Almost a year ago, participants in the First Annual Mount Blogmore-Take It Outside Invitational Pheasant Hunt gather around Tony Dean - he’s the one in the cool shades (no, not Epp, I said “cool”)  - before taking to the fields on Nick and Mary Jo Nemec’s farm.

 By KW

It was a good bunch. And a great day.

The last day most of us would spend with Tony Dean.

Last year’s Mount Blogmore-Take It Outside Invitational Pheasant Hunt was a gathering to remember. From the left, Dan O’Brien, Bill Fleming, Steve Sibson, Todd Epp (the one with the other glasses), Matt Epp, Tony Dean, Jeremiah Murphy, Denise Ross, Pat Powers, Nick Nemec, Jon Schaff, Lee Schoenbeck and Jon Lauck. (Wiken showed up too late for the shot, but not for the chili…)

 Most will be back this year, for the second annual hunt on Nov. 9, with a couple new faces. They’ll include Bob Newland, whose hunting outfit (a glimpse of which is available over on Mount Blogmore) will qualify him to hunt, guide, manage traffic flow on Highway 14 and officiate a number of winter sporting events - including broom hockey.

And there will be one original Blogmore hunter missing, of course.

As most of you know, Tony Dean died on Oct. 19.  His many friends will gather tomorrow at 5 p.m. at the AmericInn in Fort Pierre for a session of storytelling, laughter and a few beers and tears, too.

But you don’t have drink beer, have a story or be a personal friend of Tony’s to go. If he touched you in any way through his radio and TV shows, writing or outdoor advocacy, you’re invited to attend.

Along with the celebration of Tony’s life, the event will also mark the beginning of a fund drive to pay for a new wildlife and public hunting area in Tony’s honor. Check that out if you’re so inclined. I will be.

But more than anything else, celebrate at least part of the day outdoors - hunting, fishing and touching the wild that lived in Tony, and lives on in all of us.

Because that’s the real memorial to his life.

Tony and Schoenbeck share a moment prior to the 2007 hunt, under the watchful eyes of pair of Schoenbeck’s patient Labradors.

 

Whatever Red sees, Ozzie sees, too. The hunt captain and the hunt’s only pooch seem preoccupied with a distant vista as they prepare to chase ringnecks in gale-force winds.

By KW

 Gusts to 79 mph. That’s what they were saying around Reliance Sunday.

It seemed all of that on the McManus Farm, where brothers Red and Larry led their scattergun brigade against the elements - particularly a howling wind - for a toned-down second weekend of the pheasant season.

“I don’t think we’ll stay out very long,” Red said, to cheers from the bundled-up gang.

We didn’t. But we made it long enough to bag a bird or two apiece, give Mike Chaussee’s springer, Ozzie, a bit of exercise and allow Sean and Brady McManus to dig a bird or two out of the grass.

Then it was back to Red’s hunting shed - which doubles as a workshop for the rest of the year - for warmth, bird-cleaning, lightly fictionalized hunting stories and an occasional libation.

The third McManus brother, Bernie, was there for the first weekend but missed the second. He wasn’t forgotten, however. His loving family celebrated Bernie’s recovery from a recent illness by erecting - or burying -  a touching “monument” at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

Pheasant hunts aren’t just about birds, after all. They’re also about family.

And Irish satire.

 

You can’t read the sign on Bernie McManus’ unoccupied grave (a guy can’t plan too far ahead), but it reads: “You can’t keep a good man down.” And a variety of illnesses in recent years haven’t kept Bernie from the annual family pheasant hunts.

Sean and Brady McManus, representing the as-yet-unarmed - except for that wicked plastic carbine Brady was packing - squad of kids at the McManus hunt, show off  one of the roosters they bird-dogged out of the grass.

Like everything else, getting into a truck is more complicated in 70-mph-plus gusts, even in the shelter of the hunt shed. In any group hunt, and especially in inclement conditions, following safety rules  - such as unloaded shotguns in pickups and around other hunters  - becomes especially  important.

Ronnie “Red” McManus prepares to deposit a few roosters in the shed after the first field of sorghum. He also made a well-received announcement that two fields would probably be enough for the day. “Yaaaay, Red!”

 

Back on dry land, the ducks lie down with the Remington, or something like that.

By KW

 I figured when I pulled the trigger that the drake was on the far edge of hip-boot water.

Turned out to be just a couple inches beyond it.

