Five years ago today, my dad’s father, my Grandfather Duane passed after a lengthy illness. His passing affected our family deeply, the tremors of which are still being felt. With his passing, a handful of his favorite hunting implements were transferred to our family and we still use them to this day. I know he would enjoy that fact, and I wanted to share with you a series of adventures some of his gear went on this fall. Enjoy, hold your loved ones close, and leave a legacy worth writing about.
The only thing that beat the mosquitoes in their rush land on any exposed skin was the out-of-season gush of hot, humid air that rushed out of the forest as I stepped out of my dad’s Jeep. In late September, eighty six degrees at ten in the morning is far too hot for Northern Minnesota. I begrudgingly rolled my sleeves down to stave off the mosquitoes and set to pulling equipment out of Jeep while my dad wrangled my mom’s dog, Alex, as she came spilling out into the woods.
With sweat already pooling under my blaze orange ball cap, I shrugged into my worn upland vest and started shoving handfuls of twelve gauge shotgun shells unceremoniously into the zippered pouch. Knowing full well that I had far more shotgun shells than would be required for this expedition, I shifted my attention to the old, weathered case resting on the back seat of the Jeep.
Unzipping the old shotgun sleeve carefully, I extracted my Grandfather’s old shotgun, a Remington Model 31L that he purchased new in 1948, the last year that Remington produced the shotgun before ramping up production of the now ubiquitous Model 870. The old scattergun still retains much of its original sheen, although the word is worn and chipped and there is minor pitting in the bluing on the smooth barrel. My grandfather had been an accomplished woodworker during his life, and you can tell that he had taken some offense to the deeper gouges in the stock and slide, filling them in and re-coating the old walnut parts.
The butt stock wobbles a bit, but not anything to be concerned about on the seven decade old gun, and less than some of the freshly mass-produced models available to the hunter today. Chips in the wood, scratches and pitting on the metal, the Thirty One L has seen better days, but the old girl still runs like she was purchased yesterday. She has a non-removable full choke in her bore, far too tight for the Ruffed Grouse we were attempting to hunt that afternoon, but perfectly suited for the water fowling that Grandpa used to do with us when we were younger.
It would turn out that the tightly patterned choke in the aged shotgun would be of little concern to my dad and I as we tramped through the humid forest. The undergrowth was still so thick and so green that any game that may have been around could sit tight and simply wait for us to pass, and even if a grouse did spook and take off into the trees, we never would have been able to see it. After less than an hour of walking softly through the woods, my dad and I agreed to call it quits and start scouting for places to go duck hunting for the opening weekend coming up the following Saturday.
Dad guided the Jeep through the winding gravel farm roads while I navigated from one public hunting area to the next using an online map. Our little excursion was heavily reminiscent of hunting trips with my dad when I still lived at home. On those trips I almost always sat up front, twisting a Minnesota Outdoor Recreation Atlas around in my hands, guiding our small hunting party while dad drove. Our atlas had gone missing in action after a previous Jeep had been totaled in an accident a year prior, so we were relegated to using an unreliable cell phone as opposed to our trusty hard-copy map.
No matter how well we navigated, or how many Waterfowl Production Areas we scouted, my dad and I saw only a handful of ducks the whole afternoon. We wound our way around the Minnesota countryside, breathing in Farmers’ sweetcorn mulch or the profane smell of murky slough water. Throughout the whole afternoon, we saw nothing of interest and my dad and I agreed we should go scout one final public hunting area.
Situated at the far southern end of Douglas County, Pocket Lake Waterfowl Production Area is nestled next to a well traveled highway to the West and its eponymous lake to the North. We almost always had luck there, whether we were duck or Pheasant hunting. Due to its convenient location, however, opening day was always incredibly busy. It was also one of the only spots we saw multiple ducks at, albeit hanging out in the muddy, depleted slough right up front. Dad and I stomped out through the tall grass with Alex trotting in front of us, nose to the ground. Cresting a ridge, Dad and I were able to see that the other ponds on Pocket Lake WPA were void of ducks. We turned around dejectedly and started scheming for the next weekend on the way home.
The way we had it figured it was simply a matter of getting up early enough. If shooting hours on opening day started at 6:40 AM, it took us roughly an hour to hike in to our preferred spot, get set up, and get situated, and it only took us roughly fifteen minutes to drive to Pocket Lake, but we wanted to beat the other, less motivated hunters, then we would have to leave home at roughly 4:00 AM. My father and I both agreed that this sounded both totally reasonable, and fool proof, as there could not possibly be another set of hunters more motivated than my father, brothers, and I.
As the weekend faded and the workweek began, the unseasonable warmness gave way to an encouraging drop in temperatures. Further scouting with my brother and his new puppy that week yielded promising results. Unlike the previous attempts on the weekend where Pocket Lake showed us only a small handful of ducks, our weeknight trip saw over one hundred ducks flying around Pocket Lake. After stomping around in the cooler evening temperatures, my brother and I reported our findings, reaffirming that Pocket Lake was the answer to our duck hunting needs.
Despite our well-laid plains, the scouting would all be for naught, and an old contingency plan would have to be enacted quickly on opening morning.