Hunting Down Cancer - Pierre, SD Day1

[Doug Steinke]

DATE: December 27, 2006

LOCATION: Pierre, South Dakota

SUN RISE/SUN SET: 8:17 AM

WEATHER: Partly Cloud

TEMPERATURE: Low of 19 High of 40 Degrees

WIND: Southeast, 10 miles/hour

EQUIPMENT USED: Avery® Canvas Logo Cap, Avery® Fleece Skull Caps, Avery® Floating Pit Bag™, Avery® Floating Blind Bag™, Greenhead Gear® Ground Force Layout Blinds, Avery® Finisher® Blind Bag™, Greenhead Gear® Full Body Decoys – FFD Elite Series™ Lesser\Spec\Full Sized\Rester\Sleeper Canada Goose Decoys, Avery® 6-Slot Full Body Goose and Lesser Decoy Bags, Avery® 4-Slot Full Body Goose Looker\Rester\Sleeper Decoy Bags , Avery® Mud Case, Avery® Floating Gun Case, Avery® Power Flag,

HUNTERS: Terry Brentzel, Avery Field Staffer Ryan Brentzel, Dave McDermott, Fran Keller, Aaron and Avery® Pro-staffers Tyson Keller and Doug Steinke

JOURNAL ENTRY:

“Where are you guys at?” came over the cell phone.

“Hey Tyson," I said. "We’re at Mitchell’s fine eating establishment, Culvers. We stoped at Cabelas. We'll be getting a bite to eat, then we’ll be heading to Pierre.”

Don’t ask me why it happens but, why is it that four grown waterfowl hunters, who have every hunting gadget and article of clothing known to a hunter have to drive 2 hours out of their way to stop at a Cabelas. And like always, we all walked out of there donating our Nebraska dollars helping to stimulate the South Dakota economy. This past summer it was all about donating to the cause. In this case the cause was cancer survivorship and the recipient was the Lance Armstrong Foundation through a benefit called Hunting Down Cancer.

When I was developing a short list of who I wanted to take part in the HDC Benefit, Tyson Keller was high on that list. Not only is he a 3 time South Dakota Goose Calling Champion, a fellow Avery Outdoors Pro-Staffer and one of the best goose hunters in all of the Central Flyway, (part of the Dynamic 1500 Snow Goose Decoy Killing Crew of Keller & Vandemore), he is simply one of the most genuine people you will ever meet. I knew he would put together a great hunt to donate for the benefit.

Fast forward to a cold night in October this past fall. A good friend invited me out for a drink at the local watering hole to talk some walleye fishing. The cell phone rings, “Doug, hey this is McDermott. What can you tell me about Tyson Keller’s auction on your HDC benefit on Ebay? Do you think we could hunt for more than one day? Think it would be any good? Would you want to join the Brentzels and me on the trip if we get it?” I told him I’d give Tyson a call and get back to him that night since the auction ended the very next day. I called and Tyson being Tyson, “You guys don’t need to buy this hunt just come up.” I told that wasn’t the point of the hunt. We wanted to donate and get a great hunt in exchange. Plans were made if we got the winning bid and I called Dave back with the good news. The auction ended and we had the winning bid.

I don’t know what takes longer, the drive to a well anticipated hunt or the trip back knowing that months of planning and dreaming are over and there is nothing left but photos on a camera. Call me an anti-social fool or a reincarnated 1800’s explorer, but I could spend a year exploring the plains of Nebraska and South Dakota. The rolling horizon in the fall and winter are an amazing spectrum of colors and characteristics of a landscape that easily hypnotize me. Add to the scene a skiff of snow and a brilliant sunset and you’ve got Terry Redlin material. Another Terry made this trip. Terry Brentzel has been a Nebraska Game Warden for 25 years and it was a real treat riding up with him because he had actually seen a lot of the places and back roads that we were passing on our way through Northern Nebraska. “Ever been to Goose Lake? I got a story… Hey, look there that is Eagle Canyon. I pinched a guy there for shooting 3 turkeys and… Look at that, wouldn’t you love to hunt elk in that canyon”. On and on it went and we both enjoyed the trip up. As the daylight started to dim we knew we were in South Dakota when we saw our first pheasant along the road side.

Eventually we got to Pierre and met up with Tyson and his friend Aaron outside of the hotel. He was telling us about the field he had lined up and that there weren’t exactly 10 thousand birds in it, they were next to it, but our field had several thousand and we should do fine. We all tried to get some sleep that night but, it was near impossible with months of anticipation built up in all of us. So, we made the best of it with our own viewing marathon of Discovery Channel’s Dirtiest Jobs. There was this crazy lady who was harboring even crazier monkeys and they were trying to kill the cast as they were filming the episode. I'm sure Mike Rowe was saying "Ahhh, good times." Eventually we had to kick Ryan out with his special magazine and get some sleep.

