BACK IN THE
DAY
DNR owes much of its pictorial history to the affable Dean Tvedt KATHRYN A. KAHLER
One name that has appeared for decades in this magazine and other DNR publications is Dean Tvedt. His role in documenting Wisconsin’s conservation history is immeasurable, with thousands of photos to his credit. Tvedt died in February at the age of 96.
Longtime DNR photographer Dean Tvedt goes to work on Trilby Lake in Vilas County in 1952. Tvedt died in February at age 96.
and became interested in photography. My first camera had a hole in the bellows and needed to be taped to produce a usable negative. “There was something about capturing and preserving a moment in time.” Tvedt was known to friends for his After a photographic job with quick smile and love for reminiscCommonwealth Telephone Co. and a ing about his days at the DNR. After stint in Japan with the Army Corps of retiring in 1987, he could be seen most Engineers, Tvedt returned mornings having coffee with home and got a job with the friends at a local eatery near Wisconsin Conservation his home in Mount Horeb. Department as a staff He had nearly perfect atphotographer. tendance at monthly meetings “We not only produced and annual gatherings of fellow photos for departmental DNR retirees. Upon joining use, but also 16 mm movthe group — formally known as ies that were used by many the Association of Retired Conschools and conservation servationists — Tvedt wrote a clubs around the state,” he profile for their website, wisarc. recalled. org, telling his life’s story. Television was next. “I grew up on a farm near Dean Tvedt Along with DNR colleagues Cross Plains where I attended Wilbur Stites and Staber Reese, Tvedt a one-room country school,” he produced the DNR show “Wisconsin wrote. “Since our farm was the closest Outdoors.” to the school, I had the prestigious job of starting the wood-burning furEAGLE ADVENTURE nace each morning during the colder Some of the DNR’s early images months. Needless to say, I wasn’t very reveal scenes from the other side of the popular if the fire went out before the camera lens — photographers at work. teacher and other students arrived. Surely, Tvedt related countless stories “It was at Mount Horeb High of his filming adventures to his friends School where I joined a camera club
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and fellow retirees, but little was captured in writing. Fran Hamerstrom, who with her husband, Frederick, were pioneers in the field of wildlife management in Wisconsin, related one such filming adventure in her book, “An Eagle to the Sky,” first published in 1970. A chapter called “The Moviemakers” told how Tvedt and Reese once traveled to the Hamerstroms’ central Wisconsin farm in the mid-1960s to film Fran’s rehabilitated golden eagle in pursuit of prey. The DNR film crew agreed to bring “a fox in a box” for prey, and Hamerstrom would have her eagle, Nancy, in “top-notch flying condition for movie day.” The day of the shoot, Hamerstrom met the five-member movie crew at Buena Vista Marsh, where she had been training Nancy. The area provided the open fields necessary for the shoot. One of the film crew, Bob Davis, placed the box with the fox where Hamerstrom said Nancy had made her last kill. “The plan was for me to cast Nancy off and when she reached sufficient altitude and got into good position, I’d give the signal for the fox to be released,” Hamerstrom wrote. “It was breathtaking. Nancy, cast off into the
