Hunting Archives - Hunt Southwest Minnesota

Our Outdoors: Stronger Suggestions

Our Outdoors: Stronger Suggestions
By Nick Simonson

There comes a day in every August where the shift to fall is heavily hinted at. Some years, it’s the chill in the night breeze as the boat comes up the launch after a humid evening of walleye fishing that implies autumn is on the way. In others, it seems as if the foliage on the trees and sumac is turning just the slightest hint of red and yellow along the post-weekend drive back home from the lake. This year, the dark brown and crunchy cottonwood leaves beneath my feet on the running trail and the cold steel rain the following morning with temperatures not much above 65 for the day were the sign. After this, beyond the boxes checked on the calendar, fall will bring its stronger suggestions and it is best to get ready for what’s to come.
Long walks through the hills for sharptails from slightly after dawn until the mid-morning air and the exertion up and down the grassy slopes will combine to make things just hot enough to break a sweat under my long-sleeved tee and hunting vest and be a confirmation that the season has arrived. So too will the still sunrises on stand overlooking the clover field tucked in the turns of the small river where does and fawns cautiously make their way past my perch. In that instance, fall will increase my heart rate while doing almost nothing at all, as the surge of endorphins from seeing a buck – whether it’s 10 or 100 yards away – will turn my legs to jelly and send shudders of adrenaline through my torso, radiating out through my shoulders and arms, making the idea of drawing back and holding seem like a challenge.
Between the first days of the archery season and the advancement of autumn across the region, the trip to the stand will turn from a quiet, easy one to a winding and wary one as those leaves from the tall cottonwood, elm and oak trees around the creek bottom carpet the ground, creating land mines of loudness avoided with each footstep along the trail. With the later sunrise, the glow of my headlamp will likely provide the ghostly illumination needed to make my way out to the position with as little noise as possible before the hunting day begins.
Whether the season is unusually cool or above average when it comes to temperature, other treks will suggest the onset of autumn. Strolls through the winding logging trails of the north woods for the hopeful shot at a flushing ruffed grouse in late September, as the cracking of timber and rattling of brush beneath the bounds of my lab signal a hot trail, remain a solid indication of the season settling in. Then pheasant opener will arrive in early October, providing three weeks or so before things trend seriously colder and the deer firearms opener comes in November. With it often comes the suggestion of chilly conditions, snow, and the next phase of the calendar; or as it was in the case of last season, nearly a winter’s worth of the white stuff in the first week and an early start to that long slog through the cold.
You may have felt it in the past few days, noticing certain birds grouping up, small grains coming down, or a change in the weather or the way the stars in the sky have shifted in your early morning walks with the dog. The subtle signs that fall is on the way are all around us, and those more tangible ones will follow quickly behind them. Whatever memories of autumns and hunting seasons from the past further cement this shift, and whatever hopes of adventure fueled by preparation, skill, and a little luck propel your excitement for the season to come, it’s time to get ready for fall…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: Developing a Pattern

Our Outdoors: Developing a Pattern
By Nick Simonson

Computer-drafted patterning targets can be produced at a local print shop for your use, or simply draw a 30-inch circle on a large piece of packing paper and hang it at your local gun range to start the patterning process. Simonson Image.

With the first hunting seasons right around the corner, and a busy summer still in full swing headed for a collision course with autumn and all it brings, it’s tough to cram in all the things you want to do and have to do to get ready for those cool weather adventures in the outdoors. However, it’s easy to make the technical preparedness required ahead of the cool-weather shotgun seasons more fun, and in the process figure out just how your particular firearm is setting up for opening day for your favorite upland or waterfowl species.

