It’ll soon be easier to leave the car at home when visiting the Starke County Forest. A new bike rack was set to be delivered last month, according to Forester Bruce Wakeland.
“I do know that people ride their bikes out there to the parking lot,” Wakeland told the Starke County Park Board back in November, “and I see them chaining their bikes to the trees or whatever.”
The wave-style rack will hold five bicycles. A similar one was supposed to be installed as part of the parking lot project in 2018. But it had to be cut out due to cost overruns, according to park board member and highway superintendent Rik Ritzler.
Board members agreed during their November meeting to let Wakeland purchase the bike rack out of the money the forest gets from the federal Conservation Reserve Program. It ended up costing almost $450, including shipping.
In his update to the park board last month, Wakeland said he once again rented out the forest to a deer hunter and his family for a weekend. “They told me that, during those two days in their blinds, the four of them counted 50 deer,” Wakeland said. “Now, probably, some of those were the same deer being counted, but they had 50 deer sightings from their blinds. And they shot five deer, so we’ve got five fewer deer than we had.”
Not only does the annual hunt help control the Starke County Forest’s deer population, but it also brings in $300 for the facility.
