The Weather Man

It seems as though every Minnesota fishing opener I can remember it rains. Sunday is always a nice sunny day but on Saturday it is always miserable. I don’t know what the exact odds of it raining on fishing opener are, however that time of year I imagine it is close to fifty percent.
When participating in any activity that is performed outdoors it is important to have a grasp on the current weather. This is especially true when hunting and fishing. Not only does one need to be prepared for the elements by dressing properly; fish and animal movements are often influenced by the weather.
Barnie Calef once told me that ‘winter storm warning’ are a waterfowl hunters three favorite words. It doesn’t matter if you are hunting ducks and geese in Minnesota or the Dakotas. When birds are on the move, due to dropping temps and freezing water, hunting is good. The key to consistently having success hunting over decoys is hunting ‘fresh’ or new birds.
Another veteran of waterfowl hunting, Dean Tlougan, owner and operator of Premiere Flight guide service says that barometric pressure plays a role in the success of a goose hunt. Fishing tends to pick up when the barometric pressure falling as well, typically right before cold fronts or storms. I cannot confirm or deny that barometric plays a role with decoying birds.
Many people claim they can feel pressure and weather changes in their joints and can accurately predict changing weather. Due to a high school football leg injury, I can typically tell if the weather is going to change through pain in my ankle. Listening, watching or reading weather forecasts through any media is just another way to insure a safe and enjoyable time in the outdoors. However, similar to the weather, game and fish do not always cooperate.
A few short years ago my friends and I would hunt geese in Canada from a remote farmhouse, which we rented. With little or no cell reception, no television or radio it was hard to get an accurate weather forecast. Lucky for us, my buddy J.D. would have his girlfriend call him at the farmhouse every night at nine.
From her apartment she would look up the forecast online and give J.D. a current and accurate forecast for Saskatchewan. With the forecast being critical for preparation, her phone calls were a lifesaver. J.D. would get everything from the temperature to wind direction and speed. Which would save us precious time in the morning figuring how we were going to set decoys and blinds. When decoying snow geese, wind is a must.
Today J.D. has and iPhone and the farmhouse we rent surprisingly has upgraded with a wireless Internet connection. Now we can get current and accurate forecasts from J.D.’s phone. Don’t worry, J.D. still talks to his girlfriend while we are in Canada, just not as frequently or at a scheduled time.
As I have grown older time seems to be traveling by faster and faster. Living in the Midwest and getting to fully experience all four seasons gives one a sense of change and renewal. In autumn the changing of the leaves and the crackle of Canada geese urges hunters to seek sunrises. When lakes freeze fisherman want to fish through the ice and when it the lakes open in the spring we seek open water.
No two hunting and fishing seasons are the same. Year to year regulations can change with some predictability. Yet so much of our success as hunters and fisherman are pending approval from Mother Nature.