Smack the Black
The first step in getting ready for fall hunting seasons is to pattern a shotgun and the load or loads you’ll be using. If you’ve stuck with the same pairings year-in-and-year-out, it’s likely that only a handful of shells are necessary to figure out just where your firearm is putting its pellets. However, if you’ve recently changed guns or upgraded to a new model, some time in front of the patterning board is a necessity, and the same holds true if you’re trying out the latest pheasant or goose-specific shells on the market.
Make it a point to see where those pellets are falling by hanging a large target – even just a big piece of paper with a circle on it – at your gun range’s patterning board, which often consists of classic black rubber matting hung between two posts with a solid wood-and-earth backstop behind it. A 30-inch circle with a visible target in the middle will help you set up your shot and provide reliable feedback for each shell used. You can purchase custom patterning prints or simply draw the center mark yourself on paper with a bright marker so it can be easily seen from 50 yards away or utilize stick-on rifle targets in the middle of the 30-inch circle.

Make the Moves
With the target or targets hung in place, fire one shell of the chosen load at each one from the varying distances you most often encounter birds. For close-flushing species like ruffed grouse, check the pattern at 10, 20 and 30 yards. For mid-range upland game like pheasants and sharptailed grouse, 20, 30 and 40 yards will suffice. Birds encountered at longer ranges, such as ducks and geese, might stretch the distance to 50 yards for patterns.
After the shot, open the breach of your gun and set it in a secure area, check to see the range is clear, and go down and inspect the target with a pen or marker in hand. For each pellet hole in the circle, mark it with a slash of ink and start tallying how many hit within the designated area. The total will give you an idea of how many pellets stayed in the pattern, and how many strayed. You can get a general idea of how many pellets are in each shell by looking up the load information on your particular load, or by using a general guide as to what standard shotgun shells contain for pellets per ounce. Divide the number of hits marked by the estimated total of pellets to get a relative understanding of the effectiveness of your gun, the load, and the choke being used.

Choose the Choke
If you find that the pattern is too tight or not tight enough, you can adjust the choke being used to either loosen or tighten the pellet cloud for your pursuit. Once a new choke is placed in the gun, repeat the process at varying distances to see how it impacts the spread of the pellets. For a side-by-side or over-under shotgun, you’ll have to repeat the process for both barrels to get a good understanding of how each one discharges. Typically, the first barrel fired has a tighter choke, and the second barrel is more open for a second shot at a bird that is moving away from you.
From there, transition to live-action options to see how effective your setup is. Utilize stations at sporting clay fields to simulate those flushes and incoming birds you most often encounter, or try trap from the various yardages to employ your chosen combination and see how it works as targets are launched. Not only does this put the finishing touches on the patterning process, it also provides some engaging ways to simulate those field experiences and build confidence that your gun is ready to go for the season.
In total, the patterning process of putting pellets on a target, adjusting the ranges at which each count is made to match your normal fall pursuits, and finishing things off with some confidence-boosting live action shooting will pay off with more success in the field. Take an afternoon in the back half of August to be certain you’re ready for all the adventure that is to come in September, October and the months that follow…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: Fly Fishing Not All About Trout

Our Outdoors: Fly Fishing Not All About Trout
By Nick Simonson

Crappies will take to flashy woolly buggers on the fly rod and make a great warm-water target. Simonson Photo.

With the heat of summer finally settling into the region, those cold-water loving trout which were stocked in area lakes and reservoirs are seeking out the depths, and aside from some cooler hours in the morning and evening, are a bit tougher to target on the fly rod and likely will remain that way until early fall. Luckily, around the upper Midwest, there are plenty of other fish to take their place on the long rod and many ways to catch them. What follows are five warm water species to take on with a fly box in tow, hone those fly fishing skills and have a blast all summer long, until things cool down in autumn and trout rise back up into the shallows.

Panfish Plan
No summer would be complete without a warm afternoon in the shallows chasing bluegills, and these feisty panfish give every fly angler a reward for their cast, whether curled tight and well-practiced, or a little shaky when just starting out. Work the inside edge of weedlines, especially those in shallow bays or along warm sandy beaches that can easily be waded, or cast parallel to them from a boat on the outer edge. Watch for rising fish that are snapping at whatever’s hatching, but don’t be worried about matching those little bugs. Bluegills will take all sorts of flies from complex dries to basic nymphs to simple foam bugs, but favorites include beetles and rubber-legged spider patterns.

