How’s that for something to hang on your heart? A trophy image from an unforgettable Black Hills elk hunt.

By KW

Twenty six days, and he never got the big one.

Twice, Dick Brown saw the monster bull he was after. Twice, the shot of a lifetime wasn’t quite there.

So the former state legislator and GF&P Commissioner ended up taking a smaller bull for the freezer, and a trophy collection of thoughts and images and lung-testing hikes that will live forever in the warm world of recollection.

“Most of my hunting was alone,” Brown says. “Up at 4:30 and back at 8 that night. Seemed a little like the movie ‘Groundhog Day.”

Except that each day was bull elk day. And Brown hunted through the bizarre variety of weather that hammered the hills through the elk season. He made the most of his long-awaited - nine years of drawings - any-elk permit for Black Hills Unit 2.

“In the end, I did not shoot the big one, but had that special experience of being in the woods and mountains of South Dakota on a quest so many seek,” Brown says.

And the monster bull?

“He is still out there for somone else to chase in their dreams and, hopefully, for another sportsman to have the chance to pursue,” Brown says.

Sounds like a trophy hunt to me. And a trophy hunter. 

A trophy of a flat, four miles up a Forest Service road.

 A trophy of a snowfall.

And to top if off, Lincoln Ellsworth Brown checks out grandpa’s bull.

By KW

Josh Russo just checked in from over in Sports to tell me about his outdoors-recreation page for Saturday’s Journal.

Along with a look back at the Black Hills deer season by Bob Speirs, the page will feature a story by Russo on the upcoming downhill ski season, and what’s coming at Terry Peak and Deer Mountain.

Each hopes to get going later this month. Check out the details, and gety those plywood planks all greased up and ready to ride.

Or aren’t they made out of plywood? And greased?

OK, so I’m not a skier.

Bruce Plate bagged this nice whitetail doe with his .50-caliber White Mountain carbine during the 2008 Custer State Park deer season.

By KW

What do horns and antlers have to do with trophy hunting?

Not much, if it’s the hunt and not the rack that interests you.

That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with blasting a bragging-sized buck or bull or ram. There isn’t. It can be the outdoor moment of a lifetime, as Laura Sever shows down below.

But defining trophies only by their tape-measurer score or a hunt only by the rack it produces sets standards that are far too narrow for such a grand outdoor sport.

Sever certainly didn’t take such a view when she raved about the hunt experience as much as the big bull she shot. And  Bruce Plate finds a trophy hunter’s thrill in every big-game adventure - antlered or not.

Plate, a regular commentator on Take It Outside, literally headed for the hills late last week to join other hunters for the opening of the Black Hills rifle deer season. Haven’t heard how he did.

But I did get Plate to send a photo of himself, his  whitetail doe and his muzzleloader from the 2008 Custer State Park deer season.

A trophy? I think Plate would say so, especially given the gorgeous surroundings and the close-up hunting style of the muzzleloader.

Plate will be back this year for the park season, with the White Mountain and also, perhaps, his T/C Hawken flintlock - another blast from the past.

“The thing about the flintlock rifle is being able to use patience and slow down,” Plate says. “I like my shots to be no farther than 75 yards. With the abundance of whitetails in South Dakota, it is not too difficult to find an antlerless at that range.”

Plate has filled two Custer State Park tags in each of the last two years with the White Mountain. And he seems ever bit as excited about this year’s antlerless hunt as he would if he were going after a monster buck.

Clearly, the guy knows his trophies.

Laurie Sever and a trophy even more impressive than Mountain Dew cans.

By KW

A Mountain Dew can.

That was the most exotic thing Laurie Sever had shot.

Before the elk, of course. The bull elk. The big bull elk.

The 48-year-old teacher at West Middle School in Rapid City bagged a 6-by-6 bull late on the afternoon of Oct. 13, from about 200 yards with her husband’s 30-06.

“This is the first thing I ever shot, other than about 25 years ago when I shot a Mountain Dew can,” Laurie says.  “And before this hunt, I did a little target practice.”

A little was enough, apparently. With her son, Tyler, scrunched up beneath her to help keep the rifle steady, Laurie got the elk with one shot. They were somewhere up in the Custer Crossing area, although she does’nt remember clearly.

What she does remember clearly is her son’s reaction when he hiked over to the spot and found the big bull down.

“He came running back shouting, ‘You got him! You got him!”, Laurie says. “After the shot, I sat there praying that either I missed him completely or killed him. I didn’t want to wound him.”

She didn’t. And now the Severs have more than 300 pounds of elk meat in the freezer and a big trophy mount in the works. Not bad for a woman who is slower and sorer than she was before surgery and related treatments and medications for breast cancer.

As a three-year cancer survivor, she celebrates each day. But she was especially grateful that she filled her first elk tag - after applying for 11 years - and also got to hunt with both her husband, Jeff, and her son.

“I would have been perfectly satisfied not to kill anything,” she says. “There’s no place a peanut butter sandwich tastes better than in the Black Hills, out hunting with your husband and son.”

And as for taking a trophy bull on her first try?

