MARSHFIELD, Wis. — Hunting is about far more than the trophy that will go on your wall.
"The camaraderie. It was not always about the hunt. It was about getting all of us together," said Blair Pfeffer.
Every year, just ahead of gun deer season opening in Wisconsin, Pfeffer travels from southeast Wisconsin to Marshfield, about three hours northwest of Milwaukee. He stays at his family's deer camp, The Schoolhouse Gang, once an old elementary school. His stepfather bought it in the late 1960s.
"We all get together. It's the hunting stories. It's playing cards. Getting some razzing in," said Pfeffer.
The Schoolhouse, said Pfeffer, always looks the same. The same deer mounts on the walls, the old tile ceiling drooping over well-worn furniture. But this year, he said, one thing will be different.
"We're all doing it in his memory. We know he's in a better place. He's up there with his dad and his mom," said Pfeffer.
In late October, Pfeffer lost his stepbrother, Alex "Butch" Modesti, to complications from leukemia. The "Gang" lost a mentor and a leader.
"Alex Jr. was about the most decent man I've ever [met]. You know you walked in the room, he's the one who made an impression on ya," said Marlin Laidlaw, an honorary member of the gang.
Laidlaw has been around long enough to remember camp when it was still a school decades ago. He was a student there.
"If you go back to the blackboard, which is still on the back wall where the teacher sat, and I think you can still faintly see the sentence, 'I will not talk in class,' that I probably wrote years ago," said Laidlaw.
Laidlaw knew Modesti, and his father, Alex Modesti Sr., who bought the building, turning it into a deer camp. Both have now passed.
"I’d hear a ding from my texts in the morning, at 4:30 a.m., when [Alex Jr.] was in camp, and it said 'coffee’s on.' And I couldn’t wait to get down there. And then we sat and we just talked about little to nothing. But it was just the greatest time to do that, and I will miss that forever," said Laidlaw.
Pfeffer said he was bow hunting after Modesti Jr. died just a few weeks ago.
"I knew he'd want us to be hunting. And I said a prayer that he would look over me and help me find that big whitetail in the woods. And I had one come right into me that morning. He's still with us. He's still with us," said Pfeffer.
Pfeffer said they'll carry on the tradition, mentoring as Modesti did, and remembering the "Gang" is about more than the hunt.
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