The Meat Dog

“There are lots of ‘meat dogs’ out there that you can keep in the house and take out on weekends and kill birds over.” Says professional dog trainer Dave Alvarez. “They have medium to advanced hunting and retrieving skills, and they’ll hunt their tails off.” For the past twelve years my father and I have been hunting with his female black lab Cullie, and she is defiantly a ‘meat dog.’
My father picked Cullie up at a bar in Sheldon, Wisconsin. The owner of the bar was the owner of her mother and she was sired by one of Tom Dokken’s males. Cullie has always had an excellent nose, a trait my father says she got from her mother. In her retrieving career Cullie has lost very few birds, according to her breeder, Cullie’s mother accomplished a similar feat.
Many experts and non-experts have differing opinions on what to look for when picking out a puppy. Once I asked my father what method he used to pick out Cullie. He simply replied that she was the only black female available and that is what he desired. For me, that works.
Growing up in Saint Paul there was not a ton of opportunities to properly train a gundog. Cullie’s early training consisted mainly of plastic bumpers and basic obedience. Not having access to training birds, she was brought into the game with on-the-job training. She learned how to hunt through hunting, not re-enactment, which is not perfect but has worked out great in the long run.
Cullie has never been able to run a true blind retrieve. One can cast her with hand signals while hunting or looking for a dead bird but she doe not sit on a whistle blast. If someone in our hunting party shoots a bird that Cullie does not see fall you simply have to walk her to the fall area. Repeat ‘dead’ to her a few times and she will circle with her nose to the ground until she picks up the scent. Ninety-nine percent of the time she will recover the bird, sometimes tracking cripples multiple yards away from the fall.
Trust in a retriever is a must. Typically dogs have to earn trust, but they always have better sense of smell than humans. Often I have thought a bird went one way, when Cullie ultimately recovers it in a different direction. Time in the field will build teamwork and trust.
At twelve years of age Cullie is very calm and sleeps a lot around the house. To the untrained eye it would appear that she is not an energetic birddog. Get out the guns and start packing the camouflage and she seems to transform into a different creature, a hunting machine. The night before duck opener at the lake, no one is more excited than Cullie.
My mother has an orange jacket and whenever she wears it Cullie starts jumping up and down. It is kind of amusing; the dog thinks she is going pheasant hunting.
The past couple falls my father and I have limited Cullie to half days in the field and kept better tabs on her physical abilities. Cullie’s eyes and ears are starting to go but she still has an excellent nose. She has been kept in pretty good shape, especially with the addition of the new pup Stella. Cullie would hunt all day still if you let her, but as humans we must use some rationale and restrict her from pushing to the limits.
After a great opening weekend of duck hunting where she made many retrieves and hunted like a dog in it’s prime at ten years of age, my cousin Bill Hirschey told me he thought she would hunt at least four more years. That would be awesome if the prediction holds true, but I feel like it may be a difficult accomplishment.
The same season Cullie made a 100-yard retrieve on a crippled diver in large waves on a North Dakota slough. She is not steady to shot, or I would have probably stopped her from pursuing the bird. My hunting companion, Matt Gouette and I were a little nervous until she returned with the bird twenty yards down shore then proceeded to sprint down the shoreline and deliver the bird to hand. Although she was never force broken, she has always delivered to hand.
Matt has confided to me that he has had dreams where retrieves like that are Cullie’s last. She probably wouldn’t want to go any other way and I plan on allowing her to hunt until the end. I have always thought that Cullie would be the best hunting dog my father ever owned. I guess the jury is still out on that one for now. However, Cullie will forever be the ultimate meat dog.

Freelancing South Dakota Pheasants

I have said it before, and I will say it again. When there is snow on the ground and the sloughs are frozen, that is my favorite time of the year to hunt pheasants. This season we have had snow and freezing temps across the Midwest. So last weekend my father and I took advantage of the weather that has be absent the last couple hunting seasons to chase pheasants.
In an article, legendary outdoor writer Tony Dean said that South Dakota is the best place for hunters to pursue pheasants. With South Dakota having lots of pheasants and plenty of opportunities for hunters, I believe that Tony is right. My father and I both had a second five-day period available on our licenses so we chose to go back to Sodak.
Freelancing pheasants in South Dakota is like freelancing ducks in North Dakota. Basically there are birds all over the state and to be successful you have to be mobile. Knowing different areas is crucial, so we decided to hunt pheasants in an area we have never hunted for them in.
Our goal was to target cattails for the majority of our hunts. When the water beneath them is frozen, cattails provide excellent cover for late-season pheasants. Plus, it is cover that, for the most part, has just recently become accessible. I was hoping that hunters had overlooked these spots so far this season.
The two of us ended up hunting mostly Waterfowl Production Areas with the three labs we brought along. Waterfowl Production Areas or WPAs are public lands open to hunting that are purchased through Federal duck stamp dollars. These lands always have some form of water on them and are natural places to find cattails. Pheasant hunters have to remember that steel-shot is legally required on Waterfowl Production Areas.
My father and I ended up hunting Federal land, but the state of South Dakota has public land available to hunters as well. Most of the land I saw that was purchased by the state had food plots on it. South Dakota also has state funded Walk-In areas. These land plots are only accessible by foot, like the majority of public land. The state basically leases the land for the Walk-In areas from farmers, and opens the land up for public hunting. Pretty cool.
I feel that most hunters when freelancing just open up a public hunting map and say, ‘look at all the public land around here.’ Usually pointing out a few areas of concentration and suggest to others that they go there. These are places that I try to avoid. I don’t have any problems with putting on a few extra miles to avoid other hunters.
Blocking strategies for jumpy birds and dogs for finding birds that are holding are a must when hunting pheasants later in the season. We had the dogs, but we could have used some blockers. Still we were able to find a handful of roosters that were willing to hold in the snow and cold.
On our recent trip my father and I discovered that our new spot is a good one. It is always a pleasure to hunt with a good friend in a new area. Next season we are planning on going back and bringing a few more shooters. Now that we have hunted a few different areas, we know how to cover them the right way.
On the drive home from South Dakota I was pleasantly surprised by the number of pheasants my father and I spotted. We probably saw twenty-five birds feeding in cornfields while we were driving along I-90. The funny thing is that we didn’t spot a single one from the Interstate in South Dakota. I almost couldn’t believe that all the birds I saw were on the Minnesota side of our drive.

