By KW

 When cousin Red speaks of ringnecks, Wosters and McManuses listen up.

So I stopped my fork halfway to my pie hole down at the Thunderstik Lodge near Chamberlain when Red turned to the subject of pheasant broods.

 ”Big broods this year,” he said, pestering a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes. “Seems like every brood has a lot of chicks. Bigger than I can remember.”

What’s that itch in my index finger? Aaaaah. It’s OK, I’ll be scratching it on the cool metal of the Remington in less than three months.

Kablooooooom.

First, though, there’s some bird counting to do, in a more standardized way than Red’s - which doesn’t mean his isn’t accurate. He and the other McManus kin know practically to the feather what’s out there in the sorghum and switchgrass around their home place.

 GF&P conservation officers will do their best to imitate Red’s bird monitoring on a much larger scale in the next couple of weeks during the annual pheasant brood survey.

GF&P Wildlife Division Director Tony Leif is feeling good about the ringneck outlook, again.

“There’s reason to be optimistic,” Leif says. “We’d liked to have had things dry out a little sooner this spring. That wet stretch came into June a little bit. But I think it did clear up and dry out in time.”

If I remember from my years writing ringneck news over east, mid-to-late May is prime nesting time for the state bird, with the hatch coming off in June. They like it dry during those times, if possible.

But if they get washed out, they don’t quit. They nest again, and again.

“They’re very tenacious,” Leif said. “They’ll keep trying and trying and trying until they get it done.”

That’s kind of the way our scattergun clan operates at Red’s place on opening day.

As long as we don’t run out of shells.

From a spot on the trail midway up the mountain looking east toward the ceremonial portion of Bear Butte, where only traditional Native worshippers are rightfully allowed to tread, it’s easy to see why the prairie monolith has such great spiritual significance.

By KW

We hiked it quietly and, I hope, reverently.

Bear Butte deserves at least that much from any of us who go there.

My nephew Jimmy - a Sioux Falls native, online ad writer and stand-up comic who calls Los Angeles home these days - and I had perfect summer weather for his first meeting with The Bear.

It was 75 degrees or so when we started up, and 85 or so when we strolled into the main parking lot below, with our water bottles dry and our shirts wet. The three hours in-between were extraordinary, as they always are on that special, risen place.

We stooped to examine small explosions of wild flowers, dressing up the butte after a spring of plentiful rains, and smiled at the casual retreat of a portly yellow marmot two-stepping across a talus slope.

We looked down from the summit as two red-tailed hawks wheeled on the wind and screamed at the sky 100 yards below.

We were caught up, for a few rich seconds, in the blurred majesty of a speeding prairie falcon.

“Ssssssswhhhoooooo,” its wings said in passing.

And we were moved, changed really, in ways that are difficult to describe, or even to clearly perceive.

The Bear does that to you. At least, it does it to me. I can only imagine what it does to those Native spirit seekers who understand it so much better, and commit to it so profoundly in body and soul.

But even the small part that I know and feel and try to understand is priceless.

So is The Bear.

Two-thirds of the way up the Bear Butte trail, the LA Woster can’t help but gaze across Meade County toward the northern edge of the Black Hills. Recently replenished Bear Butte Lake shows blue down on the plains, beyond the gray ribbon of Highway 79.

Eileen Dowd Stukel of Pierre, shown here subduing an obviously agitated GF&P wildlife director Tony Leif during salary negotiations, has been honored with a professional service award from The Wildlife Society. (Actually, that’s an osprey she’s subduing, not a Leif. But don’t think she couldn’t subdue Leif if she wanted to …)

By KW

It’s not all about hooks and bullets at Game, Fish & Parks. Seriously. They also pay attention to wildlife that we can’t shoot and eat.

And nobody pays more attention to those non-game critters than Eileen Dowd Stukel of Pierre, the agency’s senior wildlife biologist and wildlife diversity coordinator.

The Wildlife Society apparently agrees. The organization of wildlife professionals recently selected Dowd Stukel to receive the Jim McDonough Award.  She’ll pick up the hardware and well-earned kudos from her peers during  The Wildlife Society’s annual conference in November in Miami, Fla.

I don’t have a clue who Jim McDonough is or was, by the way. But I know the award is a big deal among wildlife pros. I also know from years of working with Dowd Stukel on news stories involving non-game and rare wildlife species that she is a real pro. 

