Tag: hunting

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The Weapon and the Warrior

By Lee Schoenbeck

Pheasant hunters have an odd relationship with their firearms. How they pick them, what they pay, how many they own are just a few of the perspectives that may not make sense to the un-field-tested eye.

The warrior is looking for beauty, for those sleek curves and fine lines that send strong signals of integrity, dependability and fulfillment. The warrior and his weapon are making a lifetime commitment. There may be a few other firearms that catch his eye for a second, but that one — that perfect fit — is going to be reached for every time when he heads to the field for the big dance.

My first shotgun came by happenstance, and the romance is still there 25 years later. Dad didn’t hunt and we didn’t have a shotgun in the house. When I came home from law school, I saw that Grandpa Tony had an old gun that he brought with him when he moved off the farm. It was a Remington Model 25. Remington only made the Model 25 for 5 years, from 1945 to 1950. Like their big brother, the Model 12, they are durable. The Model 25 I got from Grandpa outlived the store (Jeske’s Hardware) and the town (Lily) where he bought it — and it outlived Grandpa. It’s been reblued twice, and has had cases of 2 æ-inch pheasant loads pass through its chamber. It’s a little worse for the wear at the moment, but I’m confident Cliff the local gunsmith can fix that.

Based upon hunter preference, the Remington Model 12, Winchester 870, Benelli Nova, and Browning A-5 (“the humpback”) are America’s shotguns of choice. There are many fancy and more expensive options out there, but the warrior that shows up with one of these is immediately recognized as a dependable hunter. Winchester doesn’t make the Model 12 any more. Some cynics contend that Winchester quit because you couldn’t sell a hunter two of these super durable weapons in a lifetime. In its 89 years of production, Americans bought 2 million of the shotgun known as”the perfect repeater.” The”Humpback” was produced continuously for almost 100 years, beginning in 1889.

I carry my firearm in the field, one-handed, like a pistol, with the trigger finger leveraged against the front of the trigger guard. I don’t hunt with gentlemen. My buddies are about dropping birds on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you need to fumble for the safety, you get to watch somebody else shoot the bird. So for me, I can only shoot a Benelli or a Winchester, as no other manufacturer puts the safety on the front of the trigger guard. That safety location allows the shooter to swing on a flushing bird, while drawing down the weapon, and hitting the safety as the shooting finger comes off the guard and squeezes for the trigger. The whole motion, of course, takes about a second, which is also the difference between birds on the ground and birds flying away on a windy South Dakota afternoon.

Manufacturers have invented new and improved ways to make and market shotguns — the choke is one such feature. If you don’t hunt, then things like chokes mean nothing to you. If you use a Model 12, which is a full choke, you don’t care either. Chokes are tubes that are screwed in the end of the gun, to affect the spread of the shot pattern as the shot leaves the barrel. The fancy options are called”improved” or”modified,” to give a wider pattern spread. The old-timers, shooting dependable weapons like the Model 12, have only one option — the full choke. It delivers a tight pattern. For a blocker, it’s like poking a fly coming at you, with a pencil. But if you learn to drop birds with a full choke, you’ll bring home the birds every time. As for those other choke options, they are designed for the”choke excuse”:”Dang, missed that one ’cause I had the modified in.” Young hunters from the 5-7 zip codes should be raised on a full choke. They will never be confused with”out-of-staters,” and they won’t need to learn the”choke excuse.”

What the warrior will pay for his weapon is another mystery. Go to an auction and watch the crazed warriors bidding on firearms off the flatbed. Afterwards place a call to Vic Carter at Kones Korner, which is like accessing an internet volume of information on firearms options and prices. You’ll soon find that the same weapon was available for 10 or 20% off, but of course Vic’s sales don’t satisfy the same visceral competitiveness that winning the gun at the auction provides.

I own a $5,000 shotgun. It’s obviously not the Model 12 or 25, which go for about $300. It isn’t even one of those fancy Belgium Brownings like my FBI brother-in-law shoots. It’s not an automatic, has no fancy tubes, and it doesn’t make pizzas. No. I got mine at the Webster Museum of Science and Industry benefit auction. For twenty years I have been buying raffle tickets at $20 a pop for guns at banquets to benefit habitat for about everything except ground squirrels — and I have NEVER won the gun. Didn’t win one at DU, Pheasants Forever, Pro Pheasant, Rocky Mountain Elk, or even the greased pig foundation. This spring though, at a museum banquet of all things, I finally won the gun. I figure I’ve got at least $5,000 into that shotgun I finally won, even if Vic said I could buy one new from him for under $300.