Dave's Band

I met Dave Easton in the fall of 2000 at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house on the University of North Dakota campus in Grand Forks. Dave had a burning passion to pursue game in the outdoors and a Jeep. I had three-dozen mallard floaters and knowledge of waterfowl passed down from my father and relatives. Together we were poised to make a great team.
Dave grew up in Colorado were there was few opportunities for him to hunt ducks. His own father was more of an upland hunter who brought Dave to western Nebraska and local game farms to harvest pheasants. To this day I have yet to encounter an individual who was more excited to experience new ways to hunt and fish.
I was just a freshman and Dave was a sophomore. Before the duck season began on the prairie we had agreed that we would hunt together as much as possible together. Dave had hunted ducks the season before with a couple older guys in the Frat, who at the time rented a house off-campus. These older Phi’s were kind enough to allow the two of us to store our firearms and the decoys at there home.
It was a time in my life that I will always remember. I was 19 years old, living on my own for the first time, making new friends, just forty-five minutes East of some of the best duck hunting in the Central flyway. If I could re-live one duck season, it would be my first fall in North Dakota.
On weekdays Dave and I would leave the UND campus in the early afternoon, after our classes were completed. Once the guns were picked up, yours truly would be riding shotgun in the Jeep, while we coasted west down highway 2 towards the prairie-potholes.
Whether or not you that have traveled down highway 2 to from Grand Forks, I will give you my re-cap. You pass the Grand Forks airport, then the Grand Forks Air Force Base, Turtle River state park, and the ‘big fan’ bridge just before Petersburg. Once you cross the bridge have left the Red River valley and are now in the prairie-potholes.
Those afternoons Dave and I would just drive around and jump shoot ducks. Gas was cheap, and I had never seen any place like it. It seemed as though every slough contained birds. Coming from Minnesota where my childhood hunts were mostly filled with ‘empty skies,’ I thought that I was in paradise.
Dave, the Colorado kid, none the wiser, was thoroughly enjoying hunting plentiful game with a new friend. Every turn on those dusty gravel roads contained new experiences for the both of us. Species of ducks, first doubles, triples, leg bands and the bag limits that had eluded me through my early years of waterfowl hunting were found.
On the weekends Dave and I would occasionally wake up before daybreak and set out decoys on several small potholes that we had become fond of. We rarely shot our limits over these sets, but we enjoyed seeing the sunrises that many of our fellow college students missed.
Back on campus Dave and I would clean plump mallards, gadwalls, teal and the occasional diver in the girl’s bathroom of the Frat house. This is also where we cleaned the perch and northern we pulled through the ice in the wintertime. In the kitchen we would mix duck breasts with any spices we could find and share them with our Frat brothers.
Our good friend Phil Bettenburg occasionally joined us on our duck hunts and the three of us go on a fishing trip every summer to this day. In the latter years of college Dave and I discovered field hunting for ducks and geese, and many new hunting partners. Some experienced, some not. By the time we both graduated and parted ways we had learned a ton about waterfowl hunting through experience and others.
Towards the end we did not hunt as much together as I would have liked. Goals and opinions changed, and educations needed to be completed in the classroom, not just the outdoors. Everything is good, but I would not trade those memories of the carefree early years for anything.
On one crisp October afternoon Dave shot a nice drake mallard just west of Petersburg, North Dakota. I, being a good friend and the one with waders on, retrieved the bird for him. To my surprise it was banded! At that time I had only seen two other banded birds harvested.
That mallard was banded in North Dakota at the J. Clark Wildlife Refuge. It was 12 years old when it met its fate at the hand of Dave’s steel 2s. Traveling up and down the flyway on that old North Dakota bird, the Avise bird band is a great memento and a true jewel. Dave’s band now hangs on my lanyard, and I think about those days every time I glance down at it. Dave gave it to me because he says that he never cared as much about the band as I did. He was more into mental aspects of the hunt, memories and experiences.

