Getting ready for deer hunting ~ October 30, 1997

David Heiller

My son, Noah, is going deer hunting for the first time this year. I bought him a license. He is 14, and because he is under age 16, he can shoot either a doe or a buck in our woods.

I will be going with Noah, but I won’t be hunting or carrying a gun. I didn’t buy a license for myself.

Noah

Most people don’t know that DNR game warden Curt Rossow of Willow River was the person responsible for letting youths shoot either a buck or doe (in areas where antlerless permits are given).

He told me on October 28 that it took his daughter, Heidi, seven years to get an antlerless permit. Now it’s possible to get one right away. Young hunters have a better chance at success, which will more likely keep them hunting. Thanks, Curt!

I went deer hunting a few times when I was Noah’s age. I used an old 12-gauge pump shot-gun that we had. It was in bad shape. The stock had electrical tape holding it together. Luckily it didn’t misfire and kill anybody. It had a tendency to go off on its own free will.

Noah will be following my footsteps on November 8. He’ll have a better gun—a Remington 30.06 that we inherited from Cindy’s dad, Gordy.

Gordy shot a lot of deer with it at his home near Thief River Falls. He died in 1993. Noah liked him a lot. So hunting with Gordy’s rifle will be a good thing.

I have never shot a deer. That may sound strange for a 44-year-old man who grew up and lives in rural Minnesota. One part of me wants to try it again. The rest of me knows that deer hunting isn’t something I care to do.

But I’ll do it with my son.

I doubt that grinding meat for venison burger was in Noah's fantasies of hunting, but it was the reality. 
We would have a big job once the hunt was over, 
and we all took part.

Noah and I walked through our woods last Saturday, looking for deer signs. We saw lots of trails, and a few scrapes. We even saw a big deer bound off ahead of us. We couldn’t tell if it was a doe or a buck.

It was nice getting out in the woods on a crisp fall morning. Now that most of the leaves are gone, the woods look entirely different than they did a month ago. You can see everywhere.

We found three spots where a deer stand will work well. At least we think they will. We’re not exactly experts, although we talked like we were as we analyzed the pros and cons of this spot and that.

A friend of mine, Dave, is going to come over this weekend and walk the woods with us. He has shot a lot of deer. He seems very willing to share his knowledge.

Last Saturday another friend, Bruce, told me in detail how to gut a deer. I didn’t ask for the advice. I figured I could muddle through it. No need to show my stupidity.

But Bruce could sense my stupidity, so he went ahead and gave a slice-by-slice account of cleaning a deer. I appreciated it. It will be faster and neater than my technique, and I can tell Noah exactly how to do it.

People like Dave and Bruce are going out of their way to help with Noah’s first deer hunt, even though I haven’t asked for the help. That’s what friends are for.

It shows how much they value deer hunting. They are both good hunters. Not only good shots, but careful and ethical. I respect that.

David

Lots of deer have visited our property this year. For a couple weeks during the summer, a doe would come to our pond every evening. We usually just sat and watched it. One time my daughter and I decided to see how close we could get. We walked to within 30 feet of it before it ran away.

Other times we got up in the morning to see a deer eating apples beneath the tree in our front yard. When we let the dogs out, the deer would dash away.

If you think a dog can run fast, watch it behind a deer. The dog looks like it is standing still.

Noah will be looking at deer next Saturday a little differently than he did this summer—through the cross hairs of a scope. He’s excited about that. I am too.

I’ll let you know what happens.

To kill, or not to kill ~ September 26, 2002

David Heiller

The bat flew through the cabin last week as only a bat can fly, dodging and darting like a furry whiffle ball,

Everybody screamed and yelled and cleared out of the room except my daughter Malika and me.

The question popped into my head: Do I kill this bat? I quickly answered no.

A bat, the kind that startles us,
and freaks so many of us out,
and eats multitudes of pesky insects.

I doubt that I will ever kill a bat again after reading an article about them in National Geographic a few years ago. The article talked about how bats consume astounding numbers of bugs.

Any critter that kills bugs gets a reprieve from me. (My compassion ends when it comes to killing bugs.)

First I took off my T-shirt and tried to trap the bat against a ceiling or wall. But he always seemed to flutter away at the last moment. And I thought they were blind. I had him trapped behind a picture frame once, and called Malika over to hold the frame while I slipped the shirt over him. But he came fluttering out, and did a little dance in my daughter’s face, which sent her diving to the floor, and the chase was on again.