The warrior’s weapons case inevitably includes firearms with special significance — real South Dakota family heirlooms — the kind kids fight over when the warrior is gone. We have one such shotgun. When the feds made us give up lead shot for waterfowl, and before the days of 3-inch shells in 12 gauges, there was the 10 gauge. The 10 gauge has about the same amount of iron in it as the cavalry cannon pieces at Fort Sisseton, but without the carriage and wheels. It was a goose hunter’s signature weapon. Today there are fancier and more mobile firearms to bring down the now common Giant Canadian, but in 1987, when the feds took away our lead, the 10 gauge was king.

At our wedding rehearsal dinner in Kranzburg that year, the gift my bride gave this warrior was a Zabala double barrel side-by-side 10 gauge. The thing shoots shells the size of small mortars. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger was carrying one of them in one of his army movies. But the treasure of this weapon came in the presentation. In front of all of my family and all of my soon-to-be family, my wife presents this broken (as in not put together) shotgun. The unique feature of my only shotgun, the Model 25, was that it couldn’t be broken down. I had no idea how to connect the pieces standing there at the head table — looked like a Rubik’s Cube to me. My soon-to-be-wife, from a serious pheasant hunting lineage, reached over, took the parts and made them into a gun in about 45 seconds.

I’ve been working to catch up in the warrior category ever since.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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She Shoots Like a Girl

By Bernie Hunhoff

It takes a lot of people to produce and publish South Dakota Magazine, about a dozen to be exact. And we’re proud of every one of them — both for what they do during work hours here at 410 E. Third Street, and also for all they do after hours.

Our staff includes two yoga instructors, a marathon runner, several great chefs, a hockey mom, a Girl Scout leader, etc. They are also dedicated community volunteers, super moms and dads, and all their children are above average. You get the point.

But we have only one deer hunter. That would be Jana Jonas Lane, a mostly-quiet and reserved young lady who runs our circulation department. If you get the magazine by mail (as most of our readers do) then you can thank her, because she manages our 43,000-name mailing list.

Jana and her husband Jim have two young daughters, so you can imagine how busy she is. She occasionally likes to do a little hunting, but Jim teases that she “shoots like a girl.” He hasn’t said that for a week now.

The story goes like this. All the local hunters east of Yankton have been watching and waiting for a big 5-point buck that appeared on game cams in the Jim River valley over the summer. The whitetail was very cagey, and wasn’t often spotted in daylight.

On opening weekend of the East River season, Jana spent a few Saturday hours in the cold and howling wind, wondering why she wasn’t indoors with her two little girls, Rain and Rose. She saw a few does and a big buck with a broken antler, but eventually she went home to warm up.

Sunday dawned with a shining, warm sun. The wind was down and pheasants were cackling. Geese were flying overhead. “It’s amazing what sunshine will do for the soul after a cloudy day,” she said. “I saw a couple of does pass through our CRP and I looked over and saw a really nice buck as he was headed into a tree line.” It was the big Jim River buck!

She says her heart started racing, and she told herself to relax and be ready. Minutes passed but he didn’t reappear. Meanwhile, a second buck walked by. It stopped to watch something. Then a doe appeared and crawled through the fence between a pasture and trees. The second buck chased after her.

Jana heard crashing sounds and saw a blur of motion in the switch grass and big blue stem. Eventually, the big buck appeared. He paused about 150 yards in front of her.

Then a young buck came along. It looked at Jana and slowly walked into the trees. A fourth buck came along, chasing after a doe, and they disappeared into the tree line.

Jana took aim at the 5-pointer, through the scope of her .308 Remington, and fired. Just like a girl. She got the Jim River buck.

She’s not a braggart, but nothing’s stopping the rest of us from telling everyone we can.

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Thanksgiving Day

By Rebecca Johnson

“It will be just like hiking,” my husband said, promising the beauty of nature all around us. My parents live close to Marindahl Lake near Volin and Jeremy thought walking some of its 634 acres of game production area would be a great activity before Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, he also hoped to shoot a deer.

