The November drive home from the pheasant fields of South Dakota
to Minneapolis is the longest and loneliest. Cruise control and
a ruler-straight interstate make contemplation easy. I find myself
reminiscing about the season past, painting mental pictures of
the resplendent graces of nature and some of the people I met
afield. I'm denying the calendar reality of the coming winter
and the fact that, for me, this hunting season is over.
The season began in the heat, bugs and lush green of high summer
in Minnesota. The Department of Natural Resources had extended
one bird season the only direction possible here in the north
-- back into summer. To keep the burgeoning Canada goose population
from grazing and soiling Twin City golf courses and schoolyards
like winged Holsteins, we now have a bonus goose season starting
before Labor Day. Mosquito repellant is often more important than
shotgun shells on these hunts.
During the summer I got my neighbor's permission to hunt his
hayfield adjacent to our south property line. A tireless farmer,
Marv is all for anything that will disrupt the geese from chomping
his grain crops before his combine can. My family indulged me,
and we returned a day early from our summer vacation so I could
build a blind.
On opening day, September 1, the strangeness of pursuing my
fall obsession in the summer struck me. All the sounds and smells
were out of sync with hunting. Each stride through the alfalfa
raised the scent of new-mown hay. Still, at the anointed hour,
I was there in my blind accepting this early hunt like an overtime
bonus on a bird hunter's paycheck.
At 6:10 a.m. the mosquitoes had beat the sun up. A chipping
sparrow eyed me from atop his corn tassel perch four feet above
my head. His vocal exuberance for the coming day was contagious.
But when I puckered and tried to mimic his notes he flitted off
-- a song with wings.
I dropped to my seat as shots echoed out of the hollow east
of me. But from my hilltop vantage, I heard no alarmed geese and
saw nothing but a few ducks circling a slough. I watched the mallards
fly, then saw one cartwheel before another 12-gauge report reached
my ears. Probably my neighbor's son, Josh, hunting their wetland.
I wondered out loud how he could be so bold to open the duck season
a month early. I guessed he was using the shots of goose hunters
to cover his premature duck hunt.
To my west, I heard evidence of the annual invasion of the poacher
army on Roland's farm. They warmed up their calls like an orchestra
before the conductor walks on.
Cacophony. When the geese finally headed to the fields to eat,
they were greeted by volleys of shots. Invisible clouds of BBs
reached for the flocks but fell far short.
Flexing their primary feathers for more altitude, the geese
didn't know, on the first day of the season, they were safe at
150 yards. The wind was suddenly full of the sounds of opening
day -- screaming geese, barking retrievers, cursing men.
That evening, from my porch, I heard Roland's milking machine
go silent right on schedule. I stood and watched the 78-year-old
bachelor dairy farmer walk wearily from his barn to another solitary
supper. I imagined he was grumbling to himself as he watched two
ATVs veer off the railroad right-of-way and across his posted
hay field. Minutes later I knew he could hear the shots and the
geese over the hum of his microwave. They were shooting geese
in the dark. But Roland was alone and afraid. And the poachers
knew it.
The next day I ask Roland why he doesn't call the game warden
when these hunters trespass and drive across the new-growth alfalfa
he has planted "under" his oats. "Aw, I don't want to get anybody
in Dutch," he said. What he meant was, I don't want to get myself
in Dutch with these armed men.
As the early goose season wore on, my neighbors' patience wore
thin with hunters who chose to drive rather than walk over their
fields. Marv even called one night to ask if those were my truck
tracks through his alfalfa. "Nope," I said, "some red-headed guy.
Said he had your permission." Marv snorted at that. "You're the
only one with permission," he said. "If you see him again, tell
him to stay the hell off my hay."
About the time the last bales of hay were stacked roof-high
in my neighbors' barns, it was early October, and I was headed
for the duck sloughs of North Dakota. My partners and I hunted
with awe amid a bumper crop of waterfowl. But an idyllic duck
dinner on the prairie, planned with great anticipation, turned
into duck dinner under the awning of the Super 8 motel in Edgeley.
A cold rain dampened everything but our waterfowling spirits.
Hunters from several Midwest states were drawn by their noses
to our small charcoal grill -- sizzling with mallard, widgeon
and gadwall breasts. The chatter among strangers was fraternal:
shots made and missed, the evils of prairie pothole mud, heroic
dog work. Kindred spirits all.
Almost all. When a 20-something-year-old from the KILNDUX license
plate group approached, his tone was not social but competitive.
"We murdered 'em," he reported. Not satisfied with our reaction,
he disappeared then reappeared and dumped two black garbage bags
of over-limit proof at our feet. Mike, a lanky lineman for our
local phone company back home, waited for him to leave. Then he
gently rested his spatula on a tailgate, walked silently to his
room and made a call.
The beer-amplified laughter from two doors down slammed to silence
when the officer identified himself. But the evidence, by then,
had been swallowed. Angry threats reverberated through the walls
when the U. S. Fish & Wildlife car left the parking lot. The
mood at the Super 8 turned suddenly sullen and gray, matching
the Dakota sky.
Later in October I returned to my favorite Minnesota slough
with my Labrador, Smoke, as my only companion. Patience was a
necessary ally. I dozed between infrequent duck sightings and
snippets of one-way conversation. Then Smoke's whining awakened
me. He was watching a flock of mallards that had landed well out
of range. It featured an albino. He stood out like a cardinal
in the snow. I was reminded of my long-past Kansas sighting of
an albino pheasant. And the children's fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling."
That night the slough's owner phoned me at home. Unusual for
a farmer wary of the cost of long-distance calls. I thought he
was calling about the white mallard. But the reason was more sinister.