I took the farther of the two drakes first, as it hammered its way up through the flooded willows on Angostura Reservoir, separated itself from another pair - gadwalls, I think - and flared up with the gusty northwest gale.

Swatted by a relatively paltry 3/4-ounce load of No. 4 20-gauge steel, it folded and splashed dead at about 30 yards.

I swung back then to the closer mallard, which was now angling hard left and 25 yards out, but had to hold the shot for the trailing hen to clear. At about 30 yards my first round was slightly back on the bird. As it faltered, the second round finished it.

With both drakes lying motionless on the water, I took a moment to celebrate the day and ponder the painstaking sneak through willow and sucking mud, to finally reach the wind-protected pocket where several dozen mallards and a scattering of smaller ducks were engaged in a dabbling convocation of chatter.

The  near drake was an easy retrieve for a dog-less duck hunter, barely knee deep on hip boots chosen over chest waders because they were less burdensome for the hike in.

The far drake was deeper and heading away with the waves.  And by the time I got to it, I was at the edge of my boot depth - even reaching out to drag it closer with the muzzle of the now-empty Remington.

I would have had a couple inches to spare, too, if not for that pesky wave. (Why is it that the biggest wave of the bunch always arrives at the absolute worst time?)

It washed a gallon or two of water into my right hip boot, and made the march back to the pickup a clammy, squishy conclusion to a near-perfect hunt.

Near perfect, though, is not half bad.

 

 There’s no clever cutline that could be half as cute as that smile. Karissa Guthrie’s grin says it all.

By KW

The answer was “yes.”

So, pretty soon I was digging through the fishing gear in the back of the pickup, on a day that was supposed to be all about pheasant hunting.

There was plenty of that. But first the Guthrie brothers - Jim, Kent and Clark - and Clark’s sweet daughter Karissa and I had to wrestle some largemouths.

I think we won. But the bass weren’t pushovers.

There’s nothing much better on a warm October day than a Jones County pheasant hunt.

But Jones County bass fishing isn’t bad.

 Especially when you take a kid along.

11-year-old Karissa Guthrie had to join her dad, Clark, and uncles, Kent and Jim, in a little bass fishing before she got to enjoy her first mentored-pheasant hunt. She didn’t seem to mind the weight, er, wait.

Is that a pretty fish or what? The sky’s not bad, either.

Rapid City’s own Kent Guthrie was catching some pretty nice bass on gear scraped together in a rush, during a pheasant hunt.

Harold Thune waits for the walkers to show and the roosters to flush at the end of a sorghum field.

By KW

Is that the smile of an 88-year-old?

Not on opening day.

When the roosters flush and the shotguns speak, we all smile the smiles of childhood.

Harold Thune is 88, heading - Lord willing - for 89 in December. He looks younger than that on any day, but especially so on a Saturday washed in warm October sun, watching a line of hunters - including his sons Tim and John - work their way toward him in a sorghum field.

“If you want to see birds hit the ground, don’t stand over here,” Harold joked.

I was looking for more than that.

 And he gave it to me, under the brim of that blaze-orange cap: an opening-day smile, the one that transcends time and defies the years.

That’s a smile worth hunting for.

“Thrush song, stream song, holy love

That flows through earthly forms and folds,

The song of Heaven’s Sabbath fleshed

 In throat and ear, in stream and stone…”

By KW

Often, I find comfort in the poetry of Wendell Berry.

Tonight, especially, with news that our friend Tony is gone.

I spent the day outdoors, fly fishing, duck hunting, slogging through slippery stream and sucking cattail bog, feeling the burn of lung and leg under heavy clouds and light-winged hawks.

And oddly enough - or not so oddly, I guess  - I thought of Tony often. Knowing he was terribly ill, unlikely to recover competely, if at all, I thought of times we hunted and fished together, and his shows that I found especially fetching.

On emotional auto-pilot, I went to fish a spot on Whitewood Creek that I’d seen him fish on “Tony Dean Outdoors.”

“There,” I said aloud, “that’s the hole. That’s the one.” There under that cliff, where the water swirls dark and deep against the rock.

And later, stalking the illusion of ducks in a cattail puzzle near the Wyoming line, I wondered how Tony  felt at that moment, knowing how - lying in what would become his death bed - he would have treasured what I had before me.

I was lying then myself, on a brown bed of grass above a whispering turn in Crow Creek, with the dark, suspended shape of a marsh hawk dipping to almost touch the phragmites with its wings. And I dismayed that Tony would never again know such treasure, at least not here on earth.