“It worked out perfectly for me,”  Laurie says. “I think it was divine intervention.”

A well-placed 30-06 round helped, too.

I was just filling out a schedule of Outdoors/Recreation stories for the print product when I realized that I do not have an idea to write for the Nov. 21 issue.

So, I thought I’d leave that to you. I would like to report on a unique hunting story from the past month as submitted by you. Send your story idea to joshua.russo@lee.net and I will take it into consideration over the next week.

So, if you have a memorable story that you would like to share, feel free to send me the details and all the journalistic necessities - the who, what, when, where and why - to my e-mail.

And as always,  if you have a picture of your animal that you would like to share, send it to the e-mail as well. Be sure to include some info on the animal, your name, the location of the hunt, and the date and time of the hunt.

Happy hunting.

- Russo

Just a heads up,

I am working on a story for the Saturday Outdoors/Recreation section on the upcoming deer season. So far in my interviews, I have heard that numbers are down this year.

- Joshua Russo

(Geez, I didn’t see Josh there in his camouflage. He means the outdoors-recreation section of the, uh, paper news product - long known as the Rapid City Journal.  On a personal anecdotal level, I’ve seen a significant reduction of deer in the meadows between here and Highway 385 along Rimrock Highway this year from 2008. K.W.)

A multi-faceted still life, from the camera of Cecil B. DeWintersteen.

By KW

First things first: SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!

They’re still out there, those rattlers. Or at least, they were, not that many days ago.

That first big blast of cold that brought snow and dropped temperatures down into the teens, single digits and even below zero in parts of the Black Hills  a couple weeks back should have put all rattlers to bed for the winter.

At least, that’s what I thought when I was creeping around in duck-hunting heaven in a foothills stream - where rattlers are common - a couple weeks back (You know, the place where I missed the bluewings landing in my decoys).

Snakes? We don’t got no stinkin’ snakes. I figured.

Then it warmed up a bit, and Wintersteen was snooping around the same creek a few days later, hunting ducks and - mostly - flyfishing for trout when he ran into the rattler.

Darn near stepped on it. Darn near went airborne.

A rattler. Still sassy enough to rattle.

Geez. Can’ t a guy rest easy - and hunt easy - after a barrage of winter type weather? Not then, apparently, But surely by now.

Or not. At least, not if it warms up again.

I told the story to Mike Kintigh of the GF&P the other day, and he offered these words of reassurance: “Well, I’ve seen rattlesnakes out in November.”

OK, on three: one…two..three: SNAAAAAAAAAKE!

By KW

It’s both charming and sad.

It’s charming to see the faces of children when they feed the ducks and geese at Canyon Lake.

And it’s sad to see waterfowl that are supposed to be wild, waddling around in their own feces, begging for Cheerios and stale white bread.

So I always have mixed emotions when I watch the feeding of the birds, which often occurs within a few feet of informational signs encouraging people not to feed.

The Rapid City Council has been fussing with this issue for months. Or is it years? The council still hasn’t figured out what to do. Members would like to reduce the waterfowl population at the lake. But they were told by GF&P officials that the agency won’t issue kill permits unless the city imposes a feeding ban.

Based on what the commission has done so far, I don’t expect that feeding ban to happen anytime soon.

So the charming, sad feeding spectacle is likely to continue.

Any suggestions?

By KW

He shot a pheasant. Then he shot her.

She died Saturday.

We don’t know the shooter, or the victim. Not yet. Details are few. We only know that it was one of those horrible hunting accidents that happens once or twice most years in South Dakota.

Authorities in Gregory County say the guy got out and shot a pheasant. He was getting back in the vehicle when his shotgun discharged and hit a 26-year-old passenger in the chest.

The sheriff’s office is calling it an accidental shooting. But it’s always more than that. It’s also almost certainly a fatal absence of safety measures that could have prevented such a gruesome accident. And it’s a burden of loss and guilt that will last a lifetime.

Be careful out there.

Guns kill.

Don’t let them kill you or someone else.

If you’re a deer or elk, or other ungulate,  you can’t see this new GORE OPTIFADE camo gear out at Scheels. The rest of  you, check it out.

By KW

I didn’t do so hot on the “spot the hunter game” on the OPTIFADE Web site.

I made it to 17 out of 30, which means - when it comes to identifying  concealed hunters who might want to do me harm - I have the skills of a respectable satellite bull.

Here’s what the OPTIFADE folks had to say about that: “You never really got the attention of the cows in the herd (which was the story of my college dating experience), but you did get the attention of a hunter (uh-oh).”

But enough about my melancholy collegiate love life and failure to properly launch in the “spot the hunter” game. Check out the newest thing in “the science of concealment” from GORE OPTIFADE.

It’s a different kind of camo, based on digital patterns and the science of an ungulate’s eyes rather than replication of cattails and tree limbs and shrubs in the camouflaged pattern on your pants or shirt of cap.

It comes out of the military, with clear applications in sport hunting.

The new camo is plenty pricey, but worth checkin’g out. And the game is a gas.

Give it a try. I’ll be orbiting out there with the other satellite bulls, if you care to join me.