He found a small pile of dead ducks and geese while mowing his
ditches. He wondered, under his words, if they might be mine.
I told him it had been a slow morning. "Never shouldered the
Remington, Duane." We concluded the waterfowl had probably been
dumped by hunters returning from North Dakota, fearing a DNR road
block. Or too tired from the long drive to face the cleaning chores.
By the first week in November, most shallow Minnesota sloughs
were frozen. My thoughts turned to turkeys. With the hope that
my third annual entry into the spring turkey license lottery would
be charmed, I visited a neighbor with a 40-acre wood lot. I wanted
to test my chances of getting permission to hunt the following
April. The owner was new to our township, but I had what I thought
was a convincing ice breaker -- I
had worked with his dad in the old Bell System.
A glint of sun off his pickup led me beyond the house to the
edge of the woods. He was unloading what appeared to be bags of
feed off the tailgate. But he tossed them back into the truck
as he noticed my approach.
After several references to his dad I ask what the bags of corn
and alfalfa pellets were feeding. "Oh, my wife enjoys watching
the deer," he said. "One of the joys of living in the country,"
I responded. But I noted their house was well beyond view of his
feeding station.
I got a noncommittal "check with me in the spring" on the turkeys,
and we smiled our goodbyes. As I wound my way in first gear back
toward the gravel road, through my rearview mirror I saw an old
wooden extension ladder angled against an oak. I stopped and craned
my neck out the window. The ladder led to a deer stand just beyond
the food pile. A baiter masquerading as a feeder.
By November 11th, Veterans Day, the deer around my place had
pretty much finished munching what was left of my sweet corn.
I decided to check to see if the ground had frozen too hard to
till. As I walked to my garden I noticed an imperfection in my
recent pole barn paint job. What I found was no paint blister.
The metal siding had been peeled open the size of a can of Alpo
dog food. I raced inside the barn and saw the entry wound on the
opposite wall. A perfect tracing of the end of a 12-gauge barrel.
Furious, I phoned the county sheriff. A deputy arrived before
dark, looking and speaking like Barney Fife from the old Andy
Griffith Show. While searching in vain for the spent slug,
he fired off staccato bursts of police talk. "Reckless discharge
of a firearm." "Public endangerment." I heard the dispatcher on
his radio ask for a squad to investigate "possible trespassing
by deer hunters." He promised to return, but I never saw him again.
By mid-November, the cold and ice at home had turned my attention
south. For the first time in 40 years, I made the decision not
to buy an Iowa license. Their pheasant flock was in dismal shape
because of a brutal winter last year and several really wet springs
in a row.
I made arrangements for a three-day hunt in rooster mecca
-- South Dakota. This was a first for me. A friend farms
three half sections on the bluffs above the Missouri River. During
October his farm is filled with hunters who pay for the privilege.
But by this deep into the season, their numbers had waned, which
allowed friendship to outweigh money.
Breakfast for pheasant hunters at Al's Oasis in Chamberlain
is a leisurely meal owing to the 10 a.m. daily start time. A far
cry from duck hunters back home, who attack their eggs trying
to beat daylight to the swamp. These pheasant hunters wore $40
haircuts and $400 Upland outfits. Dayglo shirts, still creased.
Executives smiled at one another over third cups of coffee, as
in their board rooms. I learned that most were paying $250 a day
for hunting privileges on ranches cultivated for pheasants. In
the café parking lot, guides with no haircuts scurried
to fill four-wheel-drive chuck wagons with box lunches.
Each mile of gravel road in the Chamberlain area was posted
with permanent metal signs that warned "No Road Hunting." Put
there by the Lakota Sioux Indians, who, with the state, regulate
hunting on their Crow Creek reservation.
I followed a rusty pickup on the way to my friend's ranch. A
young man wearing a rear-pointing baseball cap rode in back in
the open bed. The deep-bass thrum of a rap song followed the truck
like the plume of dust. They slowed to 20 mph. Honked the horn.
A rooster flushed from the ditch. The bed rider dropped it and
leapt to the retrieve like a Labrador.
I tried to calculate the geometric challenge of hitting a flying
bird from a moving truck. Blind luck? Or the apex of youthful
coordination? I thought it akin to NASA firing a rocket off the
spinning earth and hitting the orbiting moon.
At the ranch my host explained the tricks of the trade for his
ring-necked cash crop. Milo is preferred over corn
-- short enough even at maturity to shoot over. And every
second pass through the fields during harvest, the combine head
is lowered to five inches from the ground to create easier walking
paths for the hunters. Herbicides are no longer sprayed. Pheasants
like weeds in their row-crop coverts. Payment for hunting privileges
is cash. In advance. Poor wing shots have put stop-payment orders
on their checks in the past.
My friend wouldn't let me pay for the pheasants I bagged. Still,
driving home, I felt like I had been snitching apples from a commercial
orchard. I was on my second loop through all the CDs in the truck
when the sight of the distant Minneapolis skyline ended my behind-the-wheel
reverie. I thought of my sons living in the suburbs beyond the
skyscrapers. They're adults now, with their own families. I wondered
if they still hunted by the rules. Even when no one was watching.
I wondered if they would be ambitious enough in their business
lives to afford the future of hunting.
My English setter stirred in his travel pen for the first time
in 200 miles. He thumped right back down again, exhausted from
the three-day hunt. He had no idea just how long he could rest
before next season.
* * *
Bill Klein lives in Stillwater,
Minnesota, and recently retired after a career in advertising
and sales promotion for AT&T.
(October 2003)
