Let's Write a Fishing Report

Author’s Note: Out of concern for my personal safety, I feel I must note that none of the following in any way applies to WOJ’s Field Editors.    


     Times are tough, friend. Times are tough. In addition to body parts that protrude, bulge and just generally expand beyond their original limits, my teeth aren’t what they used to be, primarily from years of using them to cut monofilament and squeeze split shot. Once, when I couldn’t find my pocket knife, I even used them to relieve a creek chub of its tail so I could use it for trout bait. So a visit to the dentist was in order, which isn’t all bad, and I’m not talking about the magazine selection. As a rule, dental hygienists are more attractive than, say, mechanics. Mine was very pretty indeed, and such is the male psyche that I tried to chat her up, even with the saliva-sucking machine slushing away in the corner of my mouth.
     “Sho. Come here often?”
     “Yes. I do. I work here.”
     Look up the word “suave” in the dictionary, and there you’ll find a picture of me. I was not to be denied, however, and asked her more questions until in desperation she turned the tables.
     “How about you? Do you have any hobbies?”
     Here I played my trump card. I mean, dental hygienists have to be into dental hygiene, right?
     “Yesh. I love to flosh.”
     (long whistling sound followed by an explosion)
     Well, I was troubled by her reaction for awhile, which tied in to the fact that I had just turned 40. “Maybe I just don’t have it any more,” I thought.  
    “Cheer up,” well-meaning friends said. “They say 40 is the new 30” (By extension, 100 is the new 90. Which I’m guessing isn’t much consolation.)
     I felt better for a little while, but then the mid-life doubts returned.
     “40,” I thought to myself. “I need a new racket. No more slogging away, working for the Man, hoping to drag my tired old bones through life until my pittance of a 401(k) kicks in. What I need is a job that requires a minimum of work for which I am not held personally accountable.”
     My friend, I have achieved Paradise, and you can, too.

Let’s Write a Fishing Report!
     Think about it: What other job has such an array of excuses already built in? “Shoulda been here last week” and “Cold front shut ‘em down” are just two examples. And if someone confronts you about a ruined vacation centered around a fishing report which you’ve written, you can say, “Not that Long Lake. I meant the Long Lake two sections west.” By the time your reader discovers that there is no Long Lake two sections west, you’ll be in a tavern far away, having a burger and a beer. But there are certain truisms that will make your life as a profiler of hotspots much easier. “Fish around green weeds” is a classic that is about as obvious as saying “Target your efforts in water,” but people eat it up anyway. The same goes for, “If you don’t catch anything, keep moving until you find active fish.” This seems self-apparent, but it has proven to be a much better philosophy than its predecessor: “Stay in One Place Until Your Bones Moulder and Yea Even Time Itself Passeth Into Dust.”
     While the above chestnuts will help you in your budding career as an outdoor writer, it would be unethical to write a fishing report without doing actual fieldwork. Fieldwork allows you to keep a finger on the pulse of the Wisconsin outdoors, which is important (in a competitor to WOJ, I once read a report which detailed declining ice conditions on a particular lake. The ice was, in fact, poor. It had been gone for six weeks.) Fieldwork also lets you get out and associate with the “little people” who are your eyes and ears. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re driving through a park in Oshkosh. It’s a nice spring day, and you decide to take a walk along the lakefront. While on your walk you encounter an old man who is sitting on a dock, mumbling. Now, it’s likely that he said, “I think I’ve got the lumbago.” But can you, with absolute certainty, rule out the possibility that he might in fact have said, “I’ve been tearing them up on Winnebago”? No, you cannot. In the report it goes.
The Power of Decimals, and the Devil is in the Details
     Let’s say you’re acquainted with a guy at work who likes to hunt ducks. He’s got a spot on Lake Poygan, and every Monday morning during the waterfowl season he comes in and says, “Got my limit of greenheads again.” What happens after awhile is that you don’t believe him. But it’s different if he says, “Shoulda been out yesterday. I got a greenhead, a widgeon, and two ringnecks.” Variety lends credibility. I don’t know why that is, but it applies to fishing as well. O.K., you’re writing a report about the DePere Dam on the Fox River just below Green Bay. The walleyes there can be truly massive: eight pounds, thirteen pounds, nine hundred pounds, blah, blah, blah. The numbers all sort of run together after awhile, and glaze your readers’ eyes. But if you write, “Eight-year old Kurt Manske of Mishicot caught a 14.3-pound monster below the DePere Dam on a chartreuse Fuzz-E-Grub,” I guarantee that on the weekend all of northeastern Wisconsin will be at the DePere Dam, pitching chartreuse Fuzz-E-Grubs. All of Mishicot will be there, too, and they’ve never even heard of Kurt Manske. What happened? The “point-three” got ‘em.
     In the same manner it’s important to throw in an oddball bait every now and then in order to lend an air of authenticity to your report. Muskie fishermen chuck plugs and bucktails and swimbaits, and everyone knows it. In that light, “Al Hendricks of Boulder Junction caught a 50-inch lunker on a Suick” isn’t news. Al catching the same fish on a teardrop tipped with a waxworm is, and some enterprising writer (me) will make a mint churning out articles with titles like “Fishing’s Frontier: Teardrops for Lockjawed Muskies.”
     Well, grasshopper, I wish you the best of luck with your new career, and maybe I’ll see you on the water. I hear they’ve been tearing them up on Winnebago.

