5 Wisconsin Businesses That Live Off One Week in the Fall

Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources says hunting adds about $2.5 billion to the state’s economy every year.

The agency credits gun season with 88% of that total.

A handful of Wisconsin businesses build their whole year around that small hunting stretch, while many others just enjoy the bump.

These are the Wisconsin businesses that live off one week in the fall.

1. Deer Season’s Breakfast Rush

Z Place 2 Be has poured drinks for hunters on the same county road outside Mosinee for more than a hundred fall hunting seasons.

Owner Zena Dhols says gun season ranks among the bar’s busiest stretches of the year.

She keeps the doors open earlier and stays open later once the season starts.

The bar also runs a hunters-only breakfast menu it skips every other week of the year, and hunters pack in between meals to watch the Badgers and Packers.

That’s the whole model.

2. Cape-Filling Season

Bestul Taxidermy runs out of a shop outside Iola, where owner Amanda Bestul has built her business around deer season from the start.

Wisconsin Life profiled her in 2019, when she was three years into running the shop, and even then deer season already set her whole calendar.

Bestul says deer mounts make up the backbone of taxidermy work across the state, and her workload jumps hardest the week gun season opens.

Hunters start dropping off capes as soon as the season opens.

A cape is the hide and head skin that goes into a shoulder mount.

Every other animal in Bestul’s freezer waits its turn until gun season’s capes are salted, tanned, and headed toward one.

Capes come first.

3. Processor’s Busiest Stretch

Roskom Meats runs a processing shop near Freedom, and co-owner Joe Diedrich builds his fall around the nine days gun season is open.

Diedrich expects the shop to process 400 to 500 whole deer this fall.

Once gun season opens, Roskom Meats runs special hours on Sunday and Monday just to keep pace with the drop-offs.

Diedrich says he understands the pull firsthand, since his crew keeps a deer camp every fall.

Both days matter.

4. Post-Tourist Stretch

Rod and Gun Sport Shop has done business in Chetek since 1949, and summer tourists keep its shelves moving through the warm months.

Once the tourists head home, owner Mike Bilodeau counts on locals and hunters to keep the doors open.

Bilodeau said he moves more hunting rifles and ammunition in the month spanning gun season than he does across every other month on the calendar.

He fills that gap.

5. Keeping the Jerky Stocked

Held’s Meat Market runs a butcher counter in Slinger, and owner Michael Held rebuilds his fall shelves around the nine days gun season is open.

He orders extra beef jerky and sausage every fall, since the counter empties out fast once hunters start stopping in for snacks and supplies.

His crew works overtime once the season opens, since dozens of hunters can stop through in a single day.

Snacks sell out first.

Fleet Farm’s Orange Friday

Fleet Farm built an annual tradition around the day before gun season opens, calling it Orange Friday.

Stores open an hour early and hand out scratch-off tickets worth 10% to 50% off at the register.

The first 500 people in line each year walk out with a free blaze-orange hat, usually gone within about twenty minutes.

Hundreds of hunters start lining up as early as 4 a.m. to claim a spot near the front.

Fleet Farm is headquartered in Appleton and runs Orange Friday at stores across Wisconsin and four neighboring states: Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

One day of deep discounts moves serious inventory.

But a chain with dozens of stores across five states doesn’t live or die on a single Friday the way a one-location bar or butcher shop does.

Big chains scale differently.

Scopes Over Everything Else

Rocky Ridge Shooters Supply sits in Oconto Falls, and its shelves shift focus the moment gun season gets close.

Owner Mark Micoley says scopes become the shop’s top request as hunters gear up, ahead of ammunition and everything else on his shelves.

Oconto County alone carries more than 43,000 acres of public land open to hunters.

Micoley’s shop doesn’t shut down once gun season ends, though.

He leans on coyote hunters each winter and turkey hunters each spring to keep the shelves moving the rest of the year.

Rocky Ridge shows the other side of gun season: Some businesses ride the nine-day rush without depending on it to survive.

The shop doesn’t stop there.

A Fading Gas Station Tradition

Colwitz BP gas station in Shiocton shows how differently this business arrangement used to work.

The station once registered about 4,000 deer a year, back when hunters had to check in their kill in person.

Not anymore.

Owner Jack Colwitz says the state's shift to online and phone registration cut the station's deer-season business by roughly 75%.

The Bar That Didn't Survive

The River Rail Bar sat down the road from Colwitz BP in Shiocton.

By 2017, owner Dick Wickesberg counted gun season among the best stretches of his whole year, even as online registration was already cutting into it.

He said business had already dropped by nearly half once hunters stopped needing to walk inside to register their deer.

A fire destroyed the River Rail Bar & Banquet Hall in August 2023, and the business never reopened.

The building is gone.