This antelope buck in Wind Cave National Park seems to be showing some love with its horns.

By KW

By rights, I should have waited for Valentine’s Day.

But McEnroe’s goat was too good to save.

Not to be outdone by his former RCJ photo colleague, Caster Don Polovich, Steve McEnroe took a few minutes off from watching the fall of Lee Enterprises stock to offer the results of his own recent hunting trip - digitally speaking, of course - to Wind Cave National Park.

One buck - or billy, depending on how far you take the “goat” theme with pronghorns - appears to be particularly well equipped for the mating season, with horns that seem to speak to the business of the heart.

Irresistible? I’d guess some female pronghorns think so.

My wife (she of little faith, at least in outdoor types), questioned whether McEnroe had created the heart-shaped horns on the computer. Not so, the McMan says, and offers another angle to prove it. I believe him. Don’t you?

A whitetail buck checks out Caster Don from the relatively safe turf of Custer State Park.

By KW

Lest you think old Caster Don Polovich is limited to simply casting, we bring you proof that the guy’s a shooter, too.

“I see hunters have been sending photos of their deer,” CD wrote in an e-mail today. “Here are a couple I shot.”

Then, he makes a confession. Actually, several: He didn’t have a license when he shot the deer. He drilled one from his van, on a road, and nailed another from his back porch.

Fortunately, he bagged them all with his trusty 70-200.

Nikon, that is. Or is it Canon, these days, CD?

 No matter, retired on not, the 36-year RCJ photo veteran is still getting it done.

Here’s more proof:

 

“I just hate loud noises, Mr. Caster Don, especially this time of year. But I don’t mind your little ‘click-clicks’ at all. “

“Yes, I’m in your backyard doing what deer do. But let’s not make a big deal out of it.“

By KW

The GF&P Commission is considering a proposal to ban the use of rifles and handguns for spring turkey hunting in the Black Hills.

The ban, which also would include some East River turkey units, is driven by increasing safety concerns tied to the use of decoys and camouflaged ground blinds.

I’ve never been a turkey hunter. But I’ve been thinking in recent years about getting into the game. And I have to tell you, I don’t like the idea of sitting in camouflage making turkey sounds when there are guys trooping around with rifles, looking to bag the thing that makes that sound.

Throw a decoy or two into the mixm and rifles - which, let’s face it, sometimes inexplicably end up in the hands of people who make bad trigger decisions - seem pretty dangerous.

 Shotguns have always seemed safer to me.

But I don’t know much about the turkey hunt. How about some help form someone who does?

Terry Fransen, left, his son, Garrett, his dad, Harlan, and his brother, Jeff, will have plenty to remember from this year’s Potter County pheasant blast.

By KW

There’s a fair spread of years from Harlan Fransen through his sons, Terry and Jeff, down to Terry’s son, Garrett.

But they’re all at about the same giddy level of outdoor adolescence when the roosters flush.

And they flushed aplenty up in Potter County last month, when the Fransens joined friends and relatives for a ringneck extravaganza that bridges the years.

As I thought tonight about a pheasant season that is nearly atthe halfway mark (sniff, sniff), I remembered that I’d forgotten the photos Jeff Fransen of Rapid City had e-mailed. And they’re too good not to use, even a few weeks late.

They had a fine time, that bunch, as the photos show. They walked. They talked. They told a few. They hit and missed and hit some more.

Just like the years before. And just like, the Good Lord willing, the years to come.

Nothing says October in South Dakota pheasant country like a flo-orange army attacking the tall stuff, as the roosters run and fly and sneak and hide.

Terry Fransen and his 8-year-old son, Garrett, enjoy a memorable father-son moment after the hunt.

Calen, Rick and Cameron Decker of Gettysburg keep the family tradition alive, with a smile.

Caddis borealis gone wiry, by Caster Don.

 By KW

Caster Don Polovich is concerned about my sudden infatuation with the Royal Wulff.

He offers this wiry little alternative: a home-tied fly with two strands of wire for a body. Any color combination works, as long as one is light and the other dark.

It’s a No. 18. He runs it  off a No. 16 Parachute Adams.

Sunday, he took about a dozen brown trout, from 7 inches to 14 inches.

He won’t say exactly where….

David Olson of Chamberlain topped off a three-deer morning with this beautiful muley.

By KW

It’s one of those spots where David Olson figures he can always go to shoot a doe.

Or maybe two.

“Normally, that’s the spot where I go to fill my doe tags,” Olson said tonight by phone from his home in Chamberlain. “It’s a real protected spot, a thick draw, right on the Missouri River. ”

That worked perfectly two days after the big November blizzard, with snow on the ground and the wind still whistling.  The deer were packed into the draw, passing by Olson in his tree stand.