Brown Bombers
For a summertime fight, nothing puts forth its best effort like a smallmouth bass; now double that intensity level if they’ve been hooked on the fly rod. Their acrobatic leaps and hard runs after splashdown will test drag and line management and teach the art of bowing – that is, lowering the tip of the rod to a jumping fish – to prevent them from slingshotting the hook loose from their jaws. While most active in the early morning and late evening light on shallow rock bars, gravel shoals and sandy stretches of the lakes and streams where they reside, these brown bass can be encountered any time of day along these structures and others. Offer up large baitfish patterns that can be ripped past them and trigger a reaction strike, like Lefty’s Deceiver or toss a crayfish-colored Clouser minnow out there and bump it along the bottom for a solid take.

Specks of Summer
In a lake loaded with crappies, those low light conditions at the end of the day are the best bet for hooking a series of slabs on the fly rod. During the day though, crappies can be found along weed edges and may require a sinking style line, such as a Type III, to get down to them. With their quick inhale of any fly, slabs can test the focus of even the most attentive fly angler, so watch that line carefully for a slight twitch or jump to signal a take by a crappie on the feed. As night approaches, look for crappies to rise in the column – sometimes to just below the surface – to snack on whatever imitation you have to throw at them. Anything that looks like a minnow will work, including Clousers, white, silver, or other flashy woolly buggers, and even crazy Charlie streamers.

White Lightning
A school of white bass is a summertime treasure as these silver-sided fish swarm and smash just about anything pulled in their direction. Look for splashing along the surface for active fish and get as close as possible without spooking the school. Drop a cast just beyond the group and strip a streamer of any sort directly through them – but hold on! The jarring take from a white bass can rip a five-weight from even the tightest grip. With their sprints and circular runs, white bass will put it to any angler’s drag and help teach a whole new level of line management. Look for those lakes where current year classes are topping 15 inches for some of the most exciting and consistent adventures with the fly rod. Bucktail streamers like the Thunder Creek work well when white bass are up top, and any pattern with a little weight to it, like the Half-and-Half will get down to a school when they’re feeding deeper.

Rough ‘Em Up
Carp get a bad rap among anglers until they hook one on the fly rod. Then it’s fifteen minutes of a doubled-over five weight trying to steer thirty inches of scales and stink into the shallows for a slimy photo opportunity, grinning ear-to-ear with a bested “golden bonefish.” Where these rough fish abound, so do some of the most exciting and prolonged flyfishing events of the summer. Look for carp that are slurping the surface and lay out a cast and get ready for a fun fight on the fly rod but be sure to keep your distance to avoid spooking them. Offer up small nymph patterns or woolly buggers to connect, and in those areas where mulberries make their way into the water along the shore at midsummer, add a few purple foam patterns to the fly box to tangle with the region’s swimming garbage can that’ll eat just about anything from top to bottom in the water column.

Just because you don’t have a mountain stream nearby, and the region’s stocked trout have taken to the depths, doesn’t mean fly fishing season is over. Use the options around you to sharpen those skills – whether newly-acquired or long-held – and heat things up with these great warm water species to catch on the fly…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: Weighty Matters

Our Outdoors: Weighty Matters
By Nick Simonson

Like a Rock. The author’s lab had a notable weight increase after a weather-shortened hunting season last autumn, where pursuit of grouse and pheasants and the effort required (along with calorie burn) was limited. Simonson Photo.

