Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher

In the past few years, its been difficult for me to spend as much time hunting as I would like.  For most of my teen and adult years, duck and pheasant hunting was a top priority for me and for my brothers.  From the time we were old enough to hunt on our own, we’ve done just that, rarely missing a weekend of hunting during the short seasons.

And the waterfowl opener was a coveted weekend activity, known in our family as the only thing that was worth doing that weekend, except for the hour in church on Saturday night.

Hunting is still a passion for all of us, but we rely a bit more on the younger generation of the family to do a lot of the work when it comes to setting up and taking down decoys.  I spent this past weekend with my brothers and their family members hunting ducks and pheasants in West Central Minnesota where my older brother owns some prime hunting land.  We’ve been hunting there for decades and although the hunting is very good, these days hunting is more than shooting a few ducks or pheasants.

There’s a lot more reminiscing about past hunts.  We’ve been hunting together for so long I’m sure its rather boring for the younger generation to hear my brothers and I talk about the same old hunting stories they’ve heard since they were old enough to hunt.  Now, they have their own children and we pretend we’re telling the old stories for them.  In reality, my brothers and I are the ones who love to relive those old stories because that’s what you do when you’ve compiled nearly 50 years of hunting together.

We remembered good hunts in terrible weather, something most duck hunters are proud to reminisce about.  We remembered the missed opportunities and the days we’d rise sometime just after midnight just to make sure we were on a public spot an hour before anyone else arrived.  If the truth were told, our stories probably have improved our shooting abilities over the years and exaggerated the weather and difficult conditions.   But overall, the memories are there and worth the time to tell again.  And it was good to be in a duck blind with my brothers making a few new memories.

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I was impressed last week at the Pope County Board’s “Committee of the Whole” meeting.  The board was given a chance to review drone footage of a few situations experienced by the Pope County Sheriff Office and the West Central SWAT team. The drones are operated by local deputies and the footage we saw at the meeting showed how they enter a home, search each room, locate an armed suspect and then return outside to the operator.   Of course the drones, which are surprisingly inexpensive for the quality of work they do (about $500 each), can work both inside and outside in daylight or in darkness.

Adding drones to local law enforcement is just another tool that helps keep officers safe during what could be a dangerous situation.  The presentation was given by Pope County Sheriff Tim Riley and Deputy Mathew Hoffman, of PCSO who has trained extensively on the use of the drones.  Not only do the drones make law enforcement safer, but they also reduce the time officers spend at what is known as a dangerous situation because they can be deployed quickly and give officers a look at what they are faced with in real time.  Drones seem to be a great tool for local officers.