By KW

First, I like Tim Kessler. He’s been a GF&P commissioner longer, I believe, than any other commissioner in history.

He pays attention. He works to balance sportsmen and landowner concerns. He listens to state biologists but isn’t afraid to depart from the company line.

So, liking him made it harder to write a story questioning whether it was appropriate for Kessler to propose and vote in support on an increase in the state shooting preserve pheasant limit, from 15 a day to 20 a day for more than half the seven-month preserve season.

Kessler, see, is the “landlord” of a hunting preserve operated by his brother, George, on Tim’s land up near Aberdeen. So he’s not the operator, but he’s pretty close.

On that same issue, preserve operator Mike Authier of Vivian abstained. Was that necessary? Should Kessler have abstained, too? Good questions, I think, and ones that should be discussed further by the comission.

Potential conflicts of interest are common on the comission, where landowners vote on issues that hurt or benefit landowners and hunters vote on issues that hurt of benefit hunters. So is this specific issue different? I’m not sure.

But it’s interesting, especially since one commissioner felt uncomfortable enough to abstain.

The preserve limit itself is a separate can of worms. I have mixed feelings. I can’t see why anybody would want to shoot 20 rooster pheasants in a hunt. And I agree with those who fear it casts hunting in a bad light.

But preserve owner Paul Nelson makes a fair point in pointing to 20–a-day lmits on spring snow geese, and past state limits in the regular pheasant season that ranged up to 10 per day.

I think the key issue on preserves is that they kill wild birds, about 20 percent of their annual kill, according to their records. And some of those birds are shot outside the regular season, and presumably in bag limits that exceed the regular three bird kill allowed in the regular season.

To address that, Kessler proposed an the commission pass an amendment that make the 20-bird bag revert back to 15 at the end of the regular ringneck season. Still, it’s an interesing question.

I don’t have a a for-sure answer to either that one, or the commissioner conflict issue.

Do you?

Josh Carda shows his competitive style with a high-powered call.

By KW

For a minute or so Saturday morning, Mark Carda and I were in a different place.

Thanks to Josh Carda.

As the kid blew his duck call, his dad and I allowed our minds and hunting hearts to wander away from the quiet shoreline of Rapid Creek, to another place of beauty.

It’s a place of morning mist, whistling wings and pre-sunrise slogs through sucking marsh mud to hidden spots where dawn and ducks wait.

A good duck caller can be transformational for those who love an autumn slough and the magical vision of birds coaxed to wing-set by well-played calls and well-set decoys. Mark Carda and I were so transformed, as Josh blew his call.

And the kid can call, believe me. Sometime next week, I’ll prove it with a  video of Josh on the Journal Web site.

For now, trust me. There’s a reason the 16-year-old from Rapid City won another title in the the youth duck-calling competition at the South Dakota State Duck and Goose Calling Contest.  And he took third in the all-age competition.

That makes three state youth titles in duck calling and four in goose calling.

(I thought about bringing along my Vit Glodo and giving it a blast, but I decided I couldn’t stand the humiliation….)

Josh Carda’s about more than calling contests, however. What he really loves is calling birds.

He uses his skills in the potholes and fields, on duck and goose hunting trips with his dad. Josh does all kinds of hunting, but loves waterfowling best.

After hearing him call, I can see why.

Josh can’t help but grin when asked about autumn waterfowling.

A couple from Barcelona, Spain finds The Notch well worth the hike.

By Kevin Woster

For some reason, it took me 57 years to get to the notch

It won’t take so long to return.

I’ve been going to the Badlands National Park since I was a kid and it was a monument. I’ve done a bit of hiking and general snooping around.  I’ve even seen the sign for  the Notch Trail a time or two.

Never went, until a couple Sundays back, when I was coming back from East River with an hour or two to spare.

What a wonderful hike. A 1.5-mile round trip, it offers a trek down creek beds, a scramble up a rope-wood ladder staircase and a hillside saunter to the notch, where you get a fine view of the White River valley, not to mention a somewhat superior - from an altitude standpoint - gander at the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail below.

There are parts - including that ladder - that  get your heart pounding.

But in a good way.