I crossed the finish line inside the Fargodome a few weeks back at the start of the first nice day this non-winter season conveniently had offered up and checked the exercise app on my watch which was tracking my effort. 1:41:33 it read as I clicked the End button on the display. If correct, I bested my half marathon time by over four minutes. The next day I checked the official results on my phone and it displayed a time of 1:41:26 which worked out to a pace of 7’45” per mile; not too shabby for a flat-footed 44-year-old who weighed nearly 250 pounds in his junior year of high school. When asked why I run and work out with a heightened level of diligence here in middle age and now 70 pounds lighter, I often cite back to those days as one of the primary reasons.
Just prior to the weekend’s running festivities, I led my yellow lab to the black matted scale at the veterinarian’s office to get his annual shots so he’d be able to visit the boarding facility once again and maintain his overall health for the upcoming fall hunting season, avoiding summer nasties like heartworm carried by mosquitoes and tick-borne illnesses. Ole is a large creature, and he’s been that way from birth, able to rumble through cattail sloughs carving a walking path at least big enough for me, and sometimes even another hunter. By the time he was two years old, he had settled into that 100-to-105-pound range, so it’s never a shock to see triple digits show up on the LCD display at the vet.
While it’s a trite excuse to say Ole is big-boned, he truly is. He’s also quite muscular, but has a notable layer of fat as well, and if there were a dog fashion runway, he’d likely be the king of the plus-sized models – still good looking, but noticeably bigger than his contemporaries. So, when the display bounced from the upper teens, then into the low twenties and finally settled back down onto an even 120 pounds as he plopped his behind down on the scale, even I gasped audibly. He was up 13 pounds since the prior spring, and I struggled to come up with an explanation.
With my wife’s German shepherd, we walk five times a day religiously, covering the block with such regularity that I consider us to be the neighborhood watch. We know every pheasant call, from the raspy one on the far side of the draw to that dominant one of the big, backyard-safe bird which patrols the lawns on the east side of the street. My dog’s bluffed charge frequently sends that rooster with what looks to be a 28-inch tail feather back down into the small drain at the end of his suburban domain, no matter how distant we are from him. As the saying goes, birds don’t get that big by being stupid; but apparently all the walking wasn’t stopping my dog’s size increase.
In the morning, when the two dogs are eating after our first walk of the day, they like to trade bowls repeatedly. The shepherd is particular and waits until Ole has first eaten some kibble before she nudges him out of the way, and he goes to the other bowl. I don’t know if she’s having him check it for poison, like I often do with my kids’ chicken nuggets, but it’s obvious that Ole doesn’t mind being the guinea pig for the day’s feeding if he gets a few extra bites. The extra caloric intake settled in my mind as a likely source of my lab’s weight gain, but there was certainly another one.
Following a 20-inch snowfall the first week in November and a few follow-up weather events, which basically shut down much of our hunting efforts until a few perilous cross-state journeys to less-covered lands, our outings in the field were limited to early season trips for grouse and pheasants in September and October respectively. Where we would normally hunt at least one weekend day until the upland season’s end on the first Sunday in January, we didn’t after the snow fell.
In those treks, we typically cover miles and miles and miles of terrain. We hunt hard. Up hills, through brush, and deep into tangled sloughs. Like me, Ole doesn’t fear the sweat equity that comes with going to those places birds tend to be, plowing through hell to find upland heaven. It’s on those journeys that we use up our extra calories, where every mile of blacktop under my running shoes from the summer and under his polar-bear-sized paws in each daily walk pays off, especially in the late season when snow often mandates the additional physical effort. We’re always ready for it. But when nature takes away half or almost two-thirds of that season, it’s easy to see the results of a more sedentary lifestyle, comparatively speaking.
So with the vet’s advice of a more monitored feeding program, and the hopes of a longer upland season than the previous one, we enter the summer, with me looking to maintain my pace and weight from a winter of monotonous treadmill running into a summer out in the open, and Ole looking forward to a a seasonal slimdown, chasing bird dummies in the backyard and shedding a couple extra pounds ahead of a long autumn afield. Through that combination we both hope to find a balance, and put to rest these weighty issues next fall…in our outdoors.