I went to the lake and brought back two fishing nets. The bat evaded my fancy swooping several times, but I finally gathered him in. I took him outside. He squirmed around enough to get tangled up in the mesh, so I put on a pair of leather gloves and worked his fragile elbows through the mesh. He nibbled on my thumb several times. I couldn’t blame him for that.

Finally he was free. I held him up and gave him a toss, and he fluttered away. For a second he threatened to come in for one last dive bomb, but he wisely changed his mind.

We got home from the cabin three days later. I had set a live trap in the garden to catch a rabbit that has been eating the broccoli.

Crouched in the trap was a raccoon.

He was not at all happy to see me. He hissed as I walked up, then lunged at the side of the trap.

Raccoons: vandals and mischief makers.

Now this was more of a dilemma for me. I could see that the raccoon had walked in from the west. He had even knocked down some corn. So I was not happy about that.

But he was a wild animal. He had torn out the piece of metal that sprang the trap. He also had managed to pull in an extension cord that was under the trap and chewed it into small pieces. He had done his time in the cage. Maybe he was rehabilitated.

I could have dropped the trap into the pond, and the raccoon would have died a relatively painless death. But I didn’t. I put him in the back of the truck, drove several miles down a deserted road, and let him go.

I’m not sure why I did it. I told some friends about it the next day, and they both said, “He’ll be back.” If that is the case, he will not see my kinder, gentler side.

Skunks belong under the rubric:
not our furry friends.

These two critter incidents raise the question in the headline. When do you kill a wild animal?

Last year I wrote about killing a skunk that had taken up residence under the outhouse. A reader criticized me for not trapping and releasing it. But I would do it again. I’ve had too many dogs get sprayed by skunks, and I worry about rabies. So they are on my kill list.

About a month ago the dogs trapped a woodchuck under their house, and I had no trouble shooting it, because woodchucks are hard on a garden and I work too hard to have an animal ruin my garden.

Woodchucks are rural pains-in-the-neck.

I guess that’s where I draw the line. If an animal is a threat to me or my home, it usually dies.

But they aren’t exactly grizzly bears. Are they really a threat? That is indeed a relative term.

Everybody is different when it comes to killing animals. Some people don’t blink at the act. Others wouldn’t consider it at all.

There are no easy answers, but it does make living in the country an interesting experience.

Thanks, Alex ~ August 3, 2005

David Heiller

Alex Westberg is my nephew, and he’s got a couple good traits, as this photo shows.

Alex from the newspaper photo:
Cig and sucker...

One, he’s a good fisherman. He caught this white sucker on the fiver a couple weeks ago. It weighed about seven pounds. Turns out the state record is 9 pounds, one ounce. We didn’t realize that at the time or we might have kept it. But Alex let it go. He likes to do that. He’s got a good heart, at least of the figurative sense.

I’m not so sure about the physical one.

Alex is a smoker as this photo also shows, and that’s his other good trait that I’ll mention here. I never used to think that smoking was a good thing, but in encouraging it every chance I get, and I thanked Alex every time he lit up a coffin nail.

Smokers are funding our schools in good old Minnesota, and they are helping pay for the Minnesota Care health insurance program.

Don’t try to figure out the logic behind this.

Our governor proposed a 75 tent ‘fee” on cigarettes, and since he took a no-new-taxes pledge, he felt this was entirely appropriate to fund our government. It’s a fee, not a tax. Duh, OK Governor, whaddeever you say.

So smokers are paying for our health insurance and schools.

Schools should he very grateful to smokers. Take down those anti-smoking signs in the hallway of Caledonia Middle School. Forget about that anti-smoking poster contest for the fourth graders. We should be encouraging kids to smoke. They’d be helping to pay for their education; it would be a good life lesson. “Good job, Johnny, drag on that sucker. Well get another full-time fifth grade teacher yet!”

Teachers, light up. It’s job security. Bring back that smoke-filled teachers’ lounge that we all (cough cough) remember (hack hack) so well.

Cancer? Heart disease? Not to worry. There should be enough health insurance money left over from your habit to help pay for the surgery and chemotherapy and respirator. Your wife will have to worry about the funeral costs, but nothing is free anymore.

Got a problem with any of this? Don’t write to me. Here’s the man you want to see: Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Tell him you’re not afraid to pay a little more in taxes. We should all pay our share for the common good. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

Or we could actually raise the income tax for the wealthiest Minnesotans, another propose that the governor opposed. A tax bracket of 11 percent on income of single filers over $166,001 (the state’s richest 42,000 people) would have raised nearly a billion to pay for extra spending on schools and health care.