The Way to a Woman’s Heart is Through Her Stomach

     Well, I’ll be honest with you. August is my least-favorite month of the year, and always has been. I detest heat, and where I live most years August is about sweat-soaked clothes and acres of parched lawns, to say nothing of algae blooms on the lakes and low flows on the trout streams. But if there is consolation for me when August does roll around, it’s that following it are the cool days of autumn. And autumn means deer hunting and salmon fishing, and calls to my parents in Sherwood following Packer victories (didn’t talk to the folks much last fall.) The prospect of venison and smoked salmon fillets make August a month of freezer cleaning in order to make way for the new. I’ve said before in this column that I do most of the cooking in my little family, so I’m happy to fry the last batch of bluegill fillets or toss marinated venison chops on the grill.
     Though I like cooking, I can’t be said to have any natural talent at it, and am in charge, more or less, of our deer camp fish fries because it’s my fryer—kind of like picking the uncoordinated neighborhood kid in basketball because it’s his ball. But I am persistent, and have been ever since I got my real start in cooking while I was a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. I lived with three friends—all of us were students in the College of Natural Resources—and we took turns cooking a sit-down dinner for each other once a week. Despite some early successes (see toast) my night was not highly anticipated. How was I to know that you have to brown the hamburger first when you make spaghetti sauce? (Ground venison was a staple in our bachelor household, and I used it so much with a popular boxed pasta/sauce mix that my nickname was “Helper.”)
     Which is not to say that my cooking night was the only one where roommates suddenly invented reasons to stay late at the library, or to go at all. My friend Garmen, a forestry major from Washburn, presented us each with a plate of goat tacos one evening. Now, Stevens Point is as cosmopolitan as the next town, but not once during my time there did I see goat meat offered in any of the supermarkets—which led me to wonder where Garmen obtained it.
     Petting zoo?
     I thought of asking, but in the end I kept my mouth shut and ate my goat tacos. It was either that, or cook for myself. And after all, dinner wasn’t the road-killed raccoon that resided in our refrigerator for a couple of weeks. Garmen claimed he was saving it for a class on wildlife diseases, but we all knew it was earmarked as an entrée. I’m not squeamish—anyone who stores waxworms in his cheek to keep them lively can’t be considered squeamish—it’s just that I kind of got attached to that raccoon, and seeing its little bandit face every morning when I opened the fridge looking for a slice of bread or a shot of O.J.
     Eventually, I graduated, and now I look back with fondness at the fifteen years which have intervened between now and then. Those years, as you might guess by glancing at my photograph above, were marked by intense feminine interest in yours truly. I cut a wide swath in those days, dating as many as one woman every three or four years, and so I frequently entertained, whether it was at my Michigan slum, my California slum, or the slum of a farmhouse here in Wisconsin which housed so many flies that I was able to observe the insect actuarial tables at work. I’d be at the stove cooking, and while I was doing so invariably a few airborne flies would give up the ghost, having reached the end of their natural lifespans, and plummet into the sauce.
     I ate out a lot.
     Back to the womenfolk. I was fond of serving Cornish Game Hens with Wild Rice to dates, because it looked elegant and was easy to make. And if the first date was successful, I could expand my repertoire on following dates:  Partridge with Wild Rice, Chicken with Wild Rice, Guinea Fowl with Wild Rice, Emu with Wild Rice…well, you get the idea. It’s a good thing the dodo bird is extinct, as it saved itself the final indignity of being flogged alongside wild rice to one of my dates.
     I’m married now, of course—six years and counting, provided I keep up on the monthly payments—and I still remember when I realized that my then-girlfriend Lori was the woman I wanted to marry. I was cooking goose breast for her at my apartment in Whitewater, and selected the recipe from a wild-game cookbook because I had the ingredients it called for, namely, A.) a goose, and B.) flour (I’ve learned since then to marinate goose strips and grill them just like venison. Cook ‘em hot, cook ‘em fast, eat ‘em quick.) I parboiled the breast in water with a little vinegar added, and while that procedure lasted I continually skimmed off a noxious layer of brown foam, which may be completely normal but which is probably rather alarming to the woman you are attempting to impress. The next step in the recipe called for tenderizing the goose with a meat mallet. I did not own a meat mallet, because I was in my twenties, and male. But I did own a hammer, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the look on a woman’s face as you assault her dinner with a blunt object.
     The final step called for rolling the goose in flour and frying it, which I did. After it was done I took a bite of mine and promptly slid it to my oldest cat, which lives on moths, crickets, dustbunnies, cellophane, and discarded batteries.
     He sniffed at it disdainfully.
     I looked over at Lori. She chewed silently; eyes closed in transcendent bliss.
     It amazes me now, to think that my cooking played such a role in developing our relationship. It also amazes me how close the feelings of transcendent bliss and utter nausea really are.

“Trout Are Where You Find Them”

I’m going to say right up front that my friend Brian “Hodag” Heine died on October 8th, 1999, at age 34. I say this not to elicit sympathy, but to avoid the usual device where the reader is led on and on and then, at the end, clubbed over the head in a violent burst of melodrama. Which is not to say I have anything against this device, for without it legions of Hollywood filmmakers would be put out of work—but I don’t think my friend would appreciate it very much (about the only similarity he would see in the film “Brian’s Song” is a common first name.)     He might mind a little if I mention that he was an uncommonly good guy, but I think he would wholeheartedly approve when I mention the one thing which was omitted in his obituary:  he was an outstanding trout fisherman. He was democratic in that he chased channel cats and bass and even carp, and in the same way he was as happy chasing squirrels with his Winchester pump .22 as he was pursuing ducks in Theresa Marsh. But he was a trout fisherman above all. If you think I’m now going to tread on ground covered in “A River Runs Through It,” then you’re wrong, for the book (and the movie) are about fly-fishermen. Brian was a chub-tail purist, if there is such a thing, and there’s nothing romantic about that. After all, in the world of trout fishing cachet, chub-tail fishermen are the lowest of the low, pitied by worm-fishermen and looked up to only by those who fish with dynamite.
     He also probably wouldn’t mind if I note that the same genial nature and sense of humor which his family and friends enjoyed in him were qualities which attracted the opposite sex as well. Many women found him, well, as irresistible as a big brown finds a chub-tail waving seductively in the current. I’m thinking now of a few post-trip; pre-fiance stops for a cooling beer. His charm was such that he could spin his ever-present ABF cap in the air, bring it down perfectly on his blond head, and then grin confidently at some comely lass across the bar. Invariably—and I still can’t believe this—she’d come over to say hello. It galled me—a trash fish in the dating stream—no end; especially as in those days my most intimate knowledge of women came from the back of Little Cleo spoons.
     But the fishing was always first and foremost. When I think of Brian now, I see him as I’m plowing through streamside alders on the Little Wolf or the Bad Axe or any of the streams we fished together. Where I was always anxious to roam and usually covered a lot of water pretty quickly, he was content to sit on one small stretch all day long and was a master at recognizing all of the locations where trout might be found within it. I’d stop and we’d compare notes, and while I might have caught a few fish—even big ones—he had always caught more, and bigger.
     He’d squint into the horizon in the manner of a sea captain searching for spouting whales, maybe adjust his cap, and smile slightly.
     “Trout are where you find them,” he’d say.
     Of all the pseudo-philosophical statements he was so fond of dispensing, it was his favorite. I never knew how to respond, since it was so pithy, so concise, and so obviously worthless, and often as I went in search of other water I’d look back and see him releasing another fish.
     He almost never kept anything. In fact, looking back now on the twelve or so years we fished together, I can’t remember him ever having kept a single trout. He was the same way with deer hunting. He hunted mostly in the Chequamegon National Forest, and every year when I called for a post-hunt synopsis I’d hear of reasons why he didn’t shoot:  “Too far,” “Too close,” “Not big enough,” and had he lived long enough I’m sure eventually I’d have heard, “I saw a twelve-pointer about fifty yards out during the second weekend, but I didn’t shoot. He was too big.”
     Perhaps Brian’s kidney transplant caused him to be more appreciative of life, and all of its forms. I don’t know. But I will say that while many of us often use the words “It’s just great to be out there” as a way of masking our disappointment over getting skunked, he meant them, each and every time. His health problems required him to carry as much medical gear as tackle, and gout related to the transplant limited his mobility after awhile. But to his credit, he never gave these limitations more than a cursory nod. He was the kind of guy who mentioned almost dying during a trip for Lake Erie walleyes the way most of us would mention an oil change which was past due, but only by a hundred and fifty miles.
     There were dietary restrictions as well, which, afield at least, went largely ignored (I shudder now to think of dinner on one trip to the Tomorrow River:  Rock River walleye and catfish fillets fried in four inches of bacon fat. The three pounds of bacon it took to get that much grease had of course long ago gone by the board.) Brian’s blood-sugar levels were always a concern, and once I found him floundering listless and waist-deep in the sticky mud we called loon s**t. I half-dragged him back to his truck, where even his dazed powers of persuasion were such that I made a decision I still can’t believe.
     “I can drive,” he mumbled, and until I regained my senses we sped down the road at one half-mile per hour; barely rolling; and in the wrong lane.

