I have been monitoring a major weather system in the West all week. Snowfall totals have reached 48 inches in Deadwood, South Dakota with winds approaching 70 miles per hour. I can only imagine what that will do to the Big Pond when it hits. Meanwhile, ahead of the storm a stubborn low pressure system is moving out slowly and intensifying on the eastern Great Lakes... just in time to play spoiler for the lake trout season ending weekend. Nor'east winds continue to blow and keep folks off the pond; and, going into the weekend it was apparent I wouldn't be on the water with the forecasted Small Craft Advisories... again. But, today's sea conditions exceeded expectations and we entered a full out gale:
GALE WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 PM CDT THIS EVENING...
.TONIGHT...NE WIND TO 30 KT WITH GUSTS TO 40 KT DECREASING TO 20 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT LATE. RAIN LIKELY EARLY IN THE EVENING. A SLIGHT CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS IN THE EVENING. RAIN IN THE LATE EVENING AND OVERNIGHT. AREAS OF FOG AFTER MIDNIGHT. WAVES 12 TO 16 FT SUBSIDING TO 9 TO 11 FT LATE.
As much as I love them, lake trout just aren't worth losing a life over and the obvious choice was to find alternatives. Fall weather systems like this remind me of a Hemingway short referencing the dreaded "Three Day Blow"... a period of time it takes for the typical Great Lakes fall Nor'easter to clear. Hemingway's story described activities which occurred during a three day blow, most notably woodcock hunting and heavy drinking (surprise). The woodcock hunting I'm down with. But, the heavy drinking... not so much-- although I am enjoying a glass of red wine while the gale force winds deform the walls of the house, changing it's shape ever so slightly shifting and twisting and breathing like a diaphragm.
Hemingway's Three-Day-Blow-migratory-bird-hunting-penalty-kill got me thinking. We have had mostly south winds this fall which have been holding up migratory birds. No real nasty weather yet either. Migration reports from duck hunters across the state have been spotty. Ringbills haven't even come down yet... So, I figure this weather system combined with lower temps will get birds moving south. Then, I remembered a little beaver pond I discovered a decade ago while grouse hunting with my dear and late german shorthair, Boone. This is a little pond on the backside of a great grouse and woodcock covert. And, on occasion, I have been fortunate enough to jump small flocks of black ducks from it. Now black ducks are considered mainly an Atlantic Flyway bird... so to have them here is something special. They're quite rare with only 1000 or so harvested in the state per year. The daily limit is one, testimony of its rarity.
The alarm clock today rang at 4:30 am. It was raining, cold and dark. My father and I filled up with coffee, loaded the guns, hip boots, and a half-dozen hen mallard decoys into the truck and headed out to the beaver pond. We got there just in time, before it got light out. With headlamps, and in the rain, we hoofed into the backwoods beaver pond--a dark, wet hike of 20 minutes to a half hour. We set up and waited. The rain came down. The wind howled. the temperatures hovered just above 40 degrees. We adjusted our blind occasionally but mainly tried to stay still and watch the skies. Grossbeaks, sparrows and various types of woodpeckers began to wake up and fly across the pond. A beaver swam through a squall crossing the pond and disappearing into flooded vegetation. The pond was ringed by beaver highways which could almost pass for downscaled versions of crocodile slides on the Nile. A timber jay playfully flitted from branch to branch near our set up. No ducks. An eagle soared in the distance. Then, a look to the left skies, three Canada Geese quietly flew in the direction of the pond, just above the jackpine and spruce. They checked it out and flew on. And then we waited some more. But no ducks came. It rained. The wind blew fiercely out of the Northeast. We shivered. And that's when we decided to go for a walk through the familiar woods.
We headed southwest from the duck blind, into a stretch of alders between the pond and the jackpine upland. We have shot many grouse and woodcock in there over the last decade. We would walk through the cover this time without a dog. It was different. We were duck hunting today and there was little pressure to bag a grouse. We wanted to warm up. 80 yards into the hike the blood began to circulate. Toes warmed. Fingers warmed. Shivering stopped. Human sensory was returning. Then a woodcock got up. I raised the gun but realized I had No. 2 steel in the chamber. I passed. This would happen two more times walking through the alders. Those three flushes would be our only acquaintance with the woodcock today. This was a covert that would normally produce 20-30 woodcock flushes when the flights were in. Today, only three. No whitewashes marked the forest floor, a typical sign when the woodcock are in. The three birds we saw were most likely locals. The flights haven't started yet. Yellow-rumped warblers were still around and flew from aspens to alders to jackpines--scolding all the time.
