Our Outdoors: On Target
By Nick Simonson The arrow barely hung from its tip stuck smack dab in the middle of the blue circle on the large black block ten yards out from the line on the floor which my now six-year-old son straddled in the open shoot section of the archery range. If I didn’t see it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it, but there it was, flung by the half-draw of an excited little boy holding the beginner compound bow with a string so loose it had popped off the top cam just a few shots before. It was his seventh arrow […]
Our Outdoors: Light Torches, Throw Pebbles
By Nick Simonson I’ve often wondered if people would be more concerned if the increasing reports of Chronic Wasting Disease in North Dakota made the jump from a limited population of mule and whitetail deer into more uncommon species like the resident moose and elk in the state, as has occurred in Montana. It seems likely that more anglers would take notice if sedimentation, or worse, toxic chemicals from a trickle upstream ended up affecting the fishing on their favorite flow or at its end in the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Superior or Hudson Bay. If so, they may […]
Our Outdoors: Long Night Luremaking
Our Outdoors: Long Night Luremaking By Nick Simonson January in the upper Midwest is the sportsman’s most challenging month. Major hunting seasons have ended, the flash of fins from early ice begins to slow down as the winter doldrums set in, and typically the temperatures are the lowest of the year and the conditions are the most challenging. Add in a foot or two of snow and mobility on the landscape or the lake can even become a deterrent to getting out there and enjoying winter hunting and fishing opportunities. While the days may seem to drag on in the […]
Our Outdoors: Down the Tubes
Our Outdoors: Down the Tubes By Nick Simonson Give or take, it’s about 250 days until upland seasons open again. It’s really 253, but at this stage in the beginning of the long wait until that semi-warm, dew-covered morning in mid-September brings the first chuckling grouse flushing from some CRP along an alfalfa field, rounding down is the best thing to do for my psyche. The false hope and excitement generated in my lab by the toting of a cased shotgun into the house and down to the basement mirrors my own that these days will pass quickly and we’ll […]
Our Outdoors: At Season’s End
Our Outdoors: At Season’s End By Nick Simonson On the slope to the farmstead and the western horizon, the reason for the lack of flushing pheasants became clear. A golden wall stood at the end of the snow-filled drain where the mostly frozen creek flowed down to the small impoundment where my lab Ole and I started our final walk of the hunting season. Between clumps of grass and the occasional field rock revealed by the recent mild weather, three-toed tracks darted in and out of the snow covering the iced-over trickle. Some prints were locked solid in a frosty […]
Our Outdoors: ‘Twas the Night Before First Ice
By Nick Simonson ‘Twas the night before first ice, and all through the lake, Not a fish had been stirring, not even a splake. The buckets were filled with my rods and my tackle, In hopes that the perch would like jigs trimmed with hackle. The tip-ups were strung with nylon and leaders, To deal with the teeth of big predator feeders. The minnows were purchased and set on the steps, The Vexilar charged to read various depths. When out under the ice there arose such a clatter, I sprang into my coveralls to assess the matter. In the dark […]
Our Outdoors: One Day at a Time
By Nick Simonson With paper top hats donned and party blowers buzzing at this point in the season, it’s easy to encapsulate life into a year, or as the nine rolls over to a zero this New Year’s Eve, an entire decade. It’s easy to shrug off this compartmentalization process until a person stops and looks back at those individual stand-out moments that made each stretch of time in those bigger blocks so memorable. The same is true for the outdoors. Big fish, first birds, a large set of antlers or the quiet observation of something no […]
Our Outdoors: In the Cold
By Nick Simonson The rooster rose from the drain’s snow-filled cattails near my feet and curled out in front of me, banking against the northwest gusts that spurred the addition of new layers which my scattergun snagged on as I attempted to raise it to my shoulder. The slick thumb pad of my second pair of gloves slid across the safety and up the stock as I struggled to get the shotgun in place between my chest and shoulder. I pushed again on the safety and it coldly clanked into the firing position as I found a semblance of my […]
Our Outdoors: The Hottest Stuff on Ice 2019-20
By Nick Simonson Another ice season is upon us, and with the shift to hardwater comes not only the annual tradition of getting out there after walleyes, pike and panfish but also the review of some of the latest innovations in what has become one of fishing’s fastest growing markets. While things have certainly shifted from the scant selection of miniature rods and the loud-running (but nigh indestructible) Jiffy Model 30, which served as the first and only motorized auger for much of the advent of modern ice fishing thirty years ago, each season on the ice tops the last […]