     It was a shock when the end came. To be sure, my friend had talked about the possibility of his death and didn’t seem to fear it. I, however, since he was outwardly healthy, could only comprehend the possibility as I do my chances of becoming rich:  within the realm of possibility, but on the outer edges of that realm which are not visible to the naked eye.
     The year-and-a-half since Brian’s passing hasn’t given me any great insight into the meaning of his life and death, or any of ours, and I think it would gloss over his family’s pain for me to reach some sort of Disney-esque “circle of life” conclusion. Yet death occurs. We who spend a lot of time in the woods and on the water understand as much as anyone that while it is a beautiful world, it is also a hard one. Maybe someday, if we’re lucky enough to be old and gray, we’ll be able to look back and say, “So that’s what it’s all about.”
     And I can’t help but feel that it is about something. Here I have to mention that a week after my friend died I pressed his obituary between the pages of a Bible. But I felt—and feel—like a hypocrite. I couldn’t quote you a full mouthful of Scripture, but could name chapter and verse from any of the five hundred outdoor magazines stashed in the garage.
     And maybe that’s just as well, Brian might say. “Put it in a copy of  A Sand County Almanac. Press it between the pages of the inland trout regs.”
     But he probably wouldn’t even go that far. He was a practical man and not given to somberness, and if he was inclined to be poetic it would be more along the lines of “The Legend of Sam McGee.”
     No, he would say, “Just get outside, and don’t worry so much.”
     “And oh yeah,” he might add with his trademark cryptic grin. “Trout are where you find them.”    

The Crush of Fame

    Every job has its irritations. If you’re a construction worker, for instance, you have to deal with drivers unmindful of speed limits and with the oppressive heat of the summer months. If you’re an office worker, there are the endless committees and sub-committees and sub-sub-committees, combined with all of the other nuisances of cubicle culture. And if you’re an outdoor writer, there is the constant crush of female attention. I don’t know what brings it about—perhaps camouflage combined with the overpowering allure of Hoppe’s No. 9—but it is endemic to the trade. In fact, Paul Wait, WOJ’s editor, recently e-mailed me that he couldn’t get a thing done due to the caterwauling of female admirers outside his office window.
     For me, it’s actually been a lifelong curse. Take, for instance, this typical phone conversation from when I was in high school:
Mom (yelling upstairs to my bedroom):  “Honey, you have a telephone call.”
Me:  “O.K., Mom. Hey, Denny. How many walleyes did you catch?”
Caller:  “Uh… this isn’t Denny. This is Rachel. You know me, right? I’m the head cheerleader. Listen, I know I’ve been dating Biff, the extremely good-looking star quarterback with the full ride to UW next year. But I saw you at the spelling bee, and the way you used “chrysalis” in a sentence just blew my mind. What are you doing for the prom?” (In all actuality, none of this occurred. I was a serial non-dater back then, although there was a cute freshman I asked to the prom when I was a senior and she sat adjacent to the percussion section during band. She said yes—which was cool—but her father wouldn’t let me in the door and sent me packing, corsage and all. I called my friend Denny, and I exchanged the corsage for a couple of dozen fathead minnows at a local bait/liquor store. Oh yes, and a bottle of Yukon Jack. We were eighteen, but we looked fourteen. Hard to see how they lost their license.)
     Which brings me, more or less, to turkey hunting. I enjoy it. I haven’t been at it too long—this will be maybe my sixth or seventh season—but already I’ve built a record of futility which I’ll stack against anyone’s. A couple of years back, my wife and I were living in Whitewater, and I worked as manager of a shooting range near Eagle in the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. A friend and customer heard my tales of missed and cut-off toms and took pity on me.
     “Why don’t you come out with me?” John said. “I’ve got some private land we can hunt on.”
     I accepted, and we made a date for early on Saturday morning of the fifth period, before I had to be at work.
     We slipped into the woods at 5 a.m. and set up on a little knoll, with John facing south and me facing north. As mosquitoes bored through our headnets we were surrounded by the booming gobbles of toms greeting the sunrise. John yelped a little on his slate, and me a little on mine, but we had no action until 8:30 when a tom gobbled once in answer to John’s yelps, and then shut up.
     “Get ready,” John whispered. “He might be coming in silently.”
     Long minutes passed, and at this point I should have repositioned myself on the other side of the knoll with John, so as to have a view of a field edge, which is after all where our decoys were. But I stayed facing north, not wanting to get caught flat-footed if the bird came around behind us.
     “Tom! Field edge!” John hissed suddenly.
     Because I was below the top of the knoll facing the wrong way, I had to swivel around and crawl a few feet to John.
     “Lay your gun on my legs,” he said. John knew that any further movement on my part would expose us to the bird.
     I aimed, but couldn’t get my head down far enough on the gunstock. The tom was nearing the outer limits of range.
     “BOOM!”
     That gunshot was the opening whistle to another year where my turkeys would come from the grocer’s freezer case, wrapped in mesh bags. I was in a black mood about my miss all day long at work, while I endured the teasing from friends familiar with my turkey-hunting exploits.
     On the way home, I stopped at a gas station to fill up my tank and pick up a six-pack of beer. Inside at the magazine rack was an absolutely stunning young woman. She had red hair and green eyes, if memory serves, although in hindsight it could have been green hair and red eyes. Whitewater is a college town, and in college towns you can never be too sure. I paid for my gas and beer, and when I turned from the counter she approached me, carrying a copy of Bridal Monthly.
     “Ahh, getting married,” I thought. “Good for her. I’d hate to get a reputation as a homewrecker, but it is free country.”
     “I’ve been trying to place you since you walked in,” she said, as the scent of her perfume reached my nostrils.
     “Here it comes,” I thought. “Probably read one of my articles.”
     She continued:  “… and I’ve just thought of it. You’re the guy who came out when my septic system overflowed.”
     So much for the crush of fame.
     Oh, and by the way, I’m no longer charging for autographs.

