Grouse Hollow Journal for November 1, 2012 by Greg Koelker
TGIF! Thank goodness it's Friday! It's casual Friday! Freaky Friday! Have a funky Friday! Heck, yeah! It's Friday! Enjoy your Friday! Woo hoo! It's Friday! It's Friday; I'm prepared, are you? It's finally Friday! Okay, okay, enough Friday joy, but I had last Friday off, so . . . after some morning coffee and a quick look through the paper, El and I and Scout loaded up the truck and drove into the sun on our way to Westby for breakfast at Borgens Cafe. We visited over coffee with our waitress, Mary who was incredibly cheerful and friendly for that time of the morning. We had the breakfast special: eggs any way you want 'em, toast or English muffin, hashbrowns, and bacon or sausage. El had toast and bacon, while I had an English muffin and sausage patties. Good stuff. El wrapped part of her bacon up in a napkin for treats for our unhappy friend back in the truck.
From there we drove up Highway 27 to County P and through hills and coulees to the Kickapoo Reserve Visitor Center. There were groups of children and adults in the classroom and others chatting outside, getting ready for what I would guess was a nature hike. We had a short visit with another incredibly friendly person at the counter to get a set of pheasant stamps just in case some pheasant or other that Scout flushed would blunder in front of my Browning .12 gauge long enough for me to shoot. She said there were lots of birds out there today. The DNR stocks the reserve with pen raised pheasant on a regular basis, and there were empty pheasant cages outside the building, so you'd think that things were looking pretty good.
We drove west on P back to a couple of areas that didn't appear to have many hunters in them when we passed them on our way in. We were getting our hunting boots on at the back of the pickup that was parked alongside a picked corn field when a man and woman with two dark brown pointers wearing orange protective vests came down one of the cutover paths towards us. Scout wanted to go make friends, but she obeyed and stayed with us. Shortly, we were hunting.
Scout busted brush and El and I followed through the thick stuff that separates the marsh and river from a long field of corn stubble. I had my over-under shotgun and El had her camera. Scout is no dummy; if we walked in the cornfield - for the easier going, so did she unless something attracted her back into the thickets. We trudged through willows and over downed box elder trunks. Near the end of the field, Scout took a dip in the river. I saw it coming as she found a spot that wasn't too steep and over she went into cold, chest deep (for her) water. She splashed about a bit and took a long drink and was back on the hunt. We didn't see any birds. At the end of this walk we crossed the road and walked deep into a field of unpicked corn. There was a row wide enough for El and I to walk through and Scout, AKA corn dog, had a ball racing up the rows and noisily circling around us. One time Ellen remarked, "It sounds like the army coming." I was thinking more like a herd of buffalo, but you get the idea. We must have covered well over a quarter of a mile in that corn, but no birds flew. The weed growth underneath is so thick that I don't think a pheasant could have run ahead of us, but who knows. Back at the pickup, I poured water out of a milk jug for a very thirsty dog who prefers to lap at the water as it pours out of the bottle over lapping it up from a bowl.
We eventually tried another spot on the far eastern end of the reserve that Scout and I have hunted before and flushed a couple birds. Ellen got some nice video of me and Scout hunting the edge of another picked cornfield, but no birds wanted to star in the film I guess. Scout did do what most dogs will do when presented with the opportunity; she rolled in some nasty stuff, a pile of fairly green deer manure left by a whitetail with stomach issues. Scout managed to get the buckles of her collar packed with the stuff. Usually, one hears some shooting at the preserve, but we never heard a shot from anyone by us this day. Perhaps the birds took advantage of the huge unpicked cornfields to feed and hide in by the time we got out there.
Anyway, on the way home we stopped at the Valley Market in Coon Valley to see if they might have any hickory nuts for sale. Ellen wants to make a hickory nut cake for a friend and our hickory trees didn't make any or at least very few nuts this year. Anyway, the market had all kinds of nuts for sale, but not hickory nuts. They also have row upon row of great stuff like milk chocolate covered cherries, and homemade jams and jellies, and - well, I could have spent a couple hundred bucks there on treats and such. Anyway, if you or someone you know has some hickory nuts for sale, call us or drop us a line.
Back at the ranch, we took advantage of the beautiful day and rode the four-wheeler loaded with a chain saw up the ridge to clear a path. El summed it up by saying the ride was definitely "refreshing." I thought it was doggoned cold myself. Anyway, after moving the downed elm, I felt that the saw was working so well, I decided to clear up another path along the bottom of the hill. The multiflora rose is getting so bad. We cut overhanging tree tops, some dead trees, and multiflora rose from the path and cleared an opening through the fence in the middle of the woods before heading home. On the way in, I said over my shoulder to my better-half, "This was kind of fun." Ellen agreed and said something about clearing up some more trails and woods. To quote my soul buddy Dagwood Bumstead in the funny papers, "Oh my. That took a nasty little turn." (On Saturday morning, I drove back down that path with the Ford and the brush hog to really spruce things up.)
El was fixing me a sandwich when our young friend Eli Jackson pulled in from hunting all morning. He said he had gotten pretty cold, but that he had seen a "wallhanger." It ran past him and stopped too far away. He got it to respond to a grunt call, but then it absconded. He was pretty pumped about being that close to a big critter. Eli had picked up some of his deer cam cards and we loaded them up on the computer. He has some fun video of a small buck standing on its back legs to work a mock scrape near what we call the Christmas Tree plot. While we were checking out the pictures, El thin sliced some grilled, bacon wrapped venison chops and warmed them up in a frying pan, sliced some French bread and toasted it, and then served the meat with cheddar cheese melting over it with some 57 Sauce on the side. Um,um; it don't git no better.
That afternoon, I took my time getting up to take a stand in the Grouse Hollow. My tree stand there is broken down from a fallen oak tree, so I sat on a chair in a blow down brush pile. Around 5:30 I saw that little buck meandering his way up out of the woods. I got a little excited. If there is one . . . anyway, it walked along the ridge above me, taking its time to check the wind and browse a bit before it disappeared through the gate. I was about to try to stalk up near where it had been when I noticed a doe just twenty yards from me, browsing her way through the pasture. She eventually got too far away, so I got out my camera and video taped her until she jumped the fence into the hayfield beyond. Then I moved. I had gone maybe fifteen yards and was about to take a step when another doe came running through the field and jumped the fence right in front of me and stopped close enough for an easy shot. I had my bow up starting to draw back when I realized that it was looking back over its body at something chasing her. It clicked that that something was most likely a love struck buck, so I waited. The doe finally looked at me and then back again and started walking away. It finally flipped its tail and took off into the woods down the hollow. I heard it blow a warning once. No buck ever appeared - rats. I called it quits after that and headed in. No deer tagged but great excitement and fun. Ya gotta like it.
We ended the day with football on the radio and hors d'oeuvres and cocktails and a nap on the couch. Now that's what I call a good Friday.
Until next time, get out - On Sunday evening, Ellen and I and our friend Jane Downs were enjoying cocktails by a bonfire, when Eli called from up on the ridge. He was pretty pumped up; He said he just stuck a big ten-pointer from his tent by the downed barn. He had two decoys out and the buck came in before 6:00. When Eli left the tent to walk to his truck, he saw seven other deer in the fields. El and a buddy of Eli's are going to go tracking in the morning. More on this next week. This is pretty anti-climatic, but I still haven't tried to hunt a wild turkey this fall; Ellen has a gift certificate good for a free preparation and smoking of a turkey at a Holmen Meat locker - so . . . so much to do, so little time. . .Enjoy.
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