By KW

 If I heard right on the radio yesterday during a lunch break from my duck hunt, about 1,400 permits have been sold for the lion hunt that begins tomorrow.

That’s about a third of what it was the year before. Which is fine by me.

GF&P delayed the start of the mountain-lion season this year until Jan. 1 to get the season away from the Black Hills deer and elk seasons. The idea was to eliminate some of the “bonus” bags on lions by hunters who were actually after other game, but bought a lion permit just in case.

The GF&P hope is that more serious lion hunters will be more tuned into the hunt and less likely to bag a female lion with kittens still in care. That might help reduce the “orphaned kitten” situation that so quickly evolved into a ludicrous “rescue” policy sending GF&P biologists out to bfind and capture kittens, thus “saving” them for life in a zoo.

Let’s just say the policy has more to do with politics than biology.

I hope the later season works. I also hope it means that those hunters who do buy lion permits consider the lions to be trophies worthy of individual study, preparation and an ethical hunt and kill.

A mountain lion is far more than incidental game or a bonus bag. It’s a trophy, and should be hunted as such.

The Vit Glodo is ready for action.

By KW

It belonged to Herbert Daughenbaugh, a former Journal employee with a discerning taste in duck calls.

Keith Wintersteen inherited the call, which he figures his grandpa-in-law - Herbie - bought sometime in the late 1960s.

That would be about the time I bought mine.

I lost that one many years ago, a fact I mentioned in a recent e-mail exchange with Wintersteen and that gray haired old rascal over in Whitefish Bay, Royal Wulff Bluhm.

I told them about the time, back in the day, when I was wailing away on my old Herter’s call and charmed a swarm of mallards that reversed course over the Red Lake shallows and piled into my decoy spread - which at that time consisted of three puny, lug-nut- weighted mallard imitations and one floating wreck of a bird, its alleged species open to regular and vigorous debate within my peer group.

The call and dekes worked well enough that time, though, and we “let ‘em have it,” as duck hunters like to say, in a barrage of randomly targeted shotgun pellets.

And the sky rained greenheads.

Actually, two birds fell.

And when we picked them up, we realized they were spoonbills.

Mmm-Mmmm. And good eating, too.

But that wasn’t the call’s fault. And it showed the ability, from time to time, to sweet talk more than spooners. So, even these many years later, I was still lamenting its sudden disappearance during some hazy, hormonal duck hunt long past, presumably when it dove out of my pocket and into some dark bog or slippery slough or cacophonous cattail swamp.

A few days after my recent e-mailed lamentations about the lost call, I showed up for a duck hunt with Wintersteen and he presented me with a Christmas gift to quack about: a Vit Glodo special, by Herters, in the original box AND with a lanyard perfectly adjusted by the original owner.

Herbie Daughenbaugh.

What a glorious gift it was. Wintersteen and I immediately took it out to see if it could still talk.

Indeed, it was positively loquacious.

“Waaaaaa-waaaaaaa-waaaaaaack-ka-ka-ka-ka-kwaaaaaaaaack-waaaaaaack.”

Then came the birds.

Ka-BLOOOM!

Thanks Herbie. Rest in peace.

I’ll see to it that your duck call doesn’t.

By KW

First, from Norman Maclean:

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

Today, for all of you who take a moment now and then to cast your attention into the waters of Take It Outside, the words are quite simple:

Merry Christmas!

 

A Gettysburg area landowner saw dead pheasants like this snow-packed rooster scattered through what he considered pretty good winter cover after that big blast two weeks ago.

By KW

Not to ring the bells of alarm or anything, but  this has the makings of a bad winter.

Especially for ring-necked pheasants.

With a couple magnum snow storms already in the books, and East River winter weather seeming to have migrated west even as far as to what KELO’s Dave Dedrick dubbed the Banana Belt, the state bird could be in for hard times.

GF&P says wildlife losses have been slight so far. That includes pheasants, the most watched fowl in the land of infinite variety.

 But some landowner reports indicate substantial losses. We hope they’re localized, not wide spread.

If the winter is hard and the state suffers the CRP losses that have been projected for coming years, we could see the pheasant population - and the $200 million-a-year industry it supports - take a nose dive.

Stay tuned, and stay warm.

 A pintail on a Black Hills duck hunt in December? This one’s going on Wintersteen’s wall, or his office desk.

 By KW

Sixty-eight yards away.

That’s where the pintail hit the ground.

When Wintersteen picked the bird - “Pintail!” he yelled - out of a dozen mallards flushing from the creek half a football field away, I was impressed with his eye.