My wife Lori and I are big readers.
     I’d like you to think that we sit around, I in my smoking jacket and Lori in her evening gown, discussing literature with a capital “L,” but the reality is that we have short attention spans and mostly stick to magazines. My stable is a revolving one, but I currently receive Field and Stream, Trout, Ducks Unlimited, American Rifleman and Shooting Times. Lori subscribes to Garden Gate, Cuisine at Home, Dance Teacher and Better Homes and Gardens.
     Sometimes I pick up Better Homes and Gardens when I’m bored. Would I feel more manly if I told you it was Soldier of Fortune? Sure. But I occasionally get the barest glimpse of a boob in a bath-products advertisement. Hey, in these uncertain times, it’s best to take your pleasures where you can find them.
     Anyway, a staple of BH and G is the “home makeover,” where readers follow along as the subjects—in our case, Serge and Janet Ianelli of East Burnwich-upon-Bromley, Connecticut—do things like transform their tired 100-year-old Cape Cod into a vibrant abode for themselves and their three adorable children.
     In a representative photo, Janet smiles lovingly at Serge as he tends to an exotic cheese plate for their whimsical garden party. By her smile, you can just tell that Serge has never left an impromptu spittoon in the spot where Janet normally places her mug of cappuccino.
     Through a large bay window the photo reveals a knot of happy guests, and thanks to the Ianellis’ inspired lighting choices, the reader is able to see that one of the females is, um, rather fetching. You can bet that, in this perfect little world, when Janet asks, “Honey, do you think Roger’s wife is attractive?” Serge has the good sense to say, “No.”
     At first, friends, I would read articles like that and think, “Hey, I can do that.” I am, after all, sort of a Renaissance man. In 1989, I drank half of a Zima, and I can still play most of the right notes to “Cockles and Mussels” on the piano.
     Well, some of them.
     O.K., a few.
     But it quickly became apparent to me that while a man reads these types of articles and sees a year’s worth of DIY weekends, a woman reads them and gets, “Confine your man, and his stuff, to ever-smaller spaces.”
     It was while living on top of a pallet in the basement that I came to the realization that if my architectural dreams were to come true, I would have to take them outside: specifically, to the world of extreme ice-shack makeovers.
     I have been in this business for a number of years now. It’s difficult to think “outside of the box” when you are, in fact, in a box, but I use the elements of design—space, line, color, shape, texture, form, value and type—to create for you the shanty of your dreams.
     Where others see decay, I see opportunity. If, for example, you have a chunk of dry rot which you would be inclined to rip out and fill with insulation cadged from the attic, I might knock out a whole wall and construct you an airy three-season porch.
     We all know that the common materials of ice-shanty construction are wood, tarpaper and tin, with maybe a little aluminum thrown in. But just because there’s not a lot of ice-fishing in Tuscany doesn’t mean I can’t be inspired by that region and utilize stucco, or perhaps terra cotta.
     Following is a testimonial from a satisfied customer, Norb Heckendorf, of Hayward, Wisconsin:
     “My shanty was an abomination, filled with mouse nests and a persistent musty smell. And there was no organic flow-through, until Mr. Helker painted a wall azure to create the illusion of space. The only downside is that sometimes I miss flags on tip-ups because I’m too busy admiring the Roman mural, and a potpourri-induced reverie once caused me to be cited for unattended lines.”
     I was inspired to expand my repertoire to the culinary arts while watching an episode of “Everyday Italian,” with Giada de Laurentiis. If you haven’t seen the program, Ms. de Laurentiis is a stunningly beautiful woman.
Lori: “What’s she cooking?
Me: “Damn right she’s cookin.’”
Lori: “No, I said WHAT is she cooking?”
Me: “Is she cooking something?”
     My first stabs at cooking on ice were not well-received. Zagat’s Fine Dining had this to say:
     “Amidst a sea of similar establishments on Monona Bay, we had the extreme misfortune of happening upon Mr. Helker’s. Sanitary conditions are, quite frankly, appalling.
     The menu is a short one.
     Upon asking what was available, we were offered a single piece of pickled herring speared with what appeared to be a dipstick from a 1973 International Harvester Scout. The herring was mushy and lacked zip, and when we asked for condiments Mr. Helker simply scattered a handful of black flecks upon the fish. These flecks only made the herring taste worse, if that is in fact possible.
     The proprietor was a sullen host. During our entire visit he stared into a hole in the ice, mumbling dejectedly about a particularly deflating Green Bay Packers loss. The only times he brightened were when a bobber dipped and he brought a bluegill flopping up from the depths, and at the end of our visit, when we indicated that we were about to leave.”
     Well, my friends, that review stung. Stung! But first, in my defense, it did not “appear” to be a dipstick from a 1973 International Harvester Scout. It was a dipstick from a 1973 International Harvester Scout. Second, when it comes to condiments, differentiating between fine Hungarian peppercorns and mouse turds can be difficult indeed, particularly if you’ve had a few.
     But I learned from my mistakes, and a later edition of Zagat’s offered this:
     “To say Mr. Helker has made great strides is a huge understatement. He is now the unparalleled leader in fish-house cuisine. If you’re on the way back to your truck for a tin of waxworms, you simply must pop in.”
     Inspired by my successes in ice-shack makeovers and the culinary arts, I decided to try to create a multimedia empire, like Martha Stewart or Rachael Ray. To that end, I created a television pilot showcasing my shanty cooking skills. In retrospect, it would have been good to have had an aspiring starlet show a little leg every now and then, in order to have better secured our coveted demographic, but Bemidji Bob was available and reasonably observant in matters of personal hygiene.
Director: “And we are…rolling. And three, and two, and one…”
Me, yelling: “Bob, are those mushrooms? Get ‘em out of the shanty right now!”
     You see, mushrooms are bad luck in an ice shanty, just as bananas are bad luck on a charter boat. Plus, they’re disgusting (morels excepted, but only because they don’t taste like mushrooms.)
     Mycologists (sound it out, John Filardo of Windsor, Wisconsin) classify a number of types of deadly fungi, and some which are hallucinogenic. Therefore, a good day of mushroom hunting may include you careening through the woods, bouncing off of trees, with a damaged frontal lobe and heart arhythmia and plagued by enormous chipmunks.
     I have some entities of unknown appellation, but unquestionably biological in origin, behind the washer and dryer and in the corner of the basement where water pools, and I have never once come upstairs and exclaimed to my wife, Lori, “Hey! Look what I just scraped off of the basement floor! Whaddaya say we pitch it on top of a couple of steaks?”
Producer: “O.K., Kurt? O.K.? Mushrooms gone. Mushrooms gone. Man, I hate these self-centered celebrities. This pilot is going to stink. Sure wish we had a starlet to show a little leg.”
Bemidji Bob, misunderstanding, shows a little leg. Much retching ensues amongst cast and crew.
Director: “Cut! Cut! Cut!”
     O.K., so my foray into multimedia failed.
     That’s alright.
     I’ve still got my career in extreme ice-shack makeovers and fish-house cuisine to fall back on.
     Maybe I’ll see you on the ice sometime. Mine is the elegant Tudor shanty. Feel free to rap on the French double doors and maybe come in for a bite to eat. If you do, don’t worry about the vintage of the herring.
     I mean, how bad can it be?
     It’s pickled, right?