“It was kind of a real tight funnel for deer,” he said. “It was pandemonium there for a while.”

Olson filled both his doe tags, as he’d hope, dropping the first at about 20 yards and the second at about 12 yards. But the deer kept moving, sometimes stopping to sniff and, in the case of small bucks, even push on the dead does.

Olson still had another tag to fill, if he wanted to.

“Anymore, unless it’s a big buck, we don’t shoot. We just fill our doe tags and let the bucks grow,” Olson said.  “And I thought, with all that action, maybe a big buck would come by.”

It did. And it was too big for Olson to pass up.

“I’d seen some movement, and then a doe stepped out quite a ways out,” he said. “I could tell she got bumped by something. Then I saw part of the horn, then all the horns, and I knew right away it was a shooter.”

 When the doe moved, the buck started to follow. Olson got its attention by a buck-grunt call. The buck raked over a couple of trees, “and I knew I had his attention,” Olson said.

The big muley moved to about 25 yards, but the shot was blocked by a tree branch. Then it moved forward, across a clearing, and behind another branch. Opening, branch, opening, branch, until the buck saw other does and moved forward into a clearing.

Olson shot straight, knowing it was a fatal hit as the buck took off into the trees. But before he picked up the blood trail, he quietly field dressed the does.

He found the buck about 60 yards away. He gross scored it 165 3/8. Even allowing for some subtractions, that’s all but certain to make the Pope and Young record book.

Olson quite rightly marveled at the day and his good fortune.

“I got my three deer. And I know that buck will make Pope and Young,” he said. “It was a great morning.”

By KW

 I’ve managed to learn a couple of things about fly fishing from my buddy Don Bluhm:

Quit while you’re ahead.

Trust the Royal Wulff.

That’s how I ended up strolling back to the pickup late this afternoon with a promising chunk of an already productive Rapid Creek pool left unfished and half an hour or so of good casting light left on the water.

But Bluhm would have wanted me to quit with that gorgeous 16-incher. In fact, had he been there, he might have demanded it.

Especially since the brown wolfed the Wulff.

That will come as no surprised to Bluhm, my retired reporter pal from Whitefish Bay, Wis. He believes in the Royal Wulff, a fly sneered at by most Black Hills fly fishers.

Until about 4 p. m. today, I was among the skeptics. That’s when the brown smashed the Wulff - a fuzzy, double-winged little oddity with a Rodney Dangerfield persona - as it drifted along the surface of Rapid Creek, occasionally dancing to the incongruous background music of nearby city traffic.

About 18 inches below the Wulf drifted what I presumed was the real bit of angling promise: a submarining pheasant-tail nymph. It had already inspired strikes from five or six browns, four of which - ranging from 10 to 12 inches - were landed and released.

The Wulff was intended only as a stimulator-indicator fly (oh me of little faith), to draw attention to the nymph and let me know when underwater mayhem was occurring (In that role, it’s a bobber, basically).  And it had worked well for that, as well as attracting a look or two and an occasional haphazard swat from a brown.

But when the action slowed in the main run of the pool, I made a long cast across to a smaller eddy behind a rock. The Wulff had barely settled into its drift when the water exploded.

It was an acrobat, that fish, from the moment it rose to the fly until its flexing arrival in my chilly left hand. It jumped, it ran, it dove deep into the pool. It tried to power its way behind a rock and wrap itself around a snag. But the hook held and the 6-weight showed its backbone.

With the fish in hand, I saw that the Wulff was perfectly secured in the back left corner of the brown’s upper lip - too well hooked to dislodge in a fight, but easy for a finger and thumb to remove. The pheasant tail dangled, unstruck, on the tippet tied onto the Wulff hook.

“The Wulff scores!” I proclaimed to no human soul but my own, as I watched the fish evaporate back into the pool. “Donnie boy was right!”

I smiled at that. And thought of another Bluhm pearl: Don’t push it. When it’s really good, stop just short of even better. Because what you have is almost certainly more than good enough. And you don’t want to ruin that.

Just let it be.

That’s hard for me to do. But this time I managed. And by leaving early, I had time before dark to sit along the creek and say a prayer of thanks - for good health, good streams and good flies.

And, especially, for good friends.

Avery Olson, 14,  bagged this beauty of a whitetail buck hunting with her dad, GF&P Commissioner Jeff Olson of Rapid City, north of Wall.

By KW

It was tough getting there for Avery Olson and her dad, Jeff.

But my, was it worth it.

When the Olsons arrived, after their slippery drive from Rapid City, at the camper that Jeff keeps at his hunting spot north of Wall, the big whitetail buck was there, hanging with some other does nearby.