When he slammed his dad’s old Model 12 to his shoulder and touched off a round, I was questioning his judgment.

 But only for second.Then the pintail tumbled out of the scatterng ducks and fell hard into a creekside tangle.

“Holy smoke, Wintersteen,” I said, or something like that. “Heck of a shot.”

I hustled to the spot, rummaged around in a snowy thicket and lifted the elegantly-detailed drake into the air. Wintersteen stood his ground, grinned and marked me with a rangefinder at 68 yards.

Are you kidding me?

Of course, the BBB (hurriedly thrown in the 12 gauge moments earlier when a flock of geese passed nearby) helped. But regardless of the load, it was the best shot of an afternoon loaded with best things:

Like the old Herter’s duck call I got to toot and toot and toot - turning a small flock or two for a good look, then drawing a hen mallard, and another, and another, and yet another - and, finally one beautiful drake that just couldn’t resist - to our small spread of decoys.

The drake met my 20 gauge,  and his maker. More on the duck call later… but it’s a beaut.

Or the face of 10-year-old Cameron Eliason, who bagged five bright greenheads in a mentored hunt with Dan Durben. They sat out the icy afternoon on an especially ducky private stretch of the creek, just a half mile downstream from where we sat, getting periodic updates by two-way radio.

Or the flock of Canada geese that almost swung close enough; the marsh hawk that came dipping across the slough to check out the decoys and call; the marsh wrens screeching to miniature stops on cattail stalks along the creek; or the covey of sharp-tailed grouse that burst out of the foggy hazy to the east to grab our eyes and raise our pulses before they sailed quickly past - just the other side of shotgun range.

 And, especially, the simple, half-frozen joy of two half-witted adults gone positively adolescent with glee over every bird that almost believed the decoys and call, and the few (we didn’t shoot the hens) that actually did.

The temperature had plunged to near zero. And the north wind was howling.

It was coooooold out there.

So how come we felt so warm?

With the temperature near zero, Wintersteen sets the dekes so a couple of graying kids can begin their giddy wait.

Who is that semi-masked man? It could be the Lone Drakester, on a frozen day when one duck apiece seemed like overbagging on joy.

With the Take It Outside flash finally frozen up, Cameron Eliason hustled out of a snack-filled, heated shed just long enough to to kneel motionless in the semi-dark for a slow-shuttered, dimly lit, well-earned portrait.

By KW

Gov. Mike Rounds is plenty busy these days getting ready for the 2009 state legislative session.

During the week, that is. But on weekends, well, the gov tries to find a little down time - with an upland-bird gun in hand.

“I love hunting this time of year,” he said this week, during a momentary diversion from an interview ostensibly aimed at more political  subjects. “I’ll try to hunt every weekend if I can.”

Hunt what, you ask? What else? THE bird. The state bird.

“It’s mostly pheasant hunting. I can schedule it in,” Rounds said.

He made it on one East River deer hunt, and son, John, managed to bag 4-by-5 whitetail.

That was only a delightful departure, however, away from his main passion: bagging those big, beautiful, brassy roosters as they erupt from some of the best pheasant turf on earth.

Yeah, you guessed it: Lyman County. He’s got some land down there in Woster’s, er, I mean, God’s Country.

“Lyman County has some great pheasant populations this year,” Rounds said.

Do tell.

And, OK, sure, Rounds points out that there’s some pretty solid ringneck hunting elsewhere in the state, too.

Which elevates the attitudes of the faithful, even in hard economic times.

“Even in times of recession, or a coming depression, if the pheasant population is good within the state, people have a smile on their face,” Rounds said. “And there’s been a lot of smiles on people’s faces. It’s been a very good year for pheasant hunting.”

That’s been pretty much true throughout pheasant country.

But especially so down there in, well, you know.

By KW

You’ve probably heard, but the GF&P Commission last week decided not to ban the use of rifles for spring turkey hunting in the Black Hills and East River turkey units.

 Commissioner Jeff Olson of Rapid City was the lone supporter of the ban in a 5-1 commission vote to approve the season without it.

Tim Kessler, Jim McMahon, Spencer Hawley, Susie Knippling and Mert Clarkson voted against the rifle ban. Mike Authier and Randy Kemink didn’t attend.

We’ve had a pretty good discussion on this issue in the thread down below. I’ve haven’t participated much in that, since I’m far from an expert on this subject.

In fact, I’ve never been turkey hunting myself. And I probably won’t start, as long as the rifle rule stands.