B-17 Aluminum Overcast July 15, 2012

Hubby and his Dad in plane - 1st video - engine starting up 2nd video - return

2012 EAA B-17 Tour "Salute To Veterans"

www.b17.org

"Sepia" fun

I like this one - it's sharp and  I like the out of focus area on the bottom

I like this one, obviously it's too bright, but I did achieve a blurry background with the flower appearing  in focus.  Practice makes perfect - so they say :) 

A little camera experimenting again today. Nice thing about digital just keep snapping shots until you get a good one. No wasting of film :)

Each weekday morning, after I’ve showered and dressed and before I leave for work, I sit down in front of the television with a cup of coffee and whatever I’ve been able to scavenge for breakfast. I quickly check to see the sports highlights, and then flip until I find a certain infomercial offering investment opportunities and hosted by a gorgeous young woman sporting canyonesque cleavage. I watch, rapt, despite the fact that my net worth consists of whatever it is they’re paying per pound for aluminum cans these days. Sometimes I’ll hear a stirring in the background, and quickly change the channel as my wife emerges from the bedroom.
     “Whatcha watching?”
     “Bass fishing,” I say, and sometimes we sit together and watch as professional bass fishermen roar off to a part of a reservoir down South somewhere, fire a few perfunctory casts, and then roar off somewhere else.
     When I’ve had a tough week, I watch them and think to myself, “Hey, you know what? I could do that.”
     I think I can, too.
     First, I’ll need a gaudy outfit in colors not seen in my family since my brother Scott’s 1977 Homecoming date.
     Second, I’m a realist, and understand that things might be a little tough at first, since most of my bass fishing experience has involved rowing around quiet northern Wisconsin lakes at dusk with my dad. Until I get the fishing part down, I will—as we entrepeneurial types like to say—maximize revenue streams by acquiring sponsors. A shirt or jacket doesn’t offer much surface area for advertisement, so I will don a sandwich board. In light of my advancing age, potential sponsors include Metamucil, The California Prune Marketing Board, and Life Alert. Perhaps I can even hire Wilford Brimley for a television spot in which he eats a bowl of oatmeal in the bow of my boat.
     Speaking of boats, I know that standard procedure on The Tournament Trail is to operate a metalflake number with an engine consuming the annual output of a small OPEC country. I might not have the cash for that. Like I said, I’m a realist. So at first I’ll stick with my plain-Jane 14’6” aluminum boat powered by a 9.9 kicker because it possesses that most desirable of attributes: it’s paid for.
     My tackle will need some work. I need to change my mindset that six-pound-test monofilament is just about perfect and 10-pound is for heavy duty, and get line which is not only useful for hauling big ol’ hawgs out of heavy cover, but also for securing anchors and towing boaters-in-distress.
     Looking through the pages of a bass-fishing catalog, I realize that my reels are out of date, too. As Fletch said in the movie, well, “Fletch,”  “It’s all ball-bearings these days.” The reels in my catalog have 11, 16, even 20 ball bearings. Hah! I’ll have a reel constructed entirely of ball bearings. Drop it, and it rolls downhill. For backup, I’ll use a spincast reel because nobody on the circuit uses one. Think of the untapped revenue stream.
     I already have a bottle of garlic-flavored scent spray, so that’ll save me a few shekels there. The spray doesn’t work, as far as I can tell, but it does have the pleasant side effect of causing my boat to smell like a pizzeria. I was fishing with a friend a few years back, and I liberally doused my plastic worm with the stuff between casts.
     “You know,” he said, “vampires don’t come out in the daylight.”
     Salt-impregnated baits will probably be banned soon in the Madison lakes, due to the alarming number of cases of bass with hypertension, but that’s alright. I’ll introduce a line of baits which are impregnated impregnated. Cast, and they’ll give birth during the retrieve.
     I expect tournament success will come quickly, and I will parlay my fame into a television gig despite, as the saying goes, having a face made for radio. For my show, I will develop a signature line—something like “Ooo, son!” That’s Roland Martin, I think, and I probably haven’t hooked a fish in the last twenty years without uttering that phrase. Someday, after I tip, the final line of my obituary will read:
     “His last words were “Ooo, son!”
     One day maybe you’ll be like I was, sitting in front of the tube on a weekday morning, bemoaning your fate in the workaday world. You’ll idly flip the channels until you come across The Bassmaster Classic, and there I’ll be, my little aluminum boat idling amongst all the metalflaked monstrosities. They’ll blast off, and as I reappear from beneath the swells I’ll turn around.
     “Wait!” the commentator will say. “What’s he doing? He appears to be coming back to the landing!”
     And that’s exactly what I will do. I will don my sandwich board in full view of the phalanx of television cameras, take out my spincast outfit, and start jiggin’ and piggin,’ and rattlin’and buzzin’ and burnin.’ It shouldn’t be any problem to come up with a limit of lunkers.
     “Think of it!” the commentator will say. “It’s pure genius! He’s fishing virtually untapped water right beneath our feet!”
     Once ashore, I will hoist my mossybacks and get kissed by scantily-clad women. As an aside, this is a scenario which has not played out much for me in real life. James Madison Park here in Madison is on Lake Mendota, and is a popular sunbathing spot for University of Wisconsin students. Once I approached a particularly attractive pair of lotioned-up coeds, hoisted a stringer of really big bullheads, and awaited my smooch on the cheek.
     “Get those things away from us before we call the police,” they said.
     But after I get kissed at The Bassmaster Classic, I will chug a bottle of Metamucil in front of the cameras—thank you, sponsors! And then later, under the lights at the winners’ podium, I will say:
     “Thanks for the six-foot-long check. I have to go. No, I mean really. I have to go.”