Alex and Laura, 2005.

And tell Tim no more Taxpayer Protection Pledges that cozy up to groups like Americans for Tax Reform. Don’t make promises you cannot and should not keep. Then maybe common sense will return.

Until then, thank you Alex. You’re a good kid. You’ve got a good heart, for now at least.

Music is worth the price of admission ~ August 7, 1997

David Heiller

Last week was a special one for me. I’d like to share it with you, in hopes of having you attend something similar.

Last week I took a two-day banjo workshop. It was offered by the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Association (MBOTMA), as a kickoff to their annual music festival.

The lessons were held at Camp In the Woods, which is near Zimmerman, Minnesota. That is where the MBOTMA festival is held every year.

Music was a huge part of David's life. He was never shy about getting in and trying. He is playing here
with Bob Bovee and Gail Heil, and Sara Lubinski. 
I am the music appreciator in the group!

It had been about 25 years since I had taken any banjo lessons. I’ve played the instrument for all those years, but it seemed like I never really got better.

That didn’t bother me. I like to play music for fun, with friends. I’m not a professional, and probably never will be. Still, it’s nice to make improvements in whatever you do. Sometimes lessons are the only way to do that.

That’s part of what happened last week. The lessons worked, although not in the way I expected. Of the seven people in my class, I was at the bottom. I was the dunce.

Singing with the daughter
made David so very happy!

 
That was frustrating. I just couldn’t get the knack of the clawhammer style that the teacher, Rafe Stefanini, was demonstrating. I could see it and hear it, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t get it.

So I followed along as best I could, and taped a lot of his songs, and hoped that something would click.

In the meantime, I enjoyed listening to Rafe and watching his hands. He played so well. I could have sat and listened all day.

The group he played with, Big Hoedown, did a lot of songs too. They play old-time music, with fiddle, banjo, and guitar. It was amazing to see the skill they had on their instruments, and their love of that style of music. They are totally dedicated to it.

They don’t change songs to make them sound prettier. They are carrying on a tradition that is almost as old as our country.

Wednesday night, after the evening session, I played music with a couple of guitar players. I learned some beautiful new songs, and I shared some of my favorites. We sounded good! And without ever having played together before. There’s something special about playing and singing with people. Making music is really a magical thing.

When I crawled into my tent late that night, I could still hear people singing and playing throughout the campgrounds. Different groups doing different songs, with different levels of skill. But they all had one thing in common: They loved to sing and play. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought to myself, if more people did that?

That leads to my sales pitch, if you can call it that. Check out MBOTMA’s music festival. http://www.minnesotabluegrass.org/
I went back to it on Saturday with my wife, Cindy. We heard so much good music. We went to Cajun and clogging dance workshops. I jammed with some musicians, and took another brief banjo lesson.

On our way home, Cindy and I sang in the car for over an hour. We haven’t done that in many years. The music festival bug had bit us. And it felt good!

You can get more information on MBOTMA http://www.minnesotabluegrass.org/ 

Music in the kitchen is the BEST!

My workshop wasn’t for naught either. When I got home on Thursday evening, I sat at the kitchen table, which is always the best place to play the banjo, and started playing like Rafe had tried teaching me. And just like that, I got it. It clicked. I figured out the clawhammer style, and, suddenly my old songs sounded like new ones, only much better.

Cindy noticed it. Her mother noticed it. The kids noticed. Of course I did too. Wow, that was a neat feeling. It was like having a whole new instrument, and a whole new desire to play the banjo and improve and learn new songs. That was worth the price of admission.

Cheer for the Minnesota Turtles ~ August 8, 1991

David Heiller

It was a weekend to remember, what with the Twins and the Turtle.

FIRST THE TWINS: I’ve got a hunch that any Twins fan who was listening to last Saturday’s game will remember it for years and years. It will be one of those baseball memories that gets etched firmly into a certain time and place, where you’ll remember who you were with, what you were doing.

I can still remember a dramatic Harmon Killebrew home run against the hated Yankees in 1965. A bunch of us kids were playing on the rocks in downtown Brownsville, and someone had a transistor radio going. The Killer was up with two outs, two on, and the Twins down by two. It was almost like Casey at the Bat, only this time it was Killebrew, Mr. Clutch, who clouted a three run homer to win the game. Someone started yelling, “The Twins won, the Twins won!” It seemed like the whole town exploded. We jumped off the rocks and danced and yelled all the way home. I can still remember that.