I don’t usually tag along for this type of thing. I have terrible fall allergies so traipsing through autumn fields can be miserable and I’ve often felt conflicted about hunting. Many of my family members hunt and I support their right to do so. But I am a yoga teacher and an important part of yogic philosophy involves practicing ahimsa. It’s a Sanskrit word meaning nonviolence and loving kindness to all living things. I am fairly certain that hunting — or even meat eating — and ahimsa don’t mix well.

That being said, I’m not a vegetarian. I tried it for a few years in college, much to the dismay and confusion of my family. Grandma was certain vegetarians ate chicken. And when Grandpa grilled steaks he intentionally dripped blood onto my black bean burger. I don’t know if their cajoling changed me back, or if I just missed eating meat. But now I try my best to eat humanely raised animals like grass fed beef or cage-free chicken. I like to think that pheasants or deer procured from the natural fields and brush of South Dakota at least have a pretty good life before they meet their demise. With this rationale in mind, I agreed to bundle up and tag along.

The walk started easily enough. We stomped through tall grass as I whispered commentary about the scenery. Jeremy has often talked fondly about the idea of hosting a husband and wife hunting show. I used this opportunity to practice possible banter as we climbed up and down hills. I got a little quieter when we approached a large patch of sumac and brush. It took some concentration to squeeze through without getting poked in the eyes or slapped in the face with branches — and I didn’t even complain. But I did imagine accepting”Wife of the Year” award while I belly crawled under a large span of evergreen trees.

There were no deer in sight on that crisp morning and no fires were shot. Jeremy was a touch disappointed as we hiked back to the truck but I was relieved. I don’t think we could have maneuvered one out of the bracken if we wanted to and it would have made us late for Thanksgiving dinner.

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Hunting’s Odd Couple

By Lee Schoenbeck

“Welcome Hunters, and Your Owners Too” the local vet’s marquee announced. If you are a hunter with hunting dogs, then you appreciate the reality that you feed them for ten months so you can play with them for two. But if you have ever been along on a pheasant hunt, you know that it’s the dog that makes the deal. No matter the claims made to fame, it’s not the warrior, it’s not his weapon, it’s his hunting dog that makes a good South Dakota pheasant hunt happen.

The requirements placed on a hunting dog, to be successful, is more than a little unusual. To fully appreciate it, get down on all fours. Not on your living room carpet, but in the nearest corn stubble field or slough. Now put your nose on the ground and run hard for ten yards, or until your nose falls off, whichever occurs first. Yet a good hunting dog will do that drill all day long, no matter what the weather. While you have your face down in that field, notice all the smells. A good hunting dog ignores the rabbits, the deer and whatever the cattle left, to focus on the apparently unique subtle scent of the wily ringneck. This hunting dog gig is no small feat.

At the other end of the equation, ask the hunter about his hunting dog and you will be surprised to learn how many South Dakota hunting dogs purport to speak the Queen’s English. The later in the evening you ask, at one of the local watering holes in Oacoma or Gregory or Gettysburg, the likelihood the hunter’s dog will be reported as capable of performing higher math increases exponentially.

Seriously, here are a few pointers if you are inclined to join the ranks of hunters with hunting dogs.

Don’t buy your dog on a whim at a DU banquet after too much refreshment. Owning and training a dog is no prefab program — it takes commitment.

Don’t overfeed your dog. The two cups a day of quality food is really all your dog needs, and your dog will hunt better and live healthier if you stick to recommended rations — even as small as they seem compared to the size of your dog.

Feed your dog a good brand of food. There is a direct relationship between the amount of cleaning you will do in the kennel, and the quality the food your dog consumes. It doesn’t need to be a designer brand, but a good one. I’m not sure if Bernie allows for commercial product placement plugs here — but if diamonds were good enough for your wife, then Diamond may be a good choice for your dog.

Control and training is everything in the hunter / dog relationship. If you have a hunter acquaintance that you never want to see again, take an untrained dog and a really loud whistle along on your next hunt with him. On the other hand, if you want to see your Facebook friend requests quadruple — train your dog. A good rule of thumb is ten minutes a day, twice a day, every day. For a half century the best books on dog training, they could be called Dog Training for Dummies, are those written by Richard Wolters in the 1960s — try Game Dog for starters.

Nothing wrong with a spare. My hunting buddy of many years lost his dog the week before”the opener” and moped through the fall dogless — half a hunting team — a shadow of his former self. The next year, I bought and trained a second dog. Who wants to be that poor dogless hunter schmuck? A few years later we relocated, and a new hunting buddy had three dogs. If two’s good, who am I to argue with three? Life doesn’t get much better than working birds over three dogs in heavy cover, and they never make you be a blocker (the guys that people are shooting towards).

