Usually by the time you hear about a bite, it’s already over. I’ve been late to party more than a few times but that’s not such a bad thing, it gives you time to reflect and plan for the next round. There is a learning curve to successful outdoor adventures and unless you have a great mentor, perfect timing, stumbled into the jackpot or just got lucky on your first try, it’ll probably take you some time to get dialed in to develop repeated success year after year. The following are a few stories about bumps in the road and lessons learned along the way from putting in my time and better preparing for the next round.
Years ago while living in Grand Rapids a friend mentioned the steelhead/ kamloops were biting on the sucker river just north of Duluth. I drove over there next day and although there were people everywhere I managed to land six on my flyrod, maybe it beginner’s luck, it’s a feat I still haven’t topped but returned almost every spring to try. Years later I moved to Grand Marais along the north shore and learned that when there are cars parked at every stream crossing along the shore somebody is chasing steelhead. Now I’d much rather be the first guy on a bite than the second so I started keeping a thermometer in my truck and would take drives before work to sample the stream temps and use polarized glasses to check the pools and watch for fish swimming upstream to spawn, pretty soon I learned how to find them and enjoyed many fine days. Now days I live on the other side of the state but have a handful of contacts who I can call that will tell when to drop everything and get over there ASAP, such friends are priceless especially when chasing snow geese, finding morels or taking the long drive up to the rainy river for pre spawn walleyes. Thanks guys, you know who you are and I’m sure glad when I get to repay the favor.
I’ve been living in west central mn for the past eight years and although I enjoy chasing pheasants it’s usually been by going out to North Dakota where the birds are plentiful and opportunities numerous with PLOTS and public hunting areas. I have seen a few local pheasants here and there in isolated pockets and it’s usually when I’m driving somewhere doing something else, so last year I figured I’d start hunting them in my own neighborhood. So I picked up a peasant stamp the last weekend of season last year and put on a few miles driving snowy backroads on sunny days and started seeing roosters all over the place, once the crops are out and snow gets deep they are pretty easy to spot. Next, I used my plat book to locate landowners and started knocking on doors and asking for permission to hunt, I found that many landowners didn’t have a problem granting permission once deer season was over and the crops were out. Late season birds are known to be wiley and although I didn’t shoot any birds that last weekend I had a blast scouting out new areas and making mental notes for the next hunting season. This year I did make it out west and had a ball but it still didn’t satisfy my thirst for upland birds so I started hunting MN locally. Using apps like OnyX I learned that it was easier to get landowners names and then track down a phone number and it was also fairly easy to find chunks of public land to hunt like WPA’s and WMA’s. Once the sloughs were frozen walking inaccessible cattails opened up more options and after work I usually had about an hour or less of legal shooting light so I’d grab the dog and hit up the public land nearby in a series of quick “mini-hunts”, both the dog and I got some great exercise and although there was a lot of wild birds that busted off in the distance and many unsuccessful hunts I did manage a dozen late season roosters (even a few on Christmas day) and now have even more spots in the arsenal for next year.
Once again last winter on the last day of season I noticed the squirrels in the field across from my house were digging up corn in the field in the deep winter snow. I grabbed my 22 and managed to bag a few. I hadn’t hunted bushytails in over 25 years and back then as a kid I didn’t really know how to cook them up so I didn’t remember them being so tasty. Using a recipe from the meateater cookbook for the buffalo style squirrel legs I was astounded with how delicious they were. This year I’ve been paying attention to where I’ve being seeing squirrels and I’ll be putting in more time with late season small game hunting while looking for deer sheds.
Last fall my dad and went out fishing on a nearby river where he hooked into decent sturgeon, I really like chasing dinosaurs and was pretty excited to get back out for more when the boat landing was closed for construction and winter froze things up a short time later. Well I made a mental note to get back out and try it again this year, it took a few unsuccessful trips but eventually they showed back up in the same spot and the same time of year with corresponding water temps and my friend got hid first sturgo. I think a big part of playing for the long game is learning patterns and remembering them year after year. I have a calendar hanging in my kitchen, every time I go out hunting or fishing I write down where I was, who I was with and what we caught or shot. I also try to add water depth, temp and wind conditions. I have been doing this for over 20 years and have found it remarkable how the patterns line up year after year like finding morels over mothers day weekend and catching big walleyes night trolling on the October full moon, it’s also helpful to recollect stories and check my facts when my friends say something like ; “remember that time we caught 23 crappies on lake x? “ I can look it up and say it was actually 25.
I rent an old dairy farm and although I’ve shot a few spring turkeys on the farm I’ve never really tried for a fall turkey, I figured they are harder to call in and pattern so why bother. Pretty soon I started seeing 6 nice tom turkeys hanging around in the nearby woods and on various parts of the pasture and one day snowy there was two big toms sitting under my bowstand. I ran up to the local gas station and purchased a fall turkey tag even though there was only 3 days of season left, I went back to my stand 30 minutes and sure enough they were nowhere to be found. The following day while leaving to go pheasant hunting with a buddy we looked through the woods and there the 2 toms were milling around under my stand, I told my buddy I had a turkey tag and he told me I had to try to make a sneak on them and once again they had slipped away unnoticed. Day three I spotted them again and snuck within 90yards but the sun was setting and they had made it safely into the woods to roost on the last day of season. Moral of the story is that next year I got my fall turkey tag much sooner and put one in the freezer in fairly short order.