Don’t you take 57 years to get there.

Is that ladder stairs cool, or what?

You have to wait your turn to go down, when somebody’s coming up.

The tall and the small of the Notch Trail in the badlands.

Jeff Olson strikes a stern pose with his 10-plus pound silver salmon.

By KW

It takes a lot for Jeff Olson to miss a GF&P Commission meeting.

Alaska’s a lot.

So while the rest of the commissioners were up in Mobridge earlier this month fiddling with issues near and deer to Olson’s heart, he was up in the big state to the far north, fiddling with the finny stuff.

Big finny stuff.

Take this silver salmon. Olson did. But it wasn’t easy.

“This was the biggest salmon I caught,” Olson writes. “Took me to the backing twice.”

That’s backing on a substantial fly reel, one meant to fit the custom-built 8-weight Sage Olson took Way Up North, along with  a bunch of big salmon flies.

Olson figures this salmon weighed about 12 pounds, which is plenty of fish on a fly rod. He also caught a female that was slightly smaller. And some great grayling. And some rainbows. And, well, that’s Alaska, in this case a place called Katmai Park.

It’s bear country, too. And Olson saw plenty. They even had large yellow labs with big-time attitudes to keep the bears away.

“One of them slept under our cabin,” Olson said.

He means the dog, not the bear.

I think.

A griz runs off with one of Olson’s fish, before Olson can catch it.

By KW

What’s more fun, catching trout on a dry fly or watching someone you love do it?

It was no contest for me Sunday afternoon, as Mary hooked, landed and released three beautiful rainbows in a half hour on one stretch of Rapid Creek.

And she had two or three other big surface hits, one of which knocked the hopper for three feet.

The rainbows ranged from 12 inches to slightly more than 14 inches - which were the biggest trout of Mary’s life. And they fought like it.

“Oh, that was sooo much fun,” she crooned as we slogged up to the car. “Those bigger fish, they’re like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

Oh, yeah. We know. They were hot hits, as they often are during hopper season. Then there’s that electric pulse of the wild vibrating up the line, and the wild acrobatics of the fish.

It doesn’t get any better than hopper time. The trout are aggressive. You know what they’re eating. The hopper patterns are big enough so even 50-something  fingers can easily tie them on and visible enough so that 50-something eyes can easily follow their drift.

It’s a great time - even if your wife ends up out fishing you three fish to one.

Sometimes, watching and handling the net duties is even better than catching anyway.

It sure was yesterday. Besides,  I’ll get back out there myself soon enough.

In fact, wait, I see it’s almost 6 p.m.

Uh, I gotta go …

By Kevin Woster

A few seconds after the brown trout whacked my grasshopper, I felt a tiny sting on my ankle.

I glanced down and studied the “S” shaped tattoo on my lower right leg. There was nothing special about it, except  that I DON’T HAVE A TATTOO ON MY LOWER RIGHT LEG! Or anywhere else. It was actually a cluster of 10 or 15 mosquitoes, all busy burrrowing their heads in my flesh.

Yeeeowwwww! I screamed, then did sort of a clumsy pirouette which spun out into a one-legged hop on my left foot while I kicked wildly with my right.

Meanwhile, I tried to keep the trout - a plump 14-incher - from hanging me up on a tangle of branches and rocks along the shore.

About that time I realized I also had mosquitoes drilling into the back of my neck and along my jaw and on both forearms. So the dance got wilder and wackier, mixed with a quicker-than-usual catch-and-release of the trout and a full-blown sprint away from the creek and back toward the pickup.

It was an odd, sudden swarm of skeeters, particularly odd since I’d fish a quarter mile or so of creek downstream over the previous two hours without seeing so much as one.

It was hot, mid-afternoon, and that stretch of creek hadn’t been buggy - other than mayflies and caddies - for weeks. So I was fishing in shorts, short sleeves and without repellent.

Suddenly, mosquitoes were all over the place, and all over me.

I figure I got bit 10 times. Maybe 20. That’s more than I’ve been bit by mosquitoes in the last two or three years.

Fortunately, West Nile is having an off year in South Dakota. Last time state epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger was in town, about 10 days ago, he said there were only a handful of West Nile cases in the state this year.