Saturday was like that too. Noah and I were playing bat and ball, listening to Oakland slowly pull ahead of the Twins, 4-0, all on solo home runs  “The Twins are lucky they are still in this game,” I told Noah. “They could still rally.” (It ain’t over till it’s over, you know.) By the time I started re-siding house, Canseco had hit another one, and it was 5-0.

Connie with Noah and his turtle, Shane Mack,
 and Malika with her Beanie Baby.

Then, in the eighth inning, the Twins rallied, and suddenly it was 5-4, with two men on and Brian Harper at the plate.

I was standing at the top of the stepladder, Noah was standing below me, both of us frozen, listening to the announcer. Then we heard Herb Carneal’s voice rise in a mixture of excitement and disbelief: “There’s a long ball to left field. If it stays fair, it’s gone.” We knew it would stay fair, and it did.

I jumped down from the top of the ladder, and shook Noah’s hand, both of us hopping and cheering. We called into the house to Cindy, and she started cheering, and yelled for Noah to run around the outside of the house. I have no idea why she told him to do that, but he did it, and I raced behind him. He beat me. It was pure exhilaration.

The Twins went on to win, 8-6. All the Baseball Analysts said afterward what a pivotal win it was. Very significant. I don’t know about that, but it sure was unforgettable for Noah and me.

Noah really liked his net.

NOW THE TURTLE: Other than having Twins fever, Noah has had Turtle fever lately. He goes through stages, where he fixes on certain things, like snakes, or antlers, or dinosaurs. Lately it’s all turtles, specifically hard-shell snappers. He has a book showing an alligator snapper that weighs up to 200 pounds. That’s the one he really wants, but he would have settled for one like the soft-shell that his friend, Jake, has in a swimming pool in his backyard.

So on Sunday we headed to a friend’s house to visit their lake and follow up on a report of a snapping turtle sighting. It was a beautiful August day, temperature in the low 70s, sun shining, a little breeze keeping the

mosquitoes away. I sat on the dock and caught a few small sunnies, while Malika swung on a rope swing up on the bank.

Noah had come prepared with a big net, with a walking stick jammed into the handle to give it an extra five feet of reach. He walked the bank, and walked the dock, and puzzled over the bubbles that came from the mud of Elbow Lake. But nary a turtle did we see.

We finally conceded defeat and left after an hour and a half. And wouldn’t you know it; as we neared our house, guess what was crossing the road? Yup, a turtle. It wasn’t a 200-pound alligator snapper (thank goodness). It wasn’t a snapper at all, just a painted turtle the size of a muffin. But it looked pretty darn good to us.

We brought it home, and fixed up a cozy spot in a wash tub with two rocks and some water in it, where it sits right now, eating our fishing worms. Noah has named it Shane, after Shane Mack of the Minnesota Twins, of course.

You knew I’d get back to the Twins, didn’t you? In fact, a Turtle Analyst would say it was ironic that we looked so hard for a turtle at Elbow Lake, then when all hope seemed lost, we found one quite by accident on the way home. A Baseball/Turtle Analyst would even point to the similarities between finding the turtle like that and the Twins winning that game on Saturday in such a dramatic fashion, when all hope had been lost. That’s pretty significant, I guess.

At least it sure was a fun weekend.

Recalling the fanatics of fishing ~ July 28, 1988

David Heiller

“Boy, Peter is what you’d call fanatical about fishing,” I commented to Cindy as we rode home from a family gathering Sunday evening.

“Kind of like when you were 17, huh?” Cindy asked in more of a statement than a question.

“No, I was never like that,” I said firmly.

Peter and Noah fishing

But Cindy’s question got me thinking to when I was Pete’s age, between my junior and senior year of high school, growing up on the Mississippi River. Almost every summer morning, my cousin Kevin and I would take his flat-bottomed boat and head to the backwaters on the Wisconsin side of the main channel. We would stump-hop, fishing the roots of dead trees. Every tree would yield a rock bass or two. By 10 o’clock, we would have a stringer of fish, which we would split. I would fry mine for lunch.

Most evenings, I would go fishing in the Reno Bottoms, first for bass in the fast spillway water, then for panfish in the slough, and finally, as yellow light dimmed to dusk, for bullheads by the light of a kerosene lantern.

