Pam and I with a freshly
harvested Idaho Elk.
Turkey Day in the Loess Hills
Spring did not appear and it felt like we went from winter to summer in southwest Iowa. It is turkey season and the toms have been out looking for love. With the number of hens I have seen, they should not have any problem, other than competition from another love sick big boy. The place to be hunted has produced for me in the past four years. North of Council Bluffs in the Loess hills, this farm has it all. There are plenty of woods for hiding and roosting. With plenty of water in the dams in the valley and the gravel on the roads for their gizzards, what more could a turkey want. A gentleman that I hunted ducks with for 17 years had the good fortune and luck to be an excellent turkey hunter. He once told me that more big toms are shot between 08:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. than any other
The Flower Festival of St. Cecilia’s
During January in Omaha/Council Bluffs and it was really cold. We were having sub zero temps at night and during the day the temp never went above ten. Add the wind chill and it was really cold outside. My wife Pam always finds things for us to do instead of sitting around in blankets reading and watching the idiot tube. You watch that thing for any length of time and your eyes get bigger and your brain gets smaller. My father said that to me when we got our first TV. “We shape our buildings; Thereafter they shape us.” Winston Churchill This weekend was St. Cecila’s Cathedral for their annual Flower Festival. This is an Omaha tradition and one that will give you a bright break from the middle-of-winter doldrums. Construction began on the Cathedral in 1905 and was consecrated in 1959. It was listed as one of the ten largest Cathedrals
Nebraska’s Best Walleye Spot
I need a new lake to hammer some walleye. Eastern South Dakota did not treat me very well last year and it is not like it was 20 years ago when I first went up there to fish. The one advantage to the area is that there are a lot of lakes to fish all within a 30 mile radius of Webster, SD. The Merritt Reservoir in northwestern Nebraska is an oasis amid the giant oasis of the sandhills. The second deepest lake in Nebraska is just a few miles south of the Snake River Falls and the Samule R. McKelvie National Forest. Surrounded by gentle bluffs, there exists 44 mils of tree-lined shores baked in sugar-sand beaches. The lake is 11 miles long, and with 3000 acres of pure waters, this is a fishing adventure land. Maximum depth is 111 feet with an average depth of 25 feet. This is outstanding and makes
The Snow Geese Have Returned
A couple of decades ago the refuge at Desoto Bend was a stop over for the migrating snow geese and other birds. I knew some farmers that cultivated some of the refuge and they were required to leave 1/3 of the crop on the ground. Well to waterfowl, corn is like cocaine and they will gorge themselves on it. A beautiful facility was erected with viewing areas out over the water where you could come and see all the migratory wild fowl. It went unused for several years, but now the birds are back. There is not a few thousand but hundreds of thousands of snow geese with some blues mixed in, and my wife and I drove up to DeSoto Bend to see the birds. It was phenomenal. Every year they go through, and now they are stopping at DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge just east of Blair, Nebraska. That is a 45 minute