All in all, I don’t mind being over 40. Sure, making mortgage payments has not been nearly the ball of laughs the bank led us to believe it would be, and if television advice is to be followed I should be lying awake at night worrying about my fiber intake more than I currently am. I should also be worried about eliminating free radicals, though a large net dropped over the city of Madison would do the trick without requiring me to drink exotic juices which taste like tainted cranberries. But I can’t complain. Middle age for me is about achieving small victories, like some measure of financial solvency, impending fatherhood, and discovering that there is not, as my brother Craig had led me to believe, any such thing as a home prostate exam.
     So I like my age. I don’t feel, as many people do, that the high school years were the best years of my life. It’s hard for me to be nostalgic about acne. But you know what I do miss? College, and in particular one aspect of college, and that is nicknames. It’s tough to acquire nicknames in middle age because we don’t do anything stupid enough to get them. If we did have them, a typical exchange would go something like this:
     “Hey, going to the neighborhood pot-luck, Man Who Lost Everything in the Stock-Market Crash?”
     “No, I don’t think so. My daughter has a soccer game, Guy Who Edges His Sidewalk Three Times a Week.”
     But twenty years ago, at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, my friend Tom and I were The Rednecks, and living with us on our dormitory wing of mostly Natural Resources students were Slime, Hodag, Johnny Quest, Sloth, Crispy, Dirty Dan, and Uncle Milty.
Slime
     My fellow Redneck Tom and I received our introduction to Slime when we first moved in, as he fired up a chain saw to construct a bed out of pine logs. The three of us split the cost of a case of Rhinelander beer, which, if memory serves, was $4.20. “Green Death” was our beverage of choice in those days, and if you brought enough returnables back to the liquor store you could get beer and a couple of bucks back for Ramen noodles, and thus had the makings of a dinner party.
     Slime spat Copenhagen between his teeth, was a cribbage player par excellence, and drove a rusty International Harvester Scout littered with empty tobacco tins, shotgun shells, and deer skulls. His attire tended to Army surplus, though there was period when a girl he was dating—the type who dotted her i’s with hearts—attempted a radical Slime makeover by forcing him to wear ridiculous yachting outfits.
     Slime played a significant role in one of my many romantic failures at the time. I was at a campus watering hole chatting to a comely girl from my Soil Science class, and to my delight she seemed to find me amusing, if not attractive. At this point Slime entered the tavern carrying a pizza. Upon being informed that carry-in food was not allowed, he exited and prepared his pizza for concealed carry by wadding it into a ball. He re-entered, seated himself between me and my romantic interest, and began munching on his giant pizza ball.
     I’d forgive Slime for that, but I don’t know where he is now. Still, I would not be shocked to open the door one day to find him standing on the stoop with a deck of cards and a couple of bottles of Rhinelander beer.
     “Play some cribbage, Redneck?”
Hodag
     I think of Hodag, my late friend and waterfowling partner, quite a bit. We were roommates during our senior year at Point, and on the ceiling above his bed he had tacked a poster of a scantily-clad model touting one beer or another. Hodag claimed to have a special relationship with this model, and sometimes I’d hear him talking to her late at night:
“No, no,” he’d say. “I don’t want to kill my roommate.”
     One fall morning during post-college years found us picking up goose shells behind his farmhouse after the morning flight had ended. We wanted to continue hunting, so we packed his boat with duck decoys and headed up to the Horicon Marsh.
     In those days I was severely poverty-stricken and existed primarily on oxygen, with a little bit of venison thrown in every now and then. Because of blood-sugar concerns, Hodag always had food on him, and on that day on the marsh it was an enormous bag of dried fruit. I think now that he must have been aware of the powerful laxative effects of dried fruit, because he kept offering it to me:
     “Here, Redneck. Have some more dried fruit.”
     In the end, I finished the whole bag and frantically scurried into a local establishment, waders and all, after shooting hours had ended:
     “Please tell me you have a bathroom in here.”
     Alas, those days are over, and nobody calls me Redneck any more. Still, I see some hope for a nickname after all. You see, our neighborhood is full of very nice people, which is not good. Every neighborhood needs an ogre. When I was a kid, it was the local undertaker, who was rumored to stoke his air rifle with salt pellets to fire into the backsides of young miscreants. Never mind that later in life I found Mr. Salt Pellet to be a cool guy of the highest order. As kids we were terrified of him, and showed our terror by antagonizing him at every opportunity. Once, my brother Craig and I and fellow hooligan Ted slid over his fence during a backyard barbecue and darted among the guests to the food. Craig and Ted grabbed as much chicken as they could hold and I grabbed a bowl of Jell-O, and we scrambled back over the fence and to our hideout along the Fox River before the pellet gun could be brought to bear.
     Now, Jell-O is a reliable enough accompaniment to a cookout, but the gastronomical joy to be found in eating it increases exponentially with its illicitness. That joy is equaled only by the profound disappointment upon finding out, in the dark, that the bowl of Jell-O you thought you heisted was, in fact, chicken fat.
     I remember that incident now, and I think I have my nickname. I have been feeling a bit crotchety lately. What’s that? Stirrings outside?
     “Hon! Fetch me the gun, and the salt pellets! Git offa my propitty, you punks!”
     Yeah, Old Man Helker. It has a certain ring to it.

