this place and all of God's wonderful creation. Today we celebrate his final resting place, knowing he has found a place of peace in the midst of Your creation. May the wisdom he shared with friends and family over the years continue to guide those who visit the cabin and the land. We give thanks for Tom, loved by many! Amen.”

01/22/2024

Tom Heberlein—the owner and captain of the Old Tamarack Lodge in Ashland County, Wisconsin— died Jan. 4. I wrote a tribute to him soon after (Hit this link: https://bit.ly/48Jt1GZ) his death from prostate cancer, including a recap of his final trip to Old T for the November 2023 gun deer season.

01/22/2024

We put the remains of Tom Heberlein, my longtime mentor and hunting buddy, atop an icefishing sled, dragged him into the forest, and gave him the “green” burial he desired last Friday. He now rests 40 miles south of Lake Superior on a knoll he owned overlooking the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. My latest MeatEater column recounts how our small group wrapped him in an elk hide and buried him with shovels. Hit this link https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/general/the-captain-a-true-conservationist-in-life-and-death for my account.

10/14/2022

The purpose of late September’s trip to Old T was muskie fishing for Jim Simonson; bird hunting for Keith Warnke and The Captain, Tom Heberlein; and firewood cutting and bucking for Pat Durkin. Here’s the evidence that Simonson achieved his goal. At this point, we have no photographic evidence — only words — that Warnke and Heberlein shot any grouse or woodcock. And the snow scenes? Those are from this morning. Pat and his wife, Penny, are in camp so they can run the Whistlestop races in Ashland tomorrow, Oct. 15. Pat’s running the marathon (26.2 miles), and Penny the 5K (3.1 miles).

10/05/2022

Since becoming a regular at Tom Heberlein’s deer/grouse shack in northwestern Wisconsin in 2003, my No. 1 duty is maintaining his firewood supply. So, that’s what I did when spending a day up there last week. I dropped three big, dead red pines east of The Professor’s shack in the morning, and then in the afternoon hauled and stacked the chunks, with help from Keith Warnke, one of Heberlein’s former students. Heberlein helped his dad plant those pines in the late 1950s when he was 12 years old. Most trees from that effort on a cold April day 65 years ago are still growing, but he’s now outlived many others that became lumber or heating fuel for his shack and sauna.

05/31/2022

Yet another column inspired, or partially inspired, by a visit to Old Tamarack Lodge, Tom Heberlein's old hunting shack near Cayuga, Wisconsin. The shack's original owners would be shocked to know the turkey hunting around there is probably better than the deer hunting.

My humble hunting goal for the spring 2022 turkey season was to be a helpful, competent, memorable guide for three special people. Pfft! Even modesty was a bar too high. As the season neared its end in late May, I conceded I’d never make it as a professional guide. Not one of my three “clients.....

05/14/2022

Tom Heberlein and I spent 4+ days at his shack, "The Old Tamarack Lodge," in Ashland County in far northwestern Wisconsin last week. Our main reason was for him to run away from home for a few days, but we also spent three straight mornings hunting wild turkeys with our good friend and hunting/fishing guide Brenda Maier. Brenda introduced Heberlein to a talkative gobbler the first morning while hunting west of Clam Lake. Hit the link to read my account of that exciting hunt.

The turkey’s gobble was just distant enough to doubt, obscured as it was by light winds swishing through red-pine boughs overhead. Tom Heberlein must have sensed my uncertainty. Was a wild turkey really gobbling within earshot in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest near Clam Lake? Heberlein po...

02/19/2022

My wife, Penny, and I have journeyed to Old T each winter since 2006 to snowshoe and/or icefish with our longtime friends and Karen and Tim Watson. We've only missed two years: Covid in 2021 and a medical issue in 2019. It was fun to get back up there again two weeks ago. We even caught some fish. Hit the link to read about it.

Skeptics question whether ice anglers really need to drill a score of holes before bouncing between them like a trick-or-treater, their left paw clenching a jigging rod and their right paw a sonar flasher and dangling transducer. Serious ice anglers, after all, enjoy drilling holes with souped-up ba...

01/14/2022

Once again, conversations with Tom Heberlein, or papers he wrote, helped launch one of my articles. This one for the MeatEater media group deals with post-kill traditions of American hunters. We don't see or shoot many deer at Old Tamarack, but we do have some rituals and traditions, such as writing an entry every year in Heberlein's log books and posing for a group photo before breaking camp. Thanks, too, to one of Heberlein's papers — "The Gun, the Dog, and the Thermos" — and one of his former students, Professor Marc Boglioli, for helping me find a focus for this article.

Tomorrow’s anthropologists will have files an inch deep and a mile wide when they try cataloging and explaining the traditions and post-kill rituals of today’s North American hunters. That’s to be expected, given that Canada, the United States, and our hunting traditions are relatively young a...

12/03/2021

Here's my recap of my 2021 Wisconsin fi****ms deer season, which features some highlights from Old T. I've always liked this 2017 photo of Tom Heberlein's high-rent high-rise deer stand just east of the shack.

My oldest daughter, Leah, hunted deer with me for the first time since 2014. A good friend, Tom Heberlein, saw deer from his favorite stand for the first time since 2003. I shot a deer with my first deer rifle, a Savage Model 99E in .308 Wi******er, for the first time since 1984. I spent time with f...