The deer spooked. The Olsons had to unpack and prepare for the hunt, and then started following the tracks in the snow. They jumped the big buck, but couldn’t get a good shot.

Next draw over, Avery had a chance from 200 yards. She took it with a .243.

“She thought she hit him good,” Jeff said. “I though she missed.”

Oh dad of little faith.

They eventually found a blood trail and tracked it for a quarter mile, finally locating the buck out on a big, partially frozen stock dam.

“It got interesting there,” Jeff said. “We were able to get out in the water a little bit, rope him and drag him in.”

Olson says it’s wall-hanging big. And he plans to prove it.

“He will go on the wall,” he said. “He is better than any whitetail I have ever shot.”

Oh, and one more thing from Olson:

“I am so proud I can hardly stand it.”

With good reason, dad.

Rapid City’s own Ryan Gabert with a muley buck plugged near Murdo on opening weekend of the West River rifle deer season.

By KW

It isn’t just about catch and release with the kid.

He can shoot to kill, too.

Ryan Gabert, who’s better known around Dakota Angler & Outfitter and TIO for his flyfishing obsession, did the dead-eye routine during opening weekend of the West River rifle deer season.

That was plenty good enough. But then the kid - and we presume his dad - topped it off by sending in a dead-buck photo that won’t send your average non-hunter of somewhat-delicated sensibilities off screaming for a Friends of Animals membership application.

Wanna know how to shoot a dead-buck picture? Look at this one. Nicely composed, highlighting the antler spread, with good low lighting and CLOSE ENOUGH so you don’t have to squint and guess to figure out what’s what and who’s who.

It makes the muley look like the trophy it is, not some barely reconstituted roadkill.

It honors the animal and the hunt, rather than diminishing it.

And what’s missing? Oh, how about the bloody body cavity, the opaque eyes and the twisted, death-frozen tongue.

I can do without those features in a hunting photo. And I’m a hunter. So imagine what the non-hunters think, and feel.

I had only the slightest concern about the direction of the gun muzzle, which is still generally safe. And I presume the gun was unloaded long before the photo was taken.

Nice shot - from both gun and camera.

 

 The Blogmore-TIO gang, 2008, from left: Matt Epp, Todd Epp, Jon Lauck, Jeff Vonk, Nick Nemec, Jeremiah Murphy, Ben Ready, Rhett Jaeger and Brendtly Lauck.

By KW

The boys were back.

 And this year, it was all boys, since Denise Ross was one of the many 2007 participants in the Mount Blogmore-Take It Outside Invitational Hunt who didn’t make it back for the 2008 event.

There was that blizzard thing, after all. It complicated travel plans. Darlene DeChandt, for example, didn’t make it back to Pierre until Saturday, after spending a couple of days snowed in in Wall.

The idea of taking off to tromp through the snow on Sunday was understandably unappealing. Next year, Darlene.

Lots of folks didn’t like the weather outlook, or the fact that much of Nick Nemec’s corn was still in the field. Indeed, it turned out that a seven or eight guns guns stood little chance against the quick-footed roosters and the acres of standing corn.

But we forged on nonetheless, and bagged a couple roosters and one prairie chicken before heading into Highmore for a great bowl of chili and other goodies at a benefit feed and auction for Jacob Moser, a 8-year-old with profound physical disabilities that can’t begin to touch his stout spirit.

Of last year’s inaugural hunt gang, only our kind-hearted farm host Nick Nemec, lobbyist extraordinaire Jeremiah Murphy, blogging-lawyer Todd Epp and his son, Matt, Thune senior staffer Jon Lauck and, of course, the father of the hunt, yours truly, cinched it up in 2008. (What did we cinch, I wonder?)

Newcomers this year were GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk, Thune staffer Ben Ready, Rhett Jaeger, a Pierre native engaged to Nick’s daughter, Erin, and Jon Lauck’s son, Brendtly.

I never fired a shot myself. But I blew a tire on my wife’s Versa.

The boys on the hunt got a bang out of that.

Mary’s reaction was more subdued.

Jeff Vonk puts the appreciative squeeze on the high-flying prairie chicken he dropped with the shot of the day.

Despite his hit-man appearance, Epp fired only a camera. Murphy had a more lethal intent, however.

Nick did his best to fix the tire, then made a call to the saintly Cenex man in Highmore, who abandoned TV football to declare the old tire a total loss and put on a new one, which made the driver totally happy.

It’s no prairie chicken, but it’s definitely dead.

As the 2008 Blogmore-TIO hunt draws to a close, the sun sets on the blown tire - and possibly on the driver’s chances of borrowing his wife’s car again anytime soon.