 When I was young—like a lot of Wisconsin Outdoor Journal readers, I’m guessing—I wanted to grow up to be a fisheries biologist. But while attending the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I found that I just couldn’t hack the high-level mathematics courses which were required. I started out in the lowliest remedial class with the other dunces and got an “F.” I took the class again the following semester and received a pity “D.” I then took Math for Dunces B (prerequisite: Math for Dunces A) and again received an “F,” followed by a “D,” and so on and so on, until I finally met my numerical Waterloo in a segment on imaginary numbers. I gave imaginary answers on exams, and thus ended my dream of becoming a fisheries biologist.
     My point is that not all of our childhood dreams come true. Maybe you are a firefighter, or a doctor, or even an astronaut, in which case, hey, well done with that whole landing on the moon thing. But most of us are accountants, or mill-workers, or short-order cooks, and while these jobs may pay the bills, and we may even like them, they’re certainly not what we had envisioned for ourselves.
     Me?
     I’m a courier.
     I like it, but it’s not what I thought I’d be when I was a kid, and sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet. Which is why I took a part-time job working for tips as a male burlesque review dancer-—you know, the type of guy who entertains your wife or girlfriend while you’re away at deer camp. Hey, don’t knock it. I worked only ten hours last week and pulled in a cool two dollars and fifty cents. And that’s tax-free, folks.
     Which brings me to rough fish. We can’t all be walleyes in the lake of life. Some of us are destined to be sheepshead, or suckers, or burbot.
     Or carp.
     I’ve had plenty of experience with rough fish over the years, starting with when I was a kid and sent off to the Department of Natural Resources for a book (which I still have) entitled “Rough Fish, Crayfish, and Turtles: How to Catch, Clean, and Prepare Them, and Why.” I became obsessed with the idea of feeding my family with a resource which, as the book notes, is “available in the fresh waters of Wisconsin and the rest of the United States by the hundreds of millions of pounds.”
     I ran set lines which I checked while doing my paper route, and the carp I snagged accidentally while pursuing walleyes and smallmouths were put to use. Once, I snagged a 30-pounder which I had to swim after, and after I landed it and retrieved one of my prized few Rapalas I pedaled home and cut the carp in half down the backbone with my Dad’s radial-arm saw. We had the fish smoked, and to this day whenever I get those little involuntary eye twitches I think of that carp and the amount of PCB’s we must have ingested.
     Mealtimes at the Helker household were very interesting for a period of time. My mother, ever encouraging, cooked whatever I provided, and my long-suffering father, the original meat-and-potatoes guy, would sigh, look at his plate, and put fork to yet another meal of sucare (we called it that to give it that special Old World ambience.)
     My interest in rough fish did not extend only to their gastronomical qualities. I also cut the “lucky stones” out of the skulls of sheepshead, with an eye toward using them to make jewelry. You know those jewelry commercials they show on television around the holidays, where a woman opens a small box next to the Christmas tree and her eyes get all glassy like a walleye’s and she says something along the lines of, “Oohh, Fred”? Well, imagine your loved one opening a small box after you’ve lit the candles and poured her another glass of wine. Inside the box she’ll find a necklace fashioned from calcareous structures extracted from the skulls of dead fish.
     The result?
     Pure romance, my friend. You’ll have to send the kids off to the in-laws for a solid week.
     I guess my interest in sheepshead continues unabated. A few years ago my friend Mark and I conceived of a tournament as a way for our old group of high school buddies to get together. Mark, a graphic designer, executed the RSVP card for which I wrote the text:
     As you hail, or have hailed, from the Fox Cities, you must be aware of such fishing tournaments as Otter Street and Fond du Lac’s Walleye Weekend. These tournaments, while grand in their own right, do not involve the great denizen of the Winnebago System: the freshwater drum…the sheepshead…the Gray Ghost.
     It is high time that such matters be rectified. So let it here be noted that you are cordially invited to the Gray Ghost Invitational Fishing Tournament to be held at Calumet County Park on May 21st.
     The event will begin, more or less sharply, at 11 a.m., with fishing concluded by 3 p.m. A highly technical weigh-in procedure which is too involved to detail to the layman, but which involves a garbage bag attached to a Zebco De-Liar, will follow. In addition to the honor and glory of it all a prize of sufficient grandeur will be awarded during cocktail hour, unless you are Birdy, in which case you are already too competitive and need no additional encouragement. Those interested may stick around for Poisson au Poivre avec Pommes de Frites, which is French for “Peppered Sheepshead with French Fries.” As far as you know.
     No entrance fees are required. You need only bring your license, fishing tackle, bait, and something for the grill at lunch. Alcoholic beverages may be brought as well, although you should know that overimbibing may cause you to miss the delicate tap of the Gray Ghost and thus forfeit your chance at angling immortality.
     The favor of a reply is requested:
Yes, I am fantastically interested and will attend. It is high time the Gray Ghost gets its due.
I am not particularly interested in fishing for sheepshead. However, the opportunity to drink beer under the guise of a sanctioned function sounds good to me.
You guys have too much time on your hands.

     Maybe this will be the year The Gray Ghost Invitational actually takes place, maybe not. But I will forsake the game fish in the Madison lakes once or twice this summer and instead walk to the creek near my home. I’m sure it’s loaded with rough fish, and some days that’s about my speed. Like I said, not all of us can be walleyes in the lake of life. Some of us are doomed to be forever vacuuming the primordial substrate, endlessly rooting and rooting, grubbing with protruding appendage through slime and muck and mire in search of some half-rotten morsel.
     But then, if you’re a Chicago Bears fan, you already know that.

A new perspective - Gardens and other spots

Wisconsin Beer and Cheese Curds

Great Dane (Cottage Grove Road, Madison, WI)

"Emerald Isle Stout" AND
"Beer-Battered Cheese Curds" Over one half-pound of Wisconsin's favorite-beer battered white cheddar cheese curds-crispy fried and served with a side of Ranch dressing."

Take That, China!

Crime by Stan. Crime-scene set-up by Kurt. Photo by Lori.
Made in the USA! 

Stan's 11th kill, by our porch. He reached coveted double - ace status a few weeks ago and he's only in his first summer with us.

Flies? Cheesehead born-and-bred, baby.

Knife? A Case. Pennsylvania checking in.

Paper? Wisconsin, I'm sure. Not only are we America's Dairyland, we also lead the world in paper-making.


Beer? Coon Rock Cream Ale, Lake Louie Brewing, Arena, Wisconsin. Yay, us! Jump Around, Go Pack Go!, "I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for me."


Cigarette? A Marlboro, Richmond Virginia. 


Ratchet strap and wooden skewer? China, but that's O.K. Everyone needs to work.


Salsa? Dei Fratelli, Toledo, Ohio. Go Mud Hens! 


Poor deceased meadow vole? Um, Wisconsin, again. www.vole.com, text 16582 to @vole69#twitter. 