State Wildlife Division Director Tony “Osprey” Leif seems to concur, based on his comment in a GF&P release: 

“I can think of no one more deserving of this award,” Leif said. “Everyone who cares about wildlife, and particularly those who are concerned about threatened and endangered species, owes a debt of gratitude to Eileen.”

Here, here, we do indeed.

 

During open-house festivities at the Roughlock Falls Nature Area, Zane Severyn of Custer dangles his feet in the cool water of Little Spearfish Creek from a platform designed to allow exactly that simple pleasure.

By KW

Mary and I went to have fun. We did. But I couldn’t help but work, just a little.

The recent open house and ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the Roughlock Falls Nature Area near Savoy attracted 150 or so people, a nice assortment of brook and brown trout (I still say parks guru Harley Noem brought them in from the hatchery, trained, for the day…), a couple of white-tailed deer and a flock of redstarts.

It’s always been a gorgeous spot. But now it’s accessible, with facilities designed to let visitors enjoy the natural beauty without diminishing it.

They were doing that at the open house, in ways that certainly had Noem and his bosses, Doug Hofer and Jeff Vonk, beaming.

The visitors seemed to be having a pretty good time as well.

Seen from a bridge over Little Spearfish Creek just above Roughlock Falls, a cluster of thimbleberry stands out agains the dark water below.

GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk takes his eyes off the brook trout long enough to make nice in a speech prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Roughlock Falls Nature Area. State parks director Doug Hofer and Barrick Gold VP Rich Haddock seem to approve.

Cecily McLaughlin, 10, of Whitewood enjoys a free ride to the falls on shuttle bus that regularly made the 2-mile round trip from the Spearfish Canyon Lodge to Roughlock Falls during the open house.

Jakub Porod, a visitor from the Czech Republic, enjoys a quick jog on the hiking trail from Spearfish Canyon Lodge to Roughlock Falls Nature Area during the open house.

 A sign of extraterrestrial life, or simply toadflax gone wild? Special TIO agent Steve “Fox” McEnroe wants to know.

By KW

This just in from former Journal shutterbug Steve McEnroe, who takes a break once in a while from managing his retirement porfolio to investigate paranormal plant phenomena and snap a picture or two.

Always out there on the edge of the believable, the MacMan sent in this photo, wondering if the legions of outdoor experts here at Take It Outside - the wild and woolly little brother, or sister, of mighty Mount Blogmore - might offer an identification.

I say it’s ET.

Or a supper-table creation of Richard Dreyfuss.

Or maybe milkweed.

What do you say?

Members of the Sturgis-area HuntSafe team are willing targets for a Take It Outside digital gunslinger at the GF&P Commission meeting in Rapid City Thursday. In back from left are Ron White, John Tesnow, Tom Adams, Ward Dobler and Linn Hendrickson. Up front, HuntSafe Coordinator Curt Robertson sings their praises at an awards ceremony, while team nomintator and Sturgis conservation officer Scot Hawks tries to stay out of the line of fire.

By KW

Each year a bunch of new, young hunters takes it outside to the South Dakota fields, forests and wetlands with guns in hand.

The fact that so few of them get involved in hunting accidents is a tribute to their own responsible behavior, on-site supervision from adults and previous training in safe and ethical hunting.

The volunteer HuntSafe instructors across the state are responsible for the training. That’s why the Game, Fish & Parks Department honors a HuntSafe team and individual instructor each year.

This year, the guys from Sturgis were picked as the honored HuntSafe team

In addition, Gary Stadlman of Ethan was honored as HuntSafe instructor of the year.

And continuing on the safety subject, GF&P also picked Pierre conservation officer John Murphy as the boating safety officer of the year.

In presenting that award, GF&P assistant wildlife director Emmett Keyser (who doubles as an unpaid Missouri River walleye guide for certain wandering Black Hills flyfishers) praised Murphy for his energetic and efficient boating-safety instruction and enforcement as well as his compassionate response to serious boating accidents.

Nice going, fellas. The outdoors are a better place because of you.

GF&P Wildlife Division Director Tony Leif, left, (who frequently seeks advice and counsel on the mountain lion season from the Take It Outside staff) and HuntSafe coordinator Curt Robertson, right, were on hand to honor Gary Stadlman of Ethan as HuntSafe instructor of the year.

