September purports countless hunting, fishing, picking, digging, photographing, and awe-inspiring scenarios for those who have felt confined by recent heat waves or realized autumn was pushing to get moving.

Some adventures provide food for a tasty meal.  Others are chances to see colors creeping into habitats and can provide a lift from humidity.  Provisions for indoor displays or front door greetings are free because it’s autumn.

Wisconsin’s two-month wild ginseng digging season opened September 1, and closes November 1, or sooner if the leaves die back beyond recognition.  Land titleholders may take this opportunity to make sure remaining fruits, and the seeds within, are planted close by but not so close as to expose a seedling to growth retardants from the adult plant.

Mourning dove hunters, early Canada goose hunters, early teal hunters, and migratory bird enthusiasts began hunting, and sometimes calling, too.  Check license and stamp needs before grabbing a shotgun, decoys and camouflage.

If the adventure includes a retriever dog be ready to spend considerable time removing stickseed, tick-trefoil, cocklebur, and burdock hitchhiking plant parts.  Summer’s rainfalls helped more than soybeans and dent corn put on loads of fruit.  Weeds were no different.

Yes, a few of these wildflower and weed pods are in final beauty.  Common cattail may be too robust for vases, so search for a narrow-leafed cattail and everyone will be impressed with the elegance of the delicate spike of seeds.  The two species also hybridize, too.  Cattails are known to explode as they dry, so spray them with lacquer or hair spray before stepping back to admire a design.

Wisconsin’s hook and line sturgeon fishing season, opens September 7 and closes at month’s end.  It can be exciting whether watching a pole on a sandy Wisconsin River shore near Sauk Prairie.

Soon after this flurry of early openers, September 14 marks the season openers for ruffed grouse (there is no open season for sharp-tailed grouse in 2024), gray and fox squirrel, fall turkey, and deer being pursued with archery or crossbow equipment.  The black bear season is open, too.

A fair number of differences separate fall turkey hunting and the spring pursuit, but many who shadow the bird during autumn find excitement when rafts of young and adult hens flush in many directions. In most zones the season remains open continuously until January 5, 2025.  This includes the nine days during the gun-deer season beginning November 23.  What could be better than venison loins and turkey breast, red and white meat, together on the same platter?

A few oyster mushrooms and chicken-of-the-woods fungi have been gathered, helping heal the disappointments of last spring’s morel season dud.  Maitake and puffballs will follow, while the earlier species will continue to fruit in different locations.

Grapes and elderberries are putting on purple fruit displays.  The juices often end in small glass jars, and then on toast.

Shagbark hickory nuts, walnuts and very few butternuts and American chestnuts fill in nicely as nut meats to use in baking and snacking, as well as special winter bird and squirrel food.  There cracking but not picking is all that is necessary to feed the animals.

White-tailed deer are well on their way to shed velvet from antlers, lose their coat spots, and shed summer reds for brown-gray winter coats.  

Start a new landowner relationship by offering to take an antlerless deer or two from a farmer’s southern farmland woods.  Even if bucks are reserved for a family November hunt, watching an antlered deer may be an adventure worth sharing with a landlord at hunt’s end.