Even so, getting bit still bugs me in ways it never did before.

Unless, of course, the biter is a brown trout.

Top Pin Archery Club members Matt May and Jeff Prior of Dakota Greens in Custer like the new 3-D moose just fine.

By KW

The 3-D menagerie at Top Pin Archery will be bigger by one - a very big one - this year just in time for the South Dakota Archery Association 3-D shoot near Custer.

Dr. Joy Falkenberg and her husband, Matt Brown, split the $1,895 cost of the 3-D moose with the Top Pin Archery club. Next they’ll be joining others in trying to split the moose with a storm of arrows.

Naw, the big fella is too tough for that. It’ll show that tough stuff this weekend during the state shoot, which could attract more than 150 contestants, not to mention tag-along spectators.

“We’ve had a lot of calls so far,” says Top Pin owner and tournament organizer Tom May. “We’re anticipating 150 plus. It would be great to see 200.”

The course itself is worth seeing. It’s in a scenic spot in Custer State Park - or, as May says, “It’s gorgeous, but there aren’t many bad places in the park” - off America Center road between Highway 16A and the Needles Highway.

“It’s about a mile and a half from the west park entrance,” May says. “You’ll see the signs.”

Shooting starts at 8 a.m. Saturday with a “trickle start,” allowing individual archers to begin when they want to, with everybody wrapped up by 2. Next day the shooters will work the course in small groups, according to how they shot on Saturday, again starting between 8 and 9 a.m.

But it’ll wrap up sooner on Sunday, so get their earlier to check things out.

It takes about an hour and a half to finish the course. And May says interested spectators are welcome to stroll along and see how the experienced archers do it.

Make  sure you check out that moose, too.

Lincoln, Rykon and Nancy Brown get a lift out of the 3-D moose target purchased by the Top Pin Archery club with help from the kids’ mom and dad, Dr. Joy Falkenburg and Matt Brown. (Oh, and  Grandpa Dick? Try not to bust your buttons with pride on this one….)

A yellow thing that could well be a spider wiggles in a web in the riprap above Oahe Dam.

By KW

“NYAAAAAAH!”

That’s what I said when I saw the yellow thing.

Or maybe it was “NYAAAAAHAAAAAH!”

Either way, I jumped.

And dropped my fishing rod.

And forgot about smallmouth bass for a minute.

Or at least long enough to say: What the heck is that?

Anybody know?

With legs spread, it was about as wide as the palm of my hand.

Which, well, seems big for a South Dakota spider.

Or at least it did at the time.

Pierre artist Jim Pollock  limbers up the arm and the mouth for a “plein air” painting session at Sylvan Lake.

By KW

Stop and see him. Really.

He’s a good guy.

He knows how to paint, too. But not like the Woster bunch knows how to paint, with a spray gun, a bunch of red paint and a peeling barn or hog shed.

Lots better than that, Pollock does. Artsy stuff. But stuff you can figure out.

Jim Pollock’s artist-in-residence stint at Sylvan Lake is just that: at Sylvan Lake.

Out there. Plein air. On the lake.

He showed up Monday. He’ll be around through Sunday.

Check him out. I think you’ll like him, and his art.

I know I do.

Smile, you’re on camo camera…

By KW

It’s not the one Lee DeLange is looking for, exactly.

But it’s not bad, either.

For a Black Hills bowhunter like Delange, this one will surely do, when the archery deer season comes around.

But that’s then - meaning Sept. 26 - and this is now. And now is the time for serious scouting. Location cameras do a lot of that work for the hunters these days, and also produce some fascinating and intimate looks at what goes in the wild when we’re not there to see it.

 Here’s what Lee says about that:

“Hunting” with a trail camera is a great way to get ready for the upcoming season and help to ease a little bit of the fever that I tend to get this time of year.  It’s a wonderful time - and the animal is none the wiser!

True enough.

Lee’s not giving up the location of this particular camera, and deer. But he did say it’s on public land, in the Black Hills.

That narrows it down to, oh, about 1.2 million acres or so.

Yes, and a profile shot, too, please. Hold it. Hold it. There ….