We kept walking to complete the loop through the covert which would bring us back to the duck blind. A grouse got up 10 yards in front of me. I tracked it with the 12 gage. I shot it. It fell to the ground dead and flapped its wings uncontrollably--similar to a chicken which has had its head cut off. I recalled a story my father told me when I was younger... his grandfather from the old country raised chickens for the household. One day he asked my father, who was a young boy, to come over here and "watch this". His grandfather laid the chicken on the chopping block, raised his ax, and then proceeded to cut off its head. The chicken then proceeded to run around the yard with no head. I picked the grouse up gently from the forest floor, stroked the feathers smooth and mostly back into place. I admired it. I felt the sharp breastbone. It was a young bird but large. It was a nice bird. The grey phase tail was finished off with a complete black band. I will keep a wing and some of the philoplume located under the tail for fly-tying.
The smell of the spent shell was good. The smell of the yellow and red leaves rotting on the forest floor was good. We carried the grouse and walked on through the woods. We came across fresh moose tracks in the mud. They were very large and we felt hope that the moose were not all gone. There is at least one left and it made us happy. We arrived back at the duck blind near the beaver pond 40 minutes later. No ducks were there. We were warm. Almost sweating. No longer cold. We needed to sit and relax. We looked out upon the beaver pond and relaxed. A small flock of grossbeaks headed toward us from across the pond. I was thrown off by their flight pattern as they darted erratically back and forth like a flock of ducks ready to set down on the decoys. But they were only grossbeaks and I gathered myself. Then moments later in the exact spot in the sky I saw fast wingbeats. Three black ducks riding a tailwind shot down the creek valley. They were well out of range and moving fast. I high-balled on the duck call. They turned. I called again. They went back on course and disappeared over the boreal forest horizon. Maybe they heard the call. Maybe they glanced at the beaver pond. Maybe they even saw the decoys. But, they were gone as fast as they came. We sat and waited. A flock of geese flew over unseen but not unheard. It was a large flock. And loud. Then, there was no more waterfowl. We packed up and left.
On the hike out we found the pruning saw which had fallen out of one of the back packs. We brought this along so we could cut branches in order to build a blind. We were happy to recover it from the trail. The rain stopped. We removed our wet outerwear, started the truck, turned on the heater, and poured coffee from the thermos into our travel cups. We warmed up. Then we headed out and scouted some areas.
The drive back was mostly uneventful. We saw some ruffed grouse along the gravel road picking grit. We stopped at some lakes and rivers but saw no ducks.... just some dressed out spruce grouse someone had left next to one of the boat landing docks. There were no ducks anywhere. The flights had not started yet. The water in all the rivers and beaver ponds was extremely low. We needed the rain today. The cold weather will eventually come. And so will the birds: woodcock, ducks, and snow bunting.
While driving back on the dirt road we groused about the quantity of "for sale" signs. The economy sucks and the county chooses to jack up property taxes to unsustainable levels--forcing many people to abandon their dream cabins in the woods. Our discussion turned especially negative toward the county when we approached a "for sale" sign in front of a rather extravagant lone cabin in the woods perched on a small lake. As we rounded a sharp bend in the gravel road just past it a large animal crossed left to right in front of us. I thought it was a small deer at first. It was tall and grayish brown. Then I realized it might be a small wolf or coyote. It was bigger than a coyote. But, wasn't quite the size of a wolf. Then it stopped just before going into the woods. It stopped dead in its tracks. Still. And turned its head slowly toward us like an owl. Cat eyes stared back at us. Glowing tannish green cat eyes. Its tail was short and black. Its nose was pink. Its face marked with black vertical lines. It had large and staunch hind quarters and was eating well. The cat held its gaze at us through the truck windshield. It stood its ground just 10 yards in front of us holding its pose--as if to say to us "get a good look boys". Then, the Canada Lynx turned its head forward and slowly but deliberately walked into the woods and disappeared. It was the first time I had ever seen an elusive wildcat. And that moment was worth more than any lake trout or black duck this day.