We had set the alarms for 5am. I was already bright eyed and bushy tailed at 4:15 and I lay in bed watching the last 45 minutes tick slowly off the clock. We met Tyson and Aaron outside of the hotel, grabbed a quick bite to eat and we were off to the fields. All I could think about was thanking God we weren’t going to a crazy killer monkey camp. We arrived at the point of deployment and proceeded to put out the 400 plus Fully Flocked Greenhead Gear goose decoys and seven Avery layout blinds. With seven guys it seemed like it took only 30 minutes, but looking at the rising sun it was more like an hour or two. Where we are from you better be on your second cup of coffee when shooting time comes because there are always birds moving. South Dakota on the other hand was more like bankers hours and Tyson said that there wouldn’t be much movement until 9 or 9:30 am.

As on cue, the first flocks started to leave the lake just before 9 am and they were all headed to the winter wheat field that had the 10 thousand birds in it the day before. Except this time they had a group of ten guys with decoys waiting for them. Tyson was looking through the binocs and said, “They’re going right into them. He told me they are using ten brand new layout blinds they got yesterday afternoon. I wonder if they even got them mudded up yet?” We were all watching as a group of 100 cupped up birds, 20 yards high 100 yards out of the flared like they got a whiff of bad cheese. “I guess not.” Tyson says. “Get ready here they come!”

Three small flocks of lessers merged into one large flock of 500 or more and were barring down on us. Within an instant birds were everywhere above us. They gave us a first pass at about 100 yards and banked hard to the east and back behind us. I felt like “Goose” on Top Gun stretching my neck backwards and out of the Finisher looking for bogies behind us. As the whole mob came over the second time at 40 yards the back third just collapsed on top of us like falling leaves out of a tree. The rest of the flock seeing this did a 180 degree turn and followed suit. In the mass confusion Tyson yelled “TAKE’EM” but later we found out that no one else but me heard him and the only reason anyone got up to shoot was by seeing Tyson come out of his blind. Birds were everywhere in a 30 yard radius of the blinds. Guns rattled off rounds as a few birds dropped out of the flocks or jumped into the air. Tyson and Ryan jumped out of the blinds and rounded up the dead geese and by the time they picked up the last two birds we were yelling at them to get in “More birds from the west”. Be it first time jitters, the mass confusion or common courtesy not everyone pulled the trigger. Because of that there were a lot of birds that left the field to fly another day. The next flock wouldn’t be so lucky.

Just as the two human bird dogs dived back into their Ground Forces, another flock of 500 birds entered the far corner of the field. All of our attention was placed on that flock when another huge flock of birds joined the melee. If you look at the photos it looked like a swarm of a thousand starlings or black birds but these were geese. These guys made half a pass and they were starting to flutter in. As opposed to the first flock that landed everywhere around us this flock landed just below our feet to 60-70 yards out in front of us. Tyson gave the command and most everyone got off one shot and Aaron started to yell “Whoa!” There were black dots falling everywhere it seemed. I ran out of my blind and shot the last cripple to make a seven guy limit in just about 15 minutes. That meant we shot 14 geese in that last volley and two of us never shot. We did a quick count and jumped back into the blinds to shoot some photos before we left. It was great to hear Ryan, Dave, Aaron and sometimes Tyson, all competition callers not blowing competition routines but sweet goosy music. I really felt like the girlfriend who just got a dinner and a movie and didn’t kiss my date. I held the camera while everyone else called and I just squeezed. Both Tyson and I were remarking how rare it is that we get to just take pictures. We both come from situations where we have to do the majority of the calling and here we had a symphony behind us that afforded us the luxury of letting us just to play. As we were leaving new geese were landing just a couple hundred yards away from us and we left as soon as we could. It was a very nice ending to our first day.


Little Ryan and what we caught him with when we woke him up the first day. He says it was planted.





Here are a couple birds that snuck in as the first flock of the day makes its final swing away from us.





A shot of part of the second flock on our first day.





This is just a micro second before the first shot was fired on the second flock of the day.





Here we are playing with a few birds after the killing was done.





And finally the hero shot from a great first day of camera and gun shooting.





Tyson was able to shoot some photos this day. Here is my favorite of him getting me shooting an incoming flock of big boys.

[Jason Mears]

Awesome hunt guys, way to go!

[Eric Wolf]

Awesome story! Those geese were right on top of you!

[Paul "from NZ" Stenning]

Wow!!!

[Josh Carda]

nothing like shooting them up in Sodak HOME SWEET HOME! nice hunts

[Joe Fladeland]

Amazing photos. Great job guys.

[CurrituckBoy]

THose are just some small flocks arent they

Great shots

Michael

[Zach White]

That last picture is SO dang sweet! Great JE looking forward to day 2!!!!

[David Rearick]

That is an awesome write up. Great job!

[Jude St.John]

Originally Posted by Doug Steinke

I felt like “Goose” on Top Gun stretching my neck backwards and out of the Finisher looking for bogies behind us.

Now that is as good a description as I need! Sweet entry! A very enjoyable read.