I respect the passionate arguments on both sides. But nothing I’ve read or heard in this discussion makes me comfortable - personally - with the notion of sitting in camo and making turkey calls while people - a certain percentage of whom, let’s face it, are fully capable of making moronic decisions in the field - are running around with rifles looking to shoot what makes the sound I’m making, and possibly taking a crack at the source of the sound from 150 or 200 yards away.

I think I’ll stick to spring fishing, for now.

Coltan Lick, 13, of Rapid City bagged this beautiful 4-point mule deer Nov. 15 north of Faith.

By KW

By itself, the mule-deer buck would be plenty for a 13-year-old to feel good about.

But Coltan Lick has a couple of bucks to swell his memory - and take up plenty of wall space, when he and his parents, Jeff and Leah, get around to having them mounted.

The 4-b-4 muley will go on the wall someplace - the Lick’s have plenty of stuffed game already - but it won’t go alone. Coltan also shot a 5-point whitetail in the Black Hills last year, during his first hunting season.

But lest you think he’s a horn hunter only, be advised that Coltan also has a couple of antlerless tags he intends to fill. And with good reason.

“That’s pretty much all we live off,” he said, referring to deer, antelope and elk.

Coltan took the muley buck while hunting with his parents, his brother, Cobey, and his uncle, Terry Henry. And it didn’t require the degree of difficulty he expected.

“We were driving up to a CRP field to hunt there,” Coltan says. “We got maybe 300 yards down the road and saw this buck all by itself out in a field.”

They drove on up the road, parked the vehicles and began a sneak back toward the buck that eventually gave Coltan a 150-yard shot.

He pointed the .243 Winchester on target, and the buck fell.

“We weren’t even planning on trying to shoot something right then. We were just on our way out,” Coltan says. “I was surprised.”

Now if they can just figure out where to hang it.

Putting the squeeze on a chinook salmon back in the day, former GF&P fisheries chief Bob Hanten collects eggs at the salmon-spawning station on Lake Oahe.

By KW

We lost a good one last week.

Keith Wintersteen called him a “fisheries hero.”

And, indeed, Bob Hanten probably earned that status for his 30-plus years of service as GF&P’s fisheries chief in Pierre. He led the state fish crews into the new world of fisheries work, and was never afraid to add the new to the old or listen to innovative ideas.

Blue Dog Lake State Fish Hatchery. Hanten was there. Missouri River salmon fishery. Yep, there, too. The introduction of smallmouth bass into water across the state. Right in the middle of it.

Black Hills Trout. East River perch. Prairie bass.

All those, too.

In fact, if it happened at the state level since the 1960s and involved fish and fishing, Hanten probably left his thumb print.

Even more, he left a son, also named Bob, who continues to carry the family name in fisheries work as a Misrouri River biologist for GF&P.

Big Bob and Little Bob, that’s what the Hanten boys were called, back when the son started trailing the dad around public waters, and GF&P fish chores.

We’re glad to have a grown-up “Little Bob” still working on fish here in South Dakota. But we’re sad that “Big Bob” is gone.

He won’t be forgotten, however. And I’ll stop to think of him, and say a prayer of thanks, next time I catch a fish.

Back before the gray hair set in, Bob Hanten cleans up some fish eggs to prepare them for the hatchery.

The kid we’d love to slap shows off a hook-beaked brown trout from the Bighorn River.

By KW

 My old buddy Don Bluhm might have said it best: “I’m beginning not to like that kid.”

Bluhm was kidding. I think.

But still….

The outdoor exploits of Ryan Gabert could indeed inspire resentment among those of us in the gray-haired hunting and angling community, if we were petty enough to allow it.

Fortunately, we’re not petty. Well,  we’re not that petty, anyway. So we can appreciate the continuing hunting-and-fishing successes of our well-traveled-and-precocious 10-year-old.

OK, so he’s not really 10 (more like 16). He just seems like a third-grader to those of us who have long since stumbled past the half-century mark with barely a wave of the fly rod.

Anyway, the kid took this beautiful, 24-inch brown last weekend on the Bighorn River just off the Three-Mile Boat Launch near Fort Smith, Mont. The brute whacked a Size 10 hunch-back scud, and Ryan managed to wrestle it ashore, where Rapid City rod master Hans Stephenson quickly snapped this picture before gutting the fish and slapping it on the Coleman for supper.

Just teasin’. The big trout was released to fight again, of course.

Speaking of Stephenson, he and his tutorials in the magical ways of trout streams are to a large degree responsible for the development and aggravating competence of young Mr. Gabert.

To his credit, Hans doesn’t deny his role in this, saying:  ”I think I’ve created a monster.”

Indeed - a grinning, fish-catching, buck-blasting monster.

And he’s only 10 years old. OK, more like 16.

But still…