Such casual miracles we have - the gift of walking hard, of breathing deep, of tackling terrain that enlivens the senses and lifts the spirit. How grateful I was for what I had and where I was, and knowing, almost feeling, Tony’s other world experience.

I didn’t know it then on any conscious level, but Tony was already gone. I got the news at home, that he had died early this morning, and I hustled to the paper to write what brief,  inadequate deadline tribute I could manage.

It wasn’t enough. It never is when good people die.

Especially when those good people are friends.

By KW

 Speaking of sweet Remingtons - and my 1148 is sweet as they come -  how about that double by Democrats Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin on NRA endorsements.

Pull…..Blam!….powder.

Pull…..Blam!….powder.

Do you figure Joel Dykstra and Chris Lien called the NRA in D.C. and left a message like this: “Hey, gun buddies, we’re the REPUBLICAN candidates out here in South Dakota. You know, the REPUBLICANS? Remember, God, Guns and - what the heck is that third G? Anyway, it’s the party of the SECOND AMENDMENT. Hello, anybody there?”

Not this year. Not against Johnson and Herseth Sandlin.

Not on the gun issue.

Of course, all four candidates earned “A” rankings from the NRA. And Dykstra and Lien are clearly pro-gun. You might figure they’d get points on that issue.

But it’s reasonable that the NRA goes with the incumbent when all else is equal.

Apparently, all else wasn’t equal in the 2004 campaign between John Thune and the incumbent Johnson, when the NRA endorsed Thune. But Tim must have made amends with the association since then.

(Has he made amends with Steve Sibson? Only the Sibman knows….and maybe he’ll tell?)

But it must be a bit unusual to have the NRA go with the Democrats in two major congressional races. Suppose it happens much in California? New York? Massachussets?

So, this year NRA goes two for two on Dems here in South Dakota. Does that mean all us gun-tottin’ state citizens should vote for them, in defense of our Second Amendment rights?

OK, so it’s not exactly a mallard or wood duck, but …

By KW

The plan was for a duck hunt.

But I made a strategic error: I stopped at Cascade Falls.

And I took a fly rod.

So much for the duck hunt.

I had a decent strategy for a short walk-in duck hunt on the Cheyenne River Sunday afternoon. But I couldn’t resist a quick trip to Cascade Falls.

Can there be such thing as a quick trip to Cascade Falls? Not for me, it seems, especially in the off season, when the picnickers and sunbathers and cliff jumpers and litterers have migrated elsewhere.

It is a wordless wonder, that little tumble of clear water - one of those places that Wendell Berry speaks of when he says, “the world lives in the death of speech, and sings there.”

It sang there Sunday, in bird song and the voice of falling water. And in the green sunfish and bass that came to the fly, again and again.

 Despondent and alone, cased and in its own way speechless, the 20 gauge waited in the truck for a duck hunt that never came.

Next time, sweet Remington, next time.

A smallmouth came to the call - of the chartreuse fly.

Cascade Falls affirms its name during a gentle descent toward the Cheyenne River.

GF&P regional game manager John Kanta of Rapid City harvested the heck out of this antelope buck, or ram, or, uh, well…male antelope.

 By KW

 I can never remember. Is it a buck or a ram or a billy?

It’s an antelope that’s really a pronghorn that some call a goat.

So what is the male called again?

Whatever, John Kanta got one - once again disproving the oft-repeated assertion that game managers can’t shoot.

Ka-whack!

By KW

 OK, not quite ready for prime-time hunting, but heading that way.

That’s the latest medical report on Tony Dean.

He’s out of ICU at Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, and apparently has turned the corner in his battle against a post-operative infection.

He’ll be back harassing Rep. Betty Olson in no time. (Bet you can’t wait, huh Betty?)

For now, though, TD will get a big-celebrity visit this weekend. No, not my brother, Jim, although that’s plenty big. Jim visits more people in McKennan than a doctor doing rounds. (Why is he so nice, while I’m such a self-absorbed jerk? Same genes, but he does more with them …). And Jim does plan to stop by and see the T-man.

Even bigger than an appearance by the old Woster family cattle crooner, however, is Sen. Tim Johnson. The senator told me an hour or so ago that he and his wife, Barbara, would visit Tony at McKennan on Saturday.

“After all, he came to see me when I was in the hospital and I appreciate that,” Johnson said.

No doubt, Tony will appreciate a friend’s favor returned.

For those who hadn’t heard, Tony’s health has gone downhill again, in sharp and discouraging ways. Prayers are welcome.