Peter is my nephew. When he was born, I was a college student. I would babysit him. I remember when he first learned to walk, his first words, when he first started watching football games. We would sing songs together. But Peter and his family started moving, first to Detroit, then to Dallas, where they live now. We would see them once a year, at best. Every year, Peter would have grown several feet, or so it seemed. For the first time in my life, I realized how my great-Aunt Clara felt when she would see me every few years and exclaim, “Why, look how David has grown.

You’re getting to be such a big boy.” I would roll my eyes and squirm away, much like Peter did.

Now Peter is tall, almost six feet. His face and limbs are tan. He has strong arms and legs. Cindy calls him handsome, and I would have to agree, much as I hate to admit it because he looks like his father and I would never call Dan handsome, to his face anyway.

And Peter is a fisherman. We saw him a total of about three hours over our weekend visit at my sister’s last Saturday and Sunday. Peter would get up, get in the boat, and go fishing for three hours. He would come back, eat lunch, and go out again for the afternoon, despite the hot sun and blustery wind. The same for the evening. He owns a bass boat and trolling motor. His tackle box is twice the size of mine.

He caught a few fish, a couple smallmouth bass, a one-pound rock bass over the weekend. That was almost immaterial. It was the act of fishing, the search for the lunker, the solitude, the freedom of the lake in his uncle’s speedboat, that drove Peter. He asked me to go with him several times. But it was too windy, or too hot, or I wanted to take a nap, or visit with my sisters, or play with the kids. I knew I couldn’t match Peter’s zeal, and I didn’t try. Maybe 18 years ago, but not now.

Noah tried. He and Adam, Pete’s brother, stood for hours at the end of the dock, fishing in three feet of water. Mostly they caught small sunnies and perch. But

Another day's trip with another day's glory.

Sunday afternoon, Noah came running from the dock to us, half crying and half-yelling. “My fishing pole fell in the water,” he called.

Cindy jumped up and ran back with him. We could see the Mickey Mouse reel bobbing out from the dock. Cindy fished it out, and reeled in a sunfish. Noah grabbed the pole from his mom, and walked back with a proud smile. Adam, who is six, weighed the fish for his five-year-old cousin, using a scale from Pete’s bulging tackle box. “It’s half a pound,” he called out from the dock.

They put the lunker on the stringer. Noah went into the house and grabbed Peter’s hand, led him to the dock. “See the fish I caught?” he asked proudly.

This wasn’t a real fish to Peter, not an eight-ounce sunfish. “Wow, it’s a beauty,” Peter said in a voice that made Noah smile.

Noah talked about the sunfish the rest of the day, and on the way home. I asked him as we fried it Monday morning, “Shouldn’t that be Momma’s fish? She caught it.”

“No, she just caught the pole,” he answered.

That’s fisherman’s logic. It wasn’t a fanatical answer, but bordered on it. That’s what Peter would have answered.

If scrapes and scabs could talk ~ July 19, 1991

David Heiller

If six-year-old bodies could talk, they would have plenty to say about vacations. Take Malika’s nose. The freckles are finally starting to show through the scab there. For a while, it looked as if someone had peeled it like a banana.

Swingset gymnastics at the old Brownsville school.

Mollie had been performing stunts on the swings at the school grounds. She would grab the ropes and lift herself out of the swing, then rotate backwards until she was facing the ground, like a gymnast.

Disaster came one afternoon when she let go while in this position. I could hear her crying a block away, where I was cutting weeds in the backyard. Her face looked like someone had hit it with a mud pie: a coat of dirt ran in a circle from forehead to chin. Her nose wasn’t broken, but oh, what a scab. Yet she was back at the park the next day. Playgrounds have a way of making you forget about a few scabs.

If bodies could talk, you’d hear grumbling from Mollie’s shoulder and knees too, from a spill off her bike. She had only been riding a two-wheeler for three weeks, and was doing quite well, except for a minor detail of not using her brakes. She used the Fred Flintstone braking method of dragging her feet until stopped.

Malika, always happily daring,
on her ten mile + huge fall, bike ride.
 I am so pleased to say that Ms. Malika
mastered biking and still loves it today!

We were on a 10-mile leg of a beautiful bike trail from Fountain to Lanesboro, Minnesota. All was fine until we came to a steep hill, with an 80-degree turn at the bottom. Mollie went down with her hands frozen to the handlebars and her hair stuck out from the back of her head by the stiff breeze and an even stiffer fear. I know she was scared, because I was scared just watching her, the way you feel when you can see an acci­dent coming but are powerless to stop it.

If yells could have slowed her, she would have stopped. “Use your brakes, use your brakes!” I shouted, as she disappeared in front of me. I found her at the bