Wisconsinite’s love the outdoors. But for families, it can be challenging to find the time for adventures while balancing responsibilities at home. John Stellflue, a Sun Prairie resident and avid outdoorsman, recently headed out for the youth hunt with his nephew – on his wedding anniversary. How did he pull that off? Compromise and respect. From the day they said I do, John and his wife, Caralyn, have had a few simple rules to balance his love of the hunt and their marriage.
Listen to the latest episode of Wild Wisconsin -- Off the Record as we sit down to learn a bit more about those rules and how John is able to balance his outdoor lifestyle with the rest of life in general.
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TRANSCRIPT
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Wisconsin DNR's Wild Wisconsin "Off the Record" podcast. Information straight from the source.
[00:00:09] KATIE GRANT: Welcome back to another episode of Wild Wisconsin "Off the Record". I'm your host, DNR's Digital Media Coordinator, Katie Grant. Here at the DNR, we use social media to help inform the public about the many facets of Wisconsin life that we touch on a daily basis. It's also a great source for us to hear your Wisconsin stories.
[00:00:35] One of those stories came from John Stellflue, a Sun Prairie resident who tagged us in a Facebook post about heading out for the youth hunt with his nephew... on his wedding anniversary. John and his wife, Carolyn have from the beginning of their marriage, had a few simple rules in place to ensure he'd be able to hunt and fish as often as possible.
[00:00:56] We sat down to learn a bit more about those rules and how John is able to balance his outdoor lifestyle with the rest of life in general. So sit back and listen in.
[00:01:05] JOHN STELLFLUE: My name's John Stellflue. Born and raised in Wisconsin. I'm a lifelong outdoorsman. Hunting, fishing... everything Wisconsin. You know, ultimate dream is to be able to live by doing something in the outdoors. You know, unfortunately, not unfortunately, I mean, I have a job now, but it'd really be cool if someday I could you know, just make a living, doing what I love, you know? In the meantime I work hard and weekends and vacations are mainly spent hunting and fishing, you know... all Wisconsin stuff.
[00:01:45] I've been fortunate to get a bear tag. A few years back I got a bear. Deer, turkey, lots of fishing. Many, many years it was almost exclusively musky fishing. Kind of graduated now into doing a little bit, a little bit more multi-species things, but I still mainly musky fish. But, many years I was a Hunter Education Instructor.
[00:02:09] I haven't done that in a long time, but I miss that. So that's a little bit about myself.
[00:02:15] CARALYN STELLFLUE: And I'm Carolyn Stellflue. Like John, lifelong, Wisconsin resident. In fact, we grew up in the same town. I am not the outdoors person, at least not his kind of outdoors person. I mean, I love my gardening and walking and stuff like that, but I don't hunt.
[00:02:36] I hunted once. I do like to go fishing with him, but yeah, I'm a little different type of an outdoor person.
[00:02:42] KATIE: Fantastic. So you guys recently celebrated a 30th wedding anniversary, correct?
[00:02:49] CARALYN: 31
[00:02:49] KATIE: 31?
[00:02:50] JOHN: 31. Yep. 31. 1988.
[00:02:53] KATIE: All right:
[00:02:54] JOHN: We're rocking the national average every day we get up.
[00:02:58] KATIE: There you go. How did you guys meet?
[00:03:00] JOHN: How does anybody meet in Wisconsin? In a bar. [Laughs} Yeah. I was, one of us was making a pool shot... she was going to make a pool shot. And then she asked me what my advice was and I really had no advice. She thought I was cute. So...
[00:03:20] KATIE: The rest is history. When we talked John, you said, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Carolyn as long as I could hunt and fish that entire time.
[00:03:33] So, [To Caralyn] you said you're not quite as outdoorsy as John.
[00:03:36] CARALYN: No.
[00:03:37] KATIE: Have you come further than you were when you first met?
[00:03:41] CARALYN: Well yeah, cause I think that my not being the same type of outdoorsy he is probably just a different generation. Like I was around hunting. My brother's hunted, my dad hunted, my uncles. I mean, I knew that, you know, when hunting season was and pheasant, my dad fished, my uncles fish.
[00:03:58] I was around all of that, but I was a girl. And I don't know they just never took me along as much. Took my brothers, but, you know, not so much me. Then when John and I got married and we started going... we started going camping before we even got married. And then we bought the boat the year that Carissa was born or a little bit before.
[00:04:21] And so, yeah, that's when I started, you know, doing any of that kind of stuff at all was after we got married.
[00:04:27] KATIE: So you said musky fishing. What are your other absolute Wisconsin outdoors favorites.
[00:04:35] JOHN: So Whitetail hunting of course, but a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to draw a bear tag. And that to me was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done in a Wisconsin woods.
[00:04:48] I did a DIY hunt. I spent that whole summer driving from, you know, we lived down here near Madison driving to Rusk County. I mean I get home from work Friday night, throw the gear in the truck and I... from the 4th of July on, I was gone every single weekend baiting bear. And then I just stayed in a tent and camped.
[00:05:08] I left my boat right up there so I could fish, but we saw, I saw a fair number of bear during my hunt. I was able to get, you know, your standard run of the mill middle of Wisconsin bear. Not a giant, but you know, shot it with my bow. So I was excited. That was fun. That was something I really, really enjoyed, but you know, the problem is, is everyone wants to do it. And it's, you know, seven, six to seven, eight years to get a tag. But...
[00:05:29] CARALYN: Yeah. Interesting story about getting the tag.
[00:05:32] KATIE: Alright, go on.
[00:05:34] CARALYN: Because I don't remember. He maybe had mentioned wanting to go bear hunting and stuff. I don't recall if he had or not.
[00:05:44] JOHN: I probably didn't.
[00:05:45] CARALYN: Well, if it was the seven year thing he could have and I could have forgot, but, and then I don't know where you were...
[00:05:53] JOHN: I was at my mom's.
[00:05:54] CARALYN: Oh, okay, because we were talking on the phone and I had grabbed the mail out of the mailbox and I was kind of flipping through it as I was talking to him and I'm like... what is this?
[00:06:05] And I looked at it or I looked at my phone and I like, did you apply for a bear tag? And he's like, why is there one there? And I'm like, yeah, it appears to be a bear tag here.
[00:06:18] JOHN: So my kill tag showed up in the mail and I figured I was a year out yet. You know, so I was I was a little early and and I'm like, you gotta send a picture of it, you know?
[00:06:29] So I made her, I made her take a picture and send it to me and I was so excited. So then I said to her, I said, didn't I tell you about this? She said, No, you never told me a...