Stan

This is Stan. It's in incredibly bad taste, but we've taken to calling him "Ted Bundy," because while he's handsome and charming on the outside, inside, he's a cold, professional killer.

We expect he may require years of counseling.

Lori and Kurt's Excellent Adventure Part 2

 I at last have attained coveted Full Dork status. The hat, not the  shirt. I shall never abandon the One True Faith.

The Bass Baby, almost ready to go.

Kinda self-explanatory.

At Cox Hollow Lake - Vino from Botham Winery, Barneveld, WI . Shouldn't have been drinking in 96-degree heat.

Lori's photo.

First fish on new boat, a largemouth bass.

View from the boat 

Lori's photo. I like this one a lot.

Lori's Photo

Is it unethical to fish right next to a spawning sanctuary? Quite possibly.

Probably can't see the 'gills, but they're there.

Oh, God. I DO sound like that. Coen Brothers, if you're going to do "Fargo II," guess I'm available for voice-over work.

Under way.

Lori and Kurt's Excellent Adventure Part 1

We always suspected as much.

Hopefully not a metaphor for life.

Doesn't anyone name their kids Bob or Tim or Ed anymore?

Failed Marketing Slogan: "Dirty Rest Rooms."

"Benifit": It's Smoth.

Stay in the truck, Lori.

Watch out for oily pelicans.

Failed Marketing Slogan: "Crap!"

Upper right-hand corner: We need to know. Where?

Wait.

Almost.

"Um, yeah, could I have some Viagra and a large Diet Coke?"

In Australia, it's "Green Wallaby." 

Failed Marketing Slogan: "Jinkies!"

I'm gonna call the fucking manager. 

Failed Marketing Slogan: "Le Vin au Pomme de Terre"

Sportsman's Suggestions

By now, we’re all familiar with the beer commercials where a group of men sit around a square table and issue pronouncements known as…well, I can’t say it, see, since it’s copyrighted, and the last thing I need is a major beer producer mad at me. But hunters and anglers are uniquely qualified to offer help in this regard. So, without further ado, here we have my own “Sportsman’s Suggestions.”

Sportsman’s Suggestion #1 (from Paul Wait, WOJ editor): “It shall be permissible to fish near a boat full of bikini-clad women even though no fish show up on your locator.”

     This is a fine suggestion. However, my entire life has been a living testament to the fact that women get a little creeped out if you stare at them too long. So the boat full of bikini-clad women may very well move if they notice you’ve been in the vicinity for three hours without catching anything. It is therefore acceptable to use fish you have previously caught, or even purchased, to add a hint of realism to your outing. I find that smoked chubs are exceptionally durable, even with repeated “landings,” while also providing an appetizing smell:
     “Jessica, be a dear and pass me the lotion, would you? Say, what IS that tantalizing aroma coming from that boat over there? I thought they were a little goofy when they first pulled up, but for some reason now I just really, really want to get in with those guys and…have some smoked fish on crackers.”

Sportsman’s Suggestion #2: “On any day when no gobbler rides out of the woods in the back of your vest, it shall be appropriate to state that the birds were ‘all henned up.”

     I’m happy to say that I ended my own long-standing turkey-hunting drought by killing a bird last spring, in Dane County, on the first morning of the fourth period. The tom came in to excellent slate work, if I say so myself, and a shot from my Remington 870 put me—for once—in the victor’s column. With that said, I fully expect things to return to normal this year, which is where the “suggestion” comes in. I think this is the greatest all-around turkey-hunting excuse ever invented, and it covers a multitude of sins. Not that I’ve committed any of them, mind you. Blow the shot? Get burned by a suspicious hen? Choose a poor setup or set your alarm for p.m. instead of a.m.? Nah. It’s just that the birds were henned up.

Sportsman’s Suggestion #3: “If a fish touches your hand or net, even if it escapes, that fish has been officially ‘caught,’ and counts as part of your total for logbook or bragging purposes.”

     My biggest salmon of last fall was a dark October fish, caught in the Root River. My friend Greg netted it. However, the huge king destroyed my net and tore downstream to safety.
     I called my friend Mark when I got home. We fish for salmon a lot together, and I knew he’d be interested in the tale of the huge chinook.
     He was.
     “How much did it weigh?” he asked.
     Weight, weight, weight. That’s all anybody cares about.


Sportsman’s Suggestion #4: “It shall be deemed acceptable for the hunter to refer to any antlerless deer harvested, regardless of actual size or even sex, as a ‘big doe.” Oh, wait—everyone already does this anyway.

     I was just on the DNR’s website, and preliminary harvest figures from the 2006 nine-day gun-deer season indicate that hunters took 336,211 deer: 129,649 bucks and 206,562 big does.
     Doubt these figures?
     Hang around in any tavern during the season and this is typical of what you’ll hear:
     “Hey, Bob. Packers blew it, eh? How’d you guys do this weekend?”
     “Oh, not bad, not bad. Not a lot of guys out pushing, so we didn’t see as many as we usually do. But we did alright. A nice eight, maybe sixteen inside spread, and two big does. How ‘bout you?”
     “Oh, we did good, but we got a lot of guys. We got a spike, a fork, a little basket-rack six, and nine big does.”
     Hey, it happens to me, too. On opening morning of this past season I was in my usual stand high in an oak tree in an Adams County wood lot. My friend Tom was visible to me in his stand to my east, where he watched a huge meadow. I was alerted to the deer’s presence when the sun became blotted from the sky.
     I put down my coffee.
     “Good Lord,” I thought to myself. “It’s a big doe, and it’s headed straight for Tom!”
     Even at a distance the earth quivered.
     “Shoot, Tom, shoot!” I screamed inwardly, but I knew that he was probably frozen with fear. The big doe came on and reduced my friend and his stand to blaze-orange jelly.
     “Rest in peace, good buddy!” I yelled as I shouldered my rifle. “C’mon, Big Doe! Do your worst!”
     She advanced into the woods toward me, snapping trees in half, and sinking up to her haunches in the earth with each step. When I had a clear sight line I fired, and fired, and fired again. The mighty creature faltered as she neared, and then breathed her last. I stepped out of my stand onto the big doe’s back and affixed my tag to her ear.
     “Great,” I thought, as I contemplated the dragging chore. “Now I gotta go and find the keys to the tractor.”

     If you like, feel free to e-mail your own suggestions to me at kurtlorius@yahoo.com. I’ll try to work one into a column every once in awhile. Winners will be well compensated: First Place gets nothing. Second Place gets a two-day fishing trip with me. Third Place gets a three-day fishing trip with me.