Grouse Hollow Journal for November 6, 2014

Grouse Hollow Journal for November 6, 2014 by Greg Koelker

“Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. ~ Carol Bishop Hipps.

Oh October, where have you gone? You slipped off the front of the refrigerator calendar like the wonderful dream you can be on Halloween night. Well it was quite a last week of October anyway.

Tuesday evening we got the good news that Mark and Whitney were back in the states. I also sold my old Ford 8N to Chad Kuhnke on that day. While we were loading it up, he asked if we had bears around here. He said he had just seen one, or at least what he thought was one, run across the road up by the neighbors. We have some trail camera pictures of a bear from last summer, so I guess we do have bears.

I spent one morning and a couple beautiful evenings in tree stands, but saw only squirrels and birds.

On Thursday, Scout, Gregg Sikora, and I motored over to Bell Center to try for a pheasant dinner in the Kickapoo River Wildlife Area. The morning was clear and frosty as we rolled down the Great River Road along the Mississippi and then east over the hills and orchards of Crawford County. Gregg noted that there were no ducks on the river and that there haven't been. The reason most likely was the good weather.

Things were not looking good at the preserve either. There was a Suburban parked where we hoped to hunt and a guy and a dog just coming out of the marshy area to the north. “Nothin', not a rooster crowing, not a shot in the distance this morning,” the man shared with us as he opened the back gate on his SUV and encouraged his reluctant white labrador to jump in. Scout leaned over the tailgate of the Ranger, whining softly, no doubt wanting to make a friend of the panting retriever.

After they left, Scout was so antsy, she almost jumped over the tailgate of the truck, but she waited for me to put the dog ramp in place to get out. (Upon Ellen's suggestion, I made this ramp out of a section of a leftover tree stand ladder to help Scout's aging knees and hips when getting in and out of the Ranger.) Gregg and I pulled on rubber boots to combat the melting frost, and loaded up our shotguns. We decided to head north, opposite from where the other hunter had come from.

This area is dominated by a line of box elder trees with a wide field of long grass and tall weeds punctuated by copses of willows, scrub oak, and other small trees. In the distance one can see unpicked cornfields and a farm. This place just exudes pheasant habitat. Last year Scout put up at least ten birds on one hunt here. We moved out toward the river, Gregg on my left and Scout racing to and fro between us, looking something like a bargain hunter on the day after Thanksgiving that sneaked in a big box store before they opened the doors. Scout bounded about, tail wagging, checking out a thousand scents, sometimes running, sometimes stopping and quivering, crawling into brushy piles, and then racing down a wildlife trail. We called encouragement and kept watch, shotguns at the ready, as we walked toward the river. Half-a-mile down field, Scout got to take a dip and get a drink in the Kickapoo River that ribboned its way through the valley, and we started back along the other side of the field. There were cattails growing in one marshy spot that Gregg and I both thought would be perfect to find a bird in. It wasn't this day; there were no pheasants taken on this trip. It wasn't the dog's fault, I think they just weren't there. Scout and Gregg found what was left of a rooster in one spot, but we never heard a cackle or a shot in the distance from any of the other hunters that were out and about. A quivering Scout drank half-a-pail of water back at the truck, and the men drank hot coffee and ate Ellen's cranberry nut bread and some bear sausage/bacon sticks while we reviewed the hunt. We stopped in Gays Mills at the flower shop to get Ellen some “Happy Hunting Season” flowers and then went up 171 to Sunrise Orchards for apples. We each bought an 18-pound box of number 2 Honey Crisps and they threw in a half-gallon jug of honey crisp cider! You gotta love those end of season sales.

Back along the river, things had changed dramatically, waterfowlwise at least. We were amazed to see raft after raft of ducks now carpeting the river from Ferryville to Stoddard, most likely driven south by the sunrise and impending cold front and winds that rolled in on Friday morning. Gregg said he just might have to go duck hunting when we got back.

