Preserving and Sustaining Southern Wisconsin Deer Hunting traditions
The Uplands Deer Management Group is a conservation organization assisting Southern & Eastern Wisconsin landowners and hunters in their stewardship of the land and wildlife while advancing the sport of deer hunting. It is affiliated with the national Quality Deer Management Association. Among its activities are an annual spring banquet, co-sponsoring the Hollandale Deer Classic, and developing and testing deer food plot seed mixes for sale to the general public.

The Uplands area of Wisconsin earned this name for its unique geological features of steep hills, deep valleys, streams, frequent rock outcroppings, dense woods, and rich bottom-land that frequently host dairy and beef farms. It covers much of what is known as the "driftless area" - topography that escaped the advance of the Wisconsin glacier. Geographically the area is bounded on the east about 10 miles west of Madison, running south through Monroe to the state line, then running west to the Mississippi River and north to LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
The Uplands area provides some of the best whitetail deer habitat in the nation - and also the locus of great challenges: controlling & managing the deer population to achieve a balance with other forms of wildlife, protect against the spread of disease (including CWD), and preserve a deer hunting tradition in the face of forces that threaten it. It is against this backdrop of challenges that the Uplands Branch and conservation association was formed.
The Uplands geography also encompasses "Sand County" and Aldo Leopolds' legendary “Shack” where Aldo Leopold hunted white-tailed deer with bow and arrow and wrote his most creative essays ever on the principles and practice of deer management. In one of them he wrote:
“To the deer hunter or the outdoorsman, deer are the inner meaning of forested terrain. Their presence or absence does not affect the outward appearance of the forest, but does mightily affect our reaction toward it. Without deer tracks in the trail and the potential presence of deer at each new dip and bend of the trail, the forest would be, to the outdoorsman, an empty shell, a spiritual vacuum.”
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As we pursue the precepts of QDM we will follow in the footsteps of John Muir’s profound passion for nature; we will abide by Aldo Leopold’s stringent insistence on maintaining ecological integrity when managing deer herds.
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