Our Outdoors: Standard Procedure
Our Outdoors: Standard ProcedureBy Nick Simonson “Now, you get to do the strap up on top of it,” I said with a laugh as on my tip toes I cranked hard on the ratchet which secured the stabilizing pole of my buddy’s new deer stand to his chosen tree, putting a pair of red lines into my palm, which suggested the brace was secure. It was his first experience with the process of dragging the awkward combination of seat and ladder into the brushy bottom, and probably my twentieth in the last decade, as from season-to-season, a case of grass-is-greener […]
Our Outdoors: Mark Your Calendars
Our Outdoors: Mark Your CalendarsBy Nick Simonson So many big dates are on the horizon this time of year as we make the turn from summer into fall. The start of the school year, football kickoff, and of course, opening days across a wide variety of hunting seasons are among the big dates to consider. There are so many now that it makes it tough not to have the ink bleed through from one calendar page to the other from all the red Sharpie circles on the pages into November. For those looking to get the next generation into the […]
Our Outdoors: A Hop Down Memory Lane
Our Outdoors: A Hop Down Memory LaneBy Nick Simonson As I waded through the recently cut wheat fields and grassy stretches around them on the way to check my trail camera this weekend, I watched the grasshoppers flee before my boots in waves like those made by the wakeboarders back at the cabin. As they did, I recalled just how fun those summers of more than two decades ago along that same lakeshore were, thanks to some of my first – and certainly most consistent – topwater success. I can’t remember now if my dad had purchased a Rebel Crickhopper […]
Our Outdoors: Summer Swim
Our Outdoors: Summer SwimBy Nick Simonson Rocked by the waves generated from the wake board boats closing out their weekends on the water, my brother and I drifted around the patches of weeds on the long point extending into the lake. Here and there, loons would cluster and then spread out as jet skis and pontoons wove their way around the main basin and back across it. On the otherwise still day, the motion of the water would linger with me well after the trip, and I’d feel the slight rocking as I settled in back at the cabin. Along […]
Our Outdoors: Scout Out the Drought
Our Outdoors: Scout Out the DroughtBy Nick Simonson Early last fall, as I rolled up over the hill with my buddy behind me closing out the two-truck caravan in our grouse hunt, I was a bit dismayed to see the stretch of public-access grass from yellow sign to yellow sign completely hayed. While it wasn’t a big blow to our day, as we each had a couple sharpies in our bags, it did come as a bit of a surprise, and we walked a small swale which had been spared the baler but put up no more birds as the […]
Our Outdoors: On Edge
Our Outdoors: On EdgeBy Nick Simonson The haze of a hundred wildfires dimmed the light of the mid-July sun overhead on the afternoon fishing trip as I drifted along the breaks of a favorite rocky lake. The orb’s all day orange glow made me uncomfortable as the effects of yet another heatwave crashing on the west drifted slowly across the plains, like the foam at the edge of a breaker trying to extend its reach up the beach. I looked to overcome the uneasiness in the places I usually encountered the smallmouth bass on the clear water body and found […]
Our Outdoors: Turning Twenty
Our Outdoors: Turning TwentyBy Nick Simonson It was 20 years ago this summer I took a job in between college and law school as a part time reporter for my hometown newspaper, the Valley City Times-Record. In fact, it’s a publication for which I still proudly write today, and I am happy and sometimes amazed that they’ve kept me on this long and through many moves. Between reporting on developing technology in the community, looking over the police blotter and covering the occasional Legion baseball game that summer, I was also given an opportunity to share my growing passion for […]
Our Outdoors: Clear Fun
Our Outdoors: Clear FunBy Nick Simonson The rising sun heated the morning air like a fuse on the fireworks launched the night before and as it came up over the slightly rippled waters of the northern lake on Independence Day, the fishing exploded in the same fashion. Along the inside turns of the reed beds, under the mats of lily pads and off the small rocky points of the water, the smallmouth and largemouth bass took to my tubes with reckless abandon and by nine o’clock I had brought a dozen or so up to the boat that were 15 […]
Our Outdoors “It’s Okay”
Summer has barely started and I’m thinking about fall…and that’s okay. I can’t help it. My mindset has already shifted toward hunting, despite only being a week removed from the summer solstice, the July 4 holiday not here yet and there being nearly a full three months of the season remaining. It happens every year about this time. I know it shouldn’t but it does, and like the dinner bell for Pavlov’s dog, the signs that trigger thoughts of fall are everywhere. The first batch of pheasant chicks skitter with all the haste their tiny legs below their puffball bodies […]
