Beautiful Lake Alice

"Professionally guided hunts from box pits surrounded by hundreds of decoys bordering beautiful Lake Alice"  That's how the first few words from the brochure described your possible goose hunt in northeastern South Dakota.  

I had no intention of ever paying to hunt geese due to the ample road ditches, public land and the fact that land owners would almost pay you to run the geese off of their fields when I lived in the glacial-lakes area.  There is, or was at least one hunting lodge that offered the previously mentioned goose hunting opportunity.

Before choosing a career in the auto business, I had owned and operated an independent vacuum store.  The pay was poor and the benefits were few, but it kept me off of the streets in my mid and late twenty's.    I was fixing a vacuum for one of the bigger hunting lodges and instead of collecting the $75 for the repair, I agreed to let them treat me to a "Professionally Guided" goose hunt.

At that time in my life goose hunting was not only my passion and main focus in my less than perfectly balanced life, it was my obsession plain and simple.  Thoughts of hunkering down in a plush pit with fellow wing-shooters, being pampered by guides, feeling the excitement and anticipation of approaching flocks of giant Canadian geese and the adrenal rush of hearing, "cut 'em boys" were too much for me to handle.  I was at their lodge nearly an hour before I was expected.  I wasn't about to let a flat tire or other mishap ruin my golden opportunity.   

Like nearly everything in my life, I let expectations grow in my mind to the point of inviting bitter disappointment if anything other than amazing results come to pass.  This was certainly no exception.

My first hint that something odd was transpiring was when a fella' in a wheelchair appeared with the boss of the lodge.  At first I was impressed that they catered to everyone.  He entered his own vehicle  Then the lodge commander approached my car and told me to get in that vehicle with the other guy and by ourselves we would drive to the main street of a nearby town where we would meet our highly skilled and well qualified guide.  That was the second notion that something wasn't kosher as "Beautiful Lake Alice" was literally a few yards from the lodge itself and we drove in the opposite direction to meet our guide.  "Have faith Kirk. These people know that they are doing," I told myself.

Not longer than 30 minutes went by after arriving at the dark and isolated main street of this small town when headlights appeared and the excitement level began to grow.  It was the owner of the lodge.  He drove the 15 miles from the headquarters to tell us the guide was running late.  Why do people use that term, "running late"?  It seems to me there is really no "running" going on when you are behind schedule.  

Eventually the guide showed up in an old sedan that looked like it was less of a hunting rig than a sports car or even a bicycle would be.  He directed us to follow him to the hot spot.  I don't remember either of the names of my hunting party members.  The nice guy in the wheel chair was from Wisconsin so I'll call him "Tex" and the guide who only had one arm I will call "Lefty" for obvious reasons. It wasn't until Lefty told us we would be pass-shooting geese in a road ditch (the way I always hunt geese) rather than over decoys that it dawned on me, hunting from the ditch means mobility and a lot of it, to get to the right place where geese are flying and I was with a one-armed guide and a larger man in a wheelchair.

Lefty deposited us by a corn field a few hundred yards from a lake that I can assure you was not "Beautiful Lake Alice" and told us he would return shortly as he needed to "check something out" back in town.  I am sure what he was checking out was hot coffee and breakfast of eggs-over-easy, bacon, toast and hash browns as Tex and I shivered in the dark windy ditch of a country road.  

I could imagine the conversation between Lefty and his morning regulars sitting at their own "round table of truth" in their hometown cafe.  It went something like, "Fred you wouldn't believe these two morons I have out at Cooters pond.  They're giving me fifty bucks to make these guys think they are gonna shoot geese, amazing I'm telling ya" 

At first light, fog appeared and was as thick as my head is hard.  Geese generally don't like flying in terribly thick fog and wind for much the same reasons airplanes are grounded in those conditions.  With the morning light I began to recognize the area as the same lake and road I had been hunting for the last week.  I collected my thoughts and realized that my dream hunt of harvesting geese in a pit over decoys and being treated like royalty as I imagined "pay hunters" are, had turned into something else.  I can't put it into words for print, but part of it would include the word "cluster"

