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Attack of the Bullfrog

Bass Fishing Gone Wild

One of the finest things about the outdoors is that every now and again mother nature raises her head like a wise old snapping turtle and bites you right in the funny bone, providing a better time than if things had gone as you so fervently hoped. So it was with my first trip to the bass fishing bonanza of Lewis and Clark Lake on the Missouri River in South Dakota.

My big chance! A full day on the river in the company of two savvy tournament winning bass busters. Visions of lunkers dancing on hooks paraded across my noggin’ as I fitfully floundered in bed, trying to pass the interminable hours until time to leave. But the drunkenness of those heady visions turned into a morning hangover of misgivings as I arrived at the rendezvous point with the rising sun. I was confronted by evil-looking sickly green thunderheads stampeding in from the west like a herd of belly-ached buffalo about to blow their chips.

And as I met my buddies and blathered my heartfelt thanks for the invitation, the chips indeed came down. Hailstones ricocheted off the concrete and careened across the prairie in a rapidly descending, eerie darkness, that matched my falling hopes for the day.

If this stuff didn't let up soon, the guy with the boat would be going to an indoor archery shoot instead of fishing! I wrinkled the grimy, scaly, brim of my favorite fishing cap some more, attempting to ring out whatever luck was left in it. Even if this let up, if this weather didn't shut off the fish, I wondered, what would? But I am pretty much a lake-locked walleye whacker and ought to leave the speculation to the river-running bass busters. The boys with the fast boats still thought we could stir up some action when the clouds cleared, and the clouds did, about an hour later.

Wing Shooting Whitetails 

Deer Hunting with Shotguns

 Among the misty memories of my youthful outdoor experiences, my first few shotgun hunts driving for deer are among the most exciting. Pop started me out hunting deer from a blind for the first few years, but at 14, I was finally deemed safe enough at handling a gun to be unlikely to ventilate someone by accident, so I was allowed to join the big boys in party hunts driving for deer!

In Southwestern Minnesota, we were required to hunt deer with shotguns and slugs at the time. In my experience, an excited hunter shooting a bird gun with slugs at moving deer is nearly as accurate as a mortar tube shot freehand, nearly. There were no rifle sights or rifled shotgun barrels in common use at the time, and the rifling on the slugs was more, shall we say, an advertising gimmick, than a performance aid. But we happily sallied afield in large groups, with our bird guns, our hearts full of hope and optimism. We filled the air so full of lead that many a deer failed to dodge clear of our cloud of one-ounce hailstones! 

We drove corn fields, groves and willow filled sloughs, where the shooting distances were often short enough for a bayonet charge anyway! Many a deer died of a heart attack alone, scared to death by the fearsome noise of our barrages. We kept the local hardware store afloat, as well the Federal ammunition plant in Minneapolis, with the prodigious amount of shotgun slugs we wasted. But oh, did we have a good time!!