Bowhunters Eli and Pat stayed with us on the weekend. Pat got some neat Go Pro footage of several nice bucks, but the best cut was of the coyote he arrowed at 60 paces. On Saturday morning, Eli texted me that he had arrowed a nice buck up on our ridge. The rut is full on. Ellen and I and Pat helped track the deer. While they worked a blood trail, I circled around the hill in search of blood or maybe a body. Ellen called me and said they had the buck near the bottom of the Grouse Hollow. I went back for Pat's truck and drove down to the ranch to get the four-wheeler and trailer. I met Ellen walking in. She showed me a picture of the dandy 9-pointer. The boys were just finishing up the gut job when I got there. After a photo op, they loaded the huge bodied critter into the dump trailer and I attempted to haul it back down the hill. The deer only escaped twice before we decided to drag it down to the trail at the bottom and then reload it for a ride back to the ranch. Congratulations, Eli.

Speaking of getting back, our mountain kids Mark and Whitney made their way home to the US, Colorado, and back home to Wisconsin this last week, traveling some 46 hours in the air and then 16 back east by car to La Crosse. Their route back went something like this: Pokhara, Nepal to Kathmandu to Abu Dhabi in the Arab Emirates, to JFK and La Guardia to Denver to Eagle. On Thursday afternoon they added jogs to Denver for a business meeting, then on to Kearney, Nebraska to home. As far as I know they have no saddle sores, but maybe just a tad of jet lag. They have been on the road since September, staying in Connecticut, Cape Cod, near Machu Picchu in Peru, and then on to Kathmandu, Nepal, where they visited a school and then trekked in the Annapurna Sanctuary. They share with us some of their adventure over chili and drinks Friday night at the Flying Horse (Whitney's parents' place.) According to the atlas, Annapurna is a section of the Himalayas in north-central Nepal that includes 13 mountain peaks as high as 26,545 feet. The area is 34 miles long. Annapurna 1 rises west of the Kali Gandaki Gorge, that is considered to be the Earth's deepest canyon. Annapurna means something like Goddess of Food, and Mark and Whitney assured us that the food was fantastic. They stayed in the city of Pokhara for a few days and hired a car and driver to take them about. Mark - who had been a partner in a transportation business, often driving over the mountains to Denver twice a day - said he would never try to drive in their crazy traffic. Pokhara, a city of just over 250,000, was a little over 4 hours west of Kathmandu. We looked at an aerial view of the city online and you could see the international airport, a large slum, surrounded by an agricultural area full of rice fields, all surrounded by the city itself. Mark said they learned that the fields belong to rural farmers, and that the land is handed down to family through the generations but if there is no issue to inherit the state takes it; many of the poor cannot ever hope to get land or get ahead. The kids volunteered some time at an elementary school for children of the slums. They said the children were very polite and were working hard to learn English and other disciplines to better their families. Mark and Whitney took in a colorful festival that they said was a little like Halloween except the kids would stop you on the street and dance for pennies or just stop you and try to extort money and treats instead of going door to door. While trekking in the mountains, Mark and Whitney stayed in tea houses. Whitney described them as private homes where the entire family was there to prepare your meal and serve you. They had menus to choose from and there were other guests that would gather around the central area to eat. The food was fresh and fantastic. (If you ordered a chicken dish, someone went out back and butchered a chicken.) They took a long (rated 4+ out of 5) whitewater raft trip that was pretty gnarly. Anyway, there is much more to tell, but I wasn't there. For those of you who wonder, this was a part business trip with lots of personal travel for Mark and Whitney. Mark said their car had been parked at the Eagle, Colorado airport for 39 days! They were here for five days before heading back to the mountains of Colorado. They will be writing a travel article for a mountain publication soon, and I'll share the info when I get it.

Until next time, get out - if you haven't been shooting, it would be a good idea as the Big One is only two weeks away. I know that we are going to shoot this week, so there is time for a run to our friend gunsmith, Ron Stokke if we have an emergency. This morning, we have to go out and help Jake Sikora track his deer so I'd better get going. Enjoy.