Still beaming after receiving a copy of the GF&P Commission agenda autographed by the Black Hills Worst Fly Fisher (BHWFF) regional supervisor Cliff Stone of Chamberlain, left, joins assistant Wildlife Division director Emmett Keyser, right, in honoring John Murphy as the state boating safety officer of the year.

 

Cattle on grazing lease with the Black Hills National Forest enjoy the troutful waters of Castle Creek.

By KW

I got nothing against cows.

I grew up with them. Herefords helped pay the bills on our farm in Lyman County.

I like a good beef steak as well as the next guy.

But I can do without bovine companionship when I’m flyfishing. Especially on public land. Especially in an area designated for walk-in fishing.

There’s no question that the presence of obtuse ruminants grazing, relieving themselves and stomping around in the stream and streamside vegetation the other day diminished my outdoor experience. They also diminished the quality of the habitat and the stream bed itself.

I think they hurt the fishing, too.

But, like me, the herd had a right to be there, doing what cow herds do, both good and bad.

And I’m guessing the lease holder would just as soon not have wader-clad strangers like me wandering around among his critters in un-chaperoned stroll-throughs.

Multiple use, it’s called. And it tends to offer opportunities for public-land use to a variety of groups. It also tends not to make any of of those groups entirely happy.

Count me among them.

Apparently unperturbed by the cows or the thorny multiple-use questions of the day, this lovely little brookie rose for a delicate dry-fly take on the surface of Castle Creek below Deerfield Reservoir.

No. 1: Land sakes, as my mother used to say, who hasn’t caught one of these, uh, well, er…

By KW

Sure, you know what that fish is. You’ve caught plenty of them.

So how about the one below, and the one below that, and below that, and that?

In our never-ending effort here at Take It Outside to improve your outdoor IQ, our committed staff has decided to take our wildly popular “Name That Scat Game” to the next level.

One of us even drove all the way to Angostura Reservoir with a flyrod - twice - to make sure we had the appropriate instructional visuals.

So, go ahead: Name That Fish.

And that one. And the other one. Yeah, and that one, too.

(Wintersteen, you and the other fish guys out there give us mere ichthyological mortals a 10 cast handicap before you set your ID hook, will ya?)

No. 2: Sure, you’ve caught that one, too. And it looks like a bigger fish did some tail trimming.

No. 3: Its nickname seems delightfully appropriate.

No. 4: Like No. 1, No. 4 fell for the Don Polovich special.

No. 5. Yep, this one, too, Donnie P. Nice fly.

Back in the water or onto the grill? The Black Hills’ Worst Fly Fisher (Old BHWFF) chose the water, so this gorgeous brown trout still swims in Rapid Creek, to be caught and released again.

By KW

Kill that fish? Not me. Not ever.

I worked on it for an hour, sneaking along the bank, crouching in the shallows, waiting and waiting and waiting for the cautious shadow in the water to get casual about my presence, to begin to feed again.

On the surface. The sweet, believable surface.

During the stalk, the wait and the initial, anxious casts, I got hung up on trees three times, broke off once, had to change flies and re-tie once, then again.

Finally, I offered a tiny concoction of hair and metal that met the standards of subterfuge, for that fish at that moment. The brown drifted over to nudge my No. 16 Parachute Adams and, rejecting that phony bug, turned to slide back into its hole.

But in the process it noticed the No. 20 Blue Winged Olive drifting on the surface a foot and a half away. That was the one.

The hazy brown shape curled beneath the smaller fly and flashed smoothly to the surface.

Ssslup.

The slight sound of a pebble striking a pool, that’s all I heard when the brown trout took.

Without conscious thought, the rod tip came up. The hook set. The fish was transformed from fervent wish to wild weight - lithe, electric, profound.

That was the best part. But almost as good was holding that cool, spotted, flexing muscle in my hand inches above the water, looking into the clear, impassive eye, knowing that I would set it free.

And doing it.

Then watching the fish collect itself in a banana-shaped hole three feet from my right boot, turn its nose into the current and scoot dreamlike across the shallows to merge with the darker, deeper water midway to the willows.

It went 17, maybe 18 inches - trophy sized for a wild brown trout on a dry fly in the middle of morning in the middle of town.

Kill such a fish? I couldn’t imagine.

Subtract such smooth, slick beauty from a living stream in in the middle of 60,000 people? Not for a couple of marginally tasty fillets.

Not for anything, really.

It was way too much fish to kill. Most wild trout of that size are.

Or should be.