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Awesome Find

I want to share with you an awesome find. Whether its important to you or not I believe its a piece of our Wisconsin deer hunting Heritage. A friend of mine whos father in law is 73 yrs old, just sold his house and was clearing out and moving his work shop to there new home. His father in law asked him if he would like this of deer drag otherwise he was going to throw it out. He said that his great grandfather carved it many years ago for dragging deer out of the woods. My friend gave it to me.

I sit here and look at it and wonder about all the deer hunting stories this drag could tell if it could. You can see the oil from years of use embedded in the wood. I don't know what kind of wood its made out of but its as hard as a rock. There's even still some blood stains on one end of it.

Is there any such thing as a WI hunting museum? Any other stories and pictures out there that you would like to share.

Hello Mike,

That "deer drag" is a pretty interesting item,.. are you sure this is a deer drag and not a deer gambrel which would have been used for hanging a deer?

Yes, what stories it could tell! If only it could talk!

At this point in time I do not believe there is a Wisconsin deer hunting museum or any sort of central location where Wisconsin deer hunting history is being preserved, or where WI deer hunting artifacts are being saved and displayed for the general public to view.

However, there is a Wisconsin BOWHUNTING museum which receives, preserves, and displays for public view all sorts of WI bowhunting gear, tackle, artifacts, and related memorabilia. This museum was created as (originally) an offshoot of the WI Bowhunters Assoc. but now is a stand alone, non-profit, 501 (c) (3) organization. It has been created through the efforts of the Wisconsin Bowhunting Heritage Foundation and is housed at the WBH headquarters in Clintonville. The museum is open five days a week and admission is free for all, WBH members or not.

There are a number of individuals on this forum who are associated with the WBHF and are directors of the organization, I am one of them. The WBHF receives items for display either as donations or items that are loaned for a period of time. If this item has a bowhunting history and you might wish to consider seeing it in the WBHF museum, please PM me and we can go from there.

Thanks for showing this to all of us. Interesting piece of WI deer hunting history. Fun to see this old stuff!

"are you sure this is a deer drag and not a deer gambrel" Was specifically told it was a deer drag. I will look into who made it and how old it is. maybe someone else will chime in on donating it.

My Dad will be 92 next month. And yes he will rifle hunt this fall. He was born and raised on a dairy farm in Marinette County. I have something similar he made for dragging deer. It came from the farm and looks like something that may have hitched the horses to a plow or wagon. I can remember using it over 40 years ago. He says he made it before the war (WWII) when he was a teenager, "Just like my Dad's". It's dragged a lot of deer.........even in my time. One of my favorite things, along with Grandpa's Savage 99 .250-3000 as they call it. I wonder if his Dad's is still on the farm.

Hunting is much more than the antlers. Thanks for the memories.

MF, that is actually a backscratcher. Just kidding. I think you might be correct in that it is a deer drag. The center notch is for the rope and the hooks on the ends is to keep gloves hands from slipping off the drag. Just a thought.

Nice piece of history there

Cool find for sure!

MF - what are the dimensions of it?

I echo Tweeds question - how long is it?

Before we started backpacking all of our deer out, we would find a 4' log which my brother and I would wedge in front of our waists. This is all up in the big woods where we were dragging 1-3 miles and there were lots of logs to overcome.

And none of our logs lasted a season, let alone 40+ years. Neat find.

It is 26 inches long. The ends carved out so hands would not slip off when dragging. Will find out more info soon and post.

Great find Mike!

Cool!

Maybe it doubled as a drag and a gambrel hanger...

And I think it was probably also used to cultivate the soil for planting bait plots ;^)

Limbs of a crossbow :D

Found the information I was looking for. Hagbart Pedersen, was born in 1880 died 1974. He was a carpenter. Made his way to the U.S. from Norway and lived and raised a family in Washburn WI until his death. The deer drag was hand carved by him sometime in the late 1930s.

What a life

Cool

Thats awesome!

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