There is a pond below my farm, it’s probably about 40 acres in size and is leased to trap leeches. One summer I had noticed the wild rice was everywhere so I asked the landlord if I could rice it and he agreed. My youngest brother Dan was visiting for some fishing over labor day and I talked him into going ricing with me for the first time. We dragged my grandfather’s old Grumman square stern down to the pond and I pushpoled around while my brother used some cedar knockersa friend had given me. We had no idea of what we were doing and it was hot but we managed to put some rice in the canoe, it was amazing how many worms and bugs we also put in the canoe. Afterwards we placed the rice on a tarp in the yard and let the bugs and worms crawl off and then tried to fire the rice in a turkey fryer pot over my firepit. We were told that the rice should smell like roasted peanuts when it was heated enough and neither of us have a very good sense of smell because we pulled it way too early and couldn’t knock it from its husks despite aggressive stomping and dancing so I threw it in a 5 gallon bucket and left it to sit. The following year I talked my neighbor Jeff into ricing and he and I didn’t get very much but we processed it by cooking it on his stovetop and then making a machine to beat the husks off using an empty 5 gallon bucket, a drill and a shaft with rubber arms, we split the finished rice and I had two baby food jars full, one for my brother and one for me. This year Jeff and I tried ricing again and it seems like it’s always hot and two hours in the morning was enough work for us, we did that for about 5 days and ended up with about 60 lbs of green rice, we felt like we were rich with that much rice after all that work. We found a local processor and brought the rice in to get it fired, the processor got a good laugh at our rice and told us that most people bring in a couple hundred pounds for processing at time and that green rice loses about 60 percent of water weight but said he’d help us out. We ended up the 23 pounds and I still feel like a rich man every time I eat it, now I can’t wait for rice season next year.
My obsession with maple syrup started over 10 years ago, I bought some taps and tapped my neighbors maple trees, I’m pretty sure I did it wrong because I never got any sap and ended up breaking off a couple metal taps in his trees. 10 years later I decided to try it again so I got permission from my current landlord to tap his maple trees, I have three in my yard and a couple others that I thought were box elder. I think the one big blessing to staying home during Covid quarenteen on an old hobby farm was tapping trees for maple syrup and practicing my long distance shooting in the pasture. I managed to borrow a stainless pan from my neighbor and do three different boils of sap. The first time went ok and I learned about little tips like adding butter to prevent foaming and finishing it in a turkey fryer how to filter it properly. The second time I over cooked it so I took it in the house and tried the water method to make maple carmels, instead I overcooked it again and now have maple toffee, it’s not bad in coffee and kids sure like it. Batch number three turned out much better and I think I’m getting the hand of this, the pancakes I made for breakfast sure were good and next year I’ll be making more so I can have enough for myself and to give extras away as christmas gifts.
This year I was lucky enough to get invited along for a ginseng hunt down in SE MN, I made the big drive down, bought license and met my friend in a campground down in bluff country. I will admit that I had no clue what I was in for because the learning curve as well as the terrain were pretty darn steep. My buddy mentioned to bring a backpack and a shovel and that was about it. The next day as we prepared to head off into the hills he put on an old pair of overalls and put duct tape around his pant cuffs, when I asked why he told me a story about a shrew that had crawled out of an old stump and ran up the inside of his pantleg, now I wanted some duct tape. The day started off hiking up higher and higher along the steep ridges until we finally found a plant, my hosts dug the first root showing me how to carefully excavate the root, count the nodules and bury the seeds and leaves to leave the area undisturbed. As the day progressed I learned the importance of the shovel for digging, leaning and traversing the steep hillsides, also to paint the handle pink or orange because they can be easily misplaced in the dense undergrowth. I also learned that a ginseng picker needs the eyes of a hawk, the legs of a billy goat and the digging ability of a badger, a gentle badger aka archeologist so you don’t break the stem. I was glad to see that my hosts had asked me to bring a trash bag and pick up all the cans, bottles and other trash we saw so that we left the woods in better shape than we found it. My hosts were nice enough to point out a few plants and allowed me to dig them and then basically said it was you to me to find the rest and although I did find a few plants they found many more. It’s taxing on the eyes and on the mind to locate the rare plants. It’s also taxing on the body to climb up and down the steep slopes of bluff country and after a day and a half I was shot. I’m happy to say that I held my own enough to be invited back and next year I know what will be expected and can step it up a notch and have some time to prepare mentally and physically.
One last story before I go. My friend and I had made it out this winter after hearing about some bucks dropping their antlers early and started to put some miles on in a nearby woods. I had hurt my back a few days earlier and called it quits sooner than I would have liked to. He mentioned he wasn’t ready to quit so he was going out to his woods to look for antlers and check some trail cameras. The next day he told me he hadn’t found anything but had seen a bobcat on his trail camera. I hadn’t ever predator hunted but always wanted a bobcat hide on my wall or to make a hat so I looked online to see if season was open and it was for another 3 days and asked if I could go out and hunt it and he said yes. I did a little internet searching and watched a few youtube videos. Friday night after work I set up a foxpro call with a teaser tail and put on the distressed woodpecker call. After two hours of boredom and mindnumbing squawking from the call something grey came in through the woods, a minute later it disappeared and a coyote ran into the call, I shot and missed, uffda, rookie mistake I guess. The next morning I tried again and had a fox come on a wind me and take off way out of range. The last night of the season I asked my landowner buddy if he wanted to join me and he agreed so we went out and played a woodpecker call for a couple hours until we got bored and switched to a dying rappit right about sunset and sure enough a bobcat crept in at the same spot I saw the grey critter Friday night. Mark shot the bobcat and gave it to me and it’s getting tanned right now. 2 hours of boredom, 30 seconds of adrenaline and 8 minutes of tracking it through the snow and you can bet on the fact that I’m planning hunting bobcats next year. I’ve already made a decoy and found that I can use a calling app on my phone with my Bluetooth speaker. That hat sure is going be warm.
I’m a firm believer that all good things to those who wait, and with proper planning come great success so yeah I might be late to the party but that’s ok because if you were meant to be there you’ll be back with better luck next year.