A Dream Hunt

It was an unbelievable day. The snow was coming down sideways and the birds were committing suicide. I filled my Swan tag with a black neck collared bird that was sporting a Tarsus band to boot. I picked the bird out of a decoying flock that came in at first light.
Matt and I also shot about twenty snow geese, one of which was a yellow neck-collared blue! Since I had shot the swan earlier I let Matt claim the collar and leg band. On top of a limit of drake mallards I also recovered a Spoonbill for my bonus bird. The catch, the spoonbill was also banded! The leg iron on the spoonbill meant more to me than the collared Swan. The band on the spoonbill was so old I could only make out the “AD” of Advise.
I felt like I was on top of the world as I drove my brand new pick-up across the snowy cornfield. It was cold, but my body was nice and toasty with the feeling of accomplishment. As I stepped out of the truck into the decoy spread Matt showed me his bonus bird. It was a banded Greenwing Teal he bagged while I was walking back to the pickup.
Later we were sitting in a small diner in the middle of Nodak, decked out, wearing our lanyards in the joint, showing off the new bling. I was flirting with the cute waitress when I was awaken by my sounding alarm clock. Damn.
It was one of those dreams that are so real you have to check your surroundings when you wake. Needless to say, I was glad to find myself in my room, but discouraged that I had to be at work in a half an hour.
Since I was a young boy I have been having dreams about hunting. My most terrifying nightmares are also about waterfowling. Usually the nightmares are occurring on opening day of the duck season, and I am unable to hunt for various reasons. In these nightmares ducks are swarming me like mosquitoes and all I can do is sit there and point my finger at them.
I have a reoccurring dream about shooting a double-banded snow goose. The location of the hunt, the time of year and the hunting partners change, but it’s always the same bird. More specifically it’s a Ross goose with a twenty-five dollar “reward” band and the standard “Call” band.
I retrieve the bird and as I am walking back to my hunting partners I have a Kool-Aid smile on my face. I’m a nice guy, so I tell the boys, “I am keeping the reward band for myself and the rest of you guys can draw straws for the other leg iron.” Just like that, two hunting buddies become brothers in arms, connected through a bird, each of them having a band from the same bird on their respective lanyards.
From what I have read about dreaming the dreamer has little control of the events in the dream. Dreams typically deal with events that are occurring in the same time period in which the dream takes place. I dream about hunting more often before and during the waterfowl season. Dreams often include feelings and events that the dreamer has experienced in his or her life. I wonder what people who do not hunt dream about?
Scientists say we have many dreams throughout the night, but only remember very few of them. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is the stage of sleep in which dreams occur. If the dreamer awakes during REM they have the greatest chance of remembering their dreams. So if you are awaken you have a greater chance of remembering your dreams. I rarely wake up at five in the morning naturally to go duck hunting.
Native Americans believed that dreams were “visions” of what is to come. I hope I do not forget my gun next year on duck opener, but there are banded birds in my future.

MN Early Goose Opener

Labor Day, with most of my peers taking jet-ski rides around the lakes or at the MN State Fair, Matt Gouette and I were in south central Minnesota scouting for geese. We choose to scout and hunt a new area for a couple different reasons. One, the new area is about half the distance of our old haunts in western Minnesota and two I heard from my friend J.D. Westerholm there was a good amount of geese down there.
The stock market guru Warren Buffet says that it is impossible to tell what will happen to the market in the short run, and very easy to tell what will happen in the long run. That is how I feel about goose hunting in Minnesota. The night before the early goose opener in Minnesota, even with a lot of time put in scouting, I am still not sure what to expect the next morning.
Matt Gouette and I had found a lot of geese in the area we were going to hunt, but we could not get permission for the two cut cornfields the geese were using. Through talking with the landowner we did know that the fields were going to be hunted on opening day. So our plan was to set up in a field in the flight path between the roost and the two fields the geese were using. With the commotion of opening day we figured we could coax a few young Canada geese into our decoys.
As a backup, there was a small pond and a larger body of water we could hunt. Both of which were with in a half-mile of the roost the majority of the birds were using. Once again, due to the confusion of opening day we were confident that with decoys and calling we could bring birds into range in either of these spots.
So as we drove to the field on the morning of Sept 6th, the outcome was going to be anyone’s guess. Were other hunters going to blow the roost? Was there going to be pass shooters in the area? Wind, no wind, rain? In the long-term I knew that if I put my time in I was going to have some good days hunting Canada geese in Minnesota. As for the short-term we were about to find out.
When Matt and I got to the field we were going to hunt there was little sign of other hunters in the area. As we set up the decoys and brushed the blinds we only saw a few vehicles drive by. Most of which were cars so I assumed that they were not hunters. It was getting lighter out and I kept thinking to myself, ‘this could be good.’
Once the hands of the clock indicated that it was legal shooting time the geese were more easy go than easy come. Goose calls being played by hunters began to sound all around us as if they were to start on queue.
Still I thought that we had an okay chance of getting a few geese but once the shooting started I wasn’t sure. All the flocks we saw coming off the roost flew higher and higher as the sun rose. All of which wanted nothing to do with our decoy spread. We even saw one flock circle a decoy spread that was not far from us like ten times. Then once the group shot, not a single bird fell. Which tells me that they were possibly out of range. Still the birds were acting more like late season birds.
Matt and I were packing up the spread when a DNR officer drove up and checked our licenses and shells. He said that a few pass shooters had geese and the hunters in the cut sweet corn fields had harvested a few geese. The officer also confirmed my assumption that hunters had set decoys on the water the geese were using as a roost. They too had shot a few geese.
My first Minnesota goose opener in nine years was a good reality check for Matt and I. It did solidify my belief that goose hunting on opening day is a roll of the dice, and that still it is better to be out and about than sitting on the couch. All was not for not, we were able to switch areas for the Sunday morning shoot and set up on a water hole with no scouting hoping to ‘run traffic.’ We shot one goose Sunday morning, the only bird that came into the decoys or with in range the whole weekend for that matter. When the bird came in, it came in hard, cupped and committed.

