The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

When was the last time someone did something really impressive and you had more fun watching than if you had done that impressive thing yourself? It happens to me all the time in the outdoors. Watching someone harvest or catch their personal best in just about any category is pretty easy to get excited about.

My son, Brandon, moved home from the Denver, Colorado, area about a year ago and now I have my favorite hunting partner back. He is on the road a lot with his new job but we hunt whenever the schedule allows. One of those times was last weekend.

He is a resident of South Dakota now and applied for an antlerless deer tag for the firearms season and a second antlerless deer tag for muzzleloader season. In the area we hunted in north central South Dakota both of these seasons were open at the same time. I was already out there hunting birds and he showed up about two days later.

Some of my family live in this area so they took off early Sunday morning and did some scouting. Pheasant hunting does not start until 10 a.m. each day so I was in no hurry to get up and running. As it would happen, my son posted in a tree line with my cousin and waited. It was only about 15 minutes later that deer started moving towards their location.

A 30-yard shot with my grandpa’s 75-year-old Remington model 70 .270 rifle and deer one was down. We arrived to get a lesson from an expert on the specifics of field dressing this deer. The methods are all pretty similar, but those who have done it a lot have a few pointers and these were what I was after.

From the time they began hunting to a field-dressed deer in the back of the truck was a total of about 45 minutes. We were standing around and in the flat lands of the South Dakota Plains we watched another group of deer lay down in a pasture about 1/2 from where we stood. We took the truck and exited the scene to ensure we did not disturb them and  bolt in the wrong direction. When Brandon was geared up with a muzzleloader the other member of the party started to circle around in an attempt to move those deer in the right direction.

I was out of sight so what happened next, I did not get to witness. As luck would have it, the flanking move did exactly as desired and those deer moved towards the tree line and my son dropped the second deer at 15 yards with the other gun. By the time we had driven back to a pheasant hunting spot, the phone rang with deer #2 down.

The scenario repeated itself and in a total of about 90 minutes, there were two deer properly tagged for transport. Those deer made it to a garage for cooling and by 10:00 when the pheasant season opened my son was standing next to me and my four dogs ready to walk a patch of tall grass.

As luck would have it, my son’s aim was pretty good and in an hour he had three roosters in his game vest. I, so far, had not done one single thing other than watch this all unfold. We hunted birds for the rest of the day and that evening watched my two second cousins, ages 14 and 11, process an entire deer in about 90 minutes, just like experts. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

My son had filled his tags/limit for three different seasons with three different guns all in about three hours. This will most likely never be repeated by myself, or anyone else I know for that matter. These are outdoor memories you can cherish until the day you die.

By the end of the stay, we had harvested about 50 birds, about two-thirds of the group’s limit for the period hunted. I, on the other hand, could do no right. When I walked, the posters did all the shooting and when I posted, all the walkers did all the shooting. I was responsible for only three of those 50 birds.

Certainly, a slow performance for a guy with four dogs who hunts a lot. It would not have mattered if I had shot zero of those birds. This was still one of the best hunts I had ever been on and one I will remember long after the birds and deer in the freezer have been eaten.

Watching others enjoy the outdoors is now about the best memory I can make. At the age of 62, I will still make my best efforts to expose as many others to my passions outside as I can. If you enjoy what I enjoy you should try it too, and as often as you can. I am sure it will have the same impact on you as it does on me.

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.