Finally the fog lifted enough for geese to begin their morning flight.  It happened to be their flight was a few hundred yards north of our location and our guide was nowhere to be found.  Tex had never shot a goose before and that became my motivation for being a gentleman and trying to get him in position to be able to shoot one instead of throwing a tantrum like I've been known to do in the past.  He did eventually get a decent shot at one and the bird sailed a quarter of a mile before disappearing in the fog.  After retrieving it for him, Tex was more than a little disappointed with the guide and the hunting lodge itself and offered to pay my fees for the hunt.  I didn't tell him it was taken care of by barter and trade. 

Since I knew quite well where we were, we decided to fix ol' Lefty and drove to town leaving no trace of ourselves or notification anywhere that we had left.  I wonder how long (or even if) lefty searched for us and what his explanation to the lodge owner was for misplacing two hunters. 

We delivered his goose to a taxidermist in town and then had lunch.  I invited him to my store where we spent the afternoon exchanging hunting and fishing stories.  Some of them may have even been true.  I would have loved to see the face of the lodge owner when Tex showed up after dark that evening with their repaired vacuum I sent with him.  Subtle little messages are sometimes the best, like the repair tag on it showing the repair cost of $1.98

Don't Swim After Eating Bread Crusts

I've never really thought of myself as a total pessimist. I am rather skeptical about some things however, such as fad diets, miracle supplements, urban legends, and other old wise-tales. My favorite being those parents that hammer on their children to eat the crust of the bread because, "That's where all the nutrients are" when in fact bread crust is simply burnt bread that is mostly void of nutrients. It's a science thing. Trust me. Another recently debunked fable that still makes the rounds is the whole, "Don't swim for a half hour after you eat because you'll get cramps and drown" thing.  An instance of drowning due to swimming on a full stomach has never been documented.  The American Academy of Pediatrics  and the American Red Cross has never made any recommendations about waiting after eating before going swimming.  Sorry, Just the way it is.   

The art of coffee-talk might as well be dead. With the ease of access to the internet, one can't even make up phony bologna stories or twist the facts of one they know to be true in order to impress the listeners. The minute I hear something that sounds like it might bea little tooconvenient of a story, one you don't want to ruin with any facts, I'm googling it on my smart-phone. After I depose the unwanted facts to the listeners, I often find myself feeling smarter than them, yet oddly setting by myself. 

I remember a buddy of mine up north that was famous for believing that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line in the opposite direction. This guy had family members scattered all over the upper-Midwest. When he would travel to see them he seemed to take the longest, slowest route possible, yet totally believe it was shorter or faster through some kind of wishful thinking disease because someone said, "Ya, so-and-so thinks it might be faster going this way.  (Maps, my protests and common sense be damned) Someone else went that way once and thought it was a good way to go".  That person might be thought of as the brains of the operation and everyone believes them at face value, so it becomes law.  I've often wondered how it's faster to go from Sioux Falls to Rapid City by traveling through Huron, Pierre and Philip .  My arguments as well as generally accepted common sense were finally redeemed when the internet became a useful tool. 

Ever hear this?  "Well I heard from a good source..."  Trust me, their source isn't good and they are probably embellishing or they would have used their sources' name.  When you hear something such as that assume you are hearing something that isn't true.  You will be right four out of five times.  I've heard stories about a lot of you that I know aren't true.  I've heard stories about me that are physically impossible to be true.  Never the less, I would love to see it become a crime to knowingly exaggerate about a person in a way that could be harmful to them.  Unfortunately, our courts are too busy.  Our jails are too small. There aren't enough lawyers to handle the workload.  Life is hard enough the way it is without the help of people that talk just to hear their head rattle.  I personally would never repeat gossip, unless I am absolutely sure I can get away with it.