DRC

To be honest, it there was a jury full of ducks and geese; I would probably be on death row. The last couple of years I have been lucky enough to hunt waterfowl in several states and Canada each season. In doing so I have hunted with lots of different people using lots of different techniques. Coming home and hunting around my home state of Minnesota using new techniques is challenging and exciting.
I believe that Minnesota waterfowl hunters have more all-around knowledge and hunt harder then hunters from many other states. Minnesota waterfowl hunters must be continually learning and trying new things to be successful. This innovation results in many leading edge products being born in Minnesota.
The short-reed goose call may not have been born in Minnesota, but it certainly has evolved here. Not only is Minnesota home to some of the country’s best goose callers, there are many call-makers that file their taxes within in our great state. The newest call company, Death Row Calls, is quickly making a name for it’s self in the field and on stage.
I imagine that it was a sunny day at the Gamefair when a blonde-haired, younger guy from Thief River Falls stunned a quite audience by winning the 2007 State Goose Calling Championship. I have to imagine because I was not there, but when I heard the news through the grapevine I was excited.
That guy’s name is Cory Loeffler, and for those that know him it should have come as no surprise that he would be crowned state champ. I have known since Cory through calling contests since the fall of 2004. Cory has been collecting plaques and beating this author in calling contests up and down the Red River valley since then.
The thing that surprised me was that Cory won the state championship that day with a call from his new call line, Death Row Calls or DRC for short. Cory had started the new call line in the early part of 2007 and I was impressed by the calls when I first got to try one the second weekend of the ’07 Gamefair.
Not only were the DRC calls displayed on stage during the Gamefair, Cory, being a smart entrepreneur, had a booth at the popular event. When I had the opportunity to congratulate Cory in person, the DRC table was littered with plaques collected by the DRC crew that week. Around the DRC shop in Thief River the guys like to joke that the Death Row Calls line should have gotten an award for being the ‘rookie of the year.’
In it’s first year of existence the Death Row Calls line has won nearly 30 calling competitions. Besides the Minnesota State goose, callers won the North Star Two Man duck and goose with DRC calls. The North Star is a major calling competition held annually in Minnesota, usually at the Gamefair. Competition callers come from all over the country to compete in this event.
I am the kind of waterfowl hunter who likes to wear my passion for the sport all year. At any time you can catch me wearing apparel from various outdoor product manufactures. Another thing Cory has done right is design and print shirts and sweatshirts that are stylish. Believe it or not, goose calling is becoming a Fad with the younger generations.
I would like to end this column with a quick story. Contrary to popular belief, many of us who travel and compete in various calling contests across Minnesota get along very well. I met Cory Loeffler backstage at a calling contest. Although he is mainly a goose caller, once we were both waiting behind the scenes for a duck calling competition. I was surprised when he told me then that it was going to be the first time he had competed at duck calling. We joked around a little and I ended up finishing in second place. Cory says that if you don’t know how to call, you shouldn’t make calls. That day he took first in his first duck calling competition.
If you want to learn more about Death Row Calls feel free to call Cory at the DRC shop 218-686-6617. Or check out www.deathrowcalls.com.