Pick a breed that fits your hunting environment. If you pick up a Pheasants Forever magazine, you will see many articles promoting the attributes of dogs that have no apparent ability to survive hunting in sub-zero weather or snow over two feet deep. These are pretty dogs; they just aren’t South Dakota hunting dogs. The most versatile and practical hunting dog to own in the pheasant capitol of the world is a Labrador retriever. They can hunt in wind chills of 50 below (maybe more, but that’s the limit this hunter has tested), live in outdoor kennels year round, and love you like the woman of your dreams (that would be you, honey, if you happen to be reading this).

The relationship between a hunter and his dog is a special one. Taking a break on a sunny afternoon hunt, lying on a South Dakota hillside, with your best dog’s head resting on your lap, is about as peaceful as it gets. Dogs have a funny way about them. If you’re their hunter, they love you. They own you, they make you feed them and walk them twice a day, but for that you get unconditional love. The part about making you look good in the field is just an incidental benefit that man’s best friend provides for the hunter he owns.

Lee Schoenbeck resides near Watertown with his wife Donna, two of their four children and four dogs. He is certified as a Civil Trial Specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. His website is www.schoenbecklaw.com.

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S.D.’s High Holiday

Pheasant Season Opener is a family event in South Dakota

By Lee Schoenbeck

As I write this it is the night before the South Dakota High Holiday, the Friday before the third Saturday in October, and my friend Bernie Hunhoff just called to ask if I would write a column on the outdoors for the on-line version of South Dakota Magazine. On Pheasant Opener Eve, who could resist?

Next to Christmas, there really is no other time in South Dakota that screams FAMILY like”the opener”. If you’re a 57 zip code, or used to be, or want to be, you don’t even need to use an adjective for people to know that”the opener” is that special event on the third Saturday of October when over 100,000″out-of-staters” join over 75,000 South Dakotans in our native ritual of the pheasant hunt.

Thursday night as I was impatiently waiting with my 16 year old in line to get his hunting license before the weekend onslaught of out-of-staters, I listened to a gentleman ahead of me getting his license. No matter how the clerk asked for information, each answer included the fact that he may not be living here any more, but that he was a South Dakotan. It was a little annoying at first, but as I listened you could tell there was a story there he wanted to share. He had sold his farm near Huron the year before and had moved elsewhere to be near children and grandchildren. It soon became clear that the other out-of-staters straggling near him were his sons from Connecticut and Chicago. This was a story happening a thousand times over across South Dakota during our High Holiday, a family united afield back in their native South Dakota.

I have to admit that while I thought it was kind of neat, I was still annoyed with two trips back and forth to town to get the gear it takes to outfit a sprouting 16-year-old for the weekend hunt. At 16, fashion matters, hand me downs — even afield — don’t cut it. I’ve done this with sons and daughters, same deal either way. Finally, after 10 gallons of case and all my after work daylight was burnt, I had a son properly licensed and outfitted for the weekend hunt.

The next morning I happened to read the latest Ike’s issue and caught some perspective on all this preparation. It turns out that 92% of youth that enjoy the outdoor hunting experience come from a family that hunts. Meaning the majority of children that will be a part of carrying on our state’s outdoor legacy will be those whose parents made the effort at some point to make the High Holiday a family experience. That former Huron farmer pushing his eighth decade was still enjoying the fruits of some time spent with his sons years ago, getting them outfitted, getting them afield and making sure they had an experience that made them want to come back for many more years together.

Besides the family bonding opportunity our High Holiday presents, those who hunt also leave a substantial legacy for the rest of their communities. The federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment and ammunition provide more than 75% of the total funding of many wildlife agencies in America. Those dollars support habitat development, clean water, and the creation of outdoor opportunities of all stripes.

This year the rooster roundup continues until January 1st. If it sounds like taking a youngster out in the field safely with a loaded firearm for a several mile walk might be a little inconvenient — it is. Like a lot of what’s involved in raising children, there’s sacrifice. But I have yet to hear a mother endure the unbelievable pains of labor and express regret about the fruits the experience.

So when you get the chance, grab a son or daughter and be a part of something special for today — and for the future — out on the land here at home in South Dakota.

EDITOR’S NOTE: See more photos of the 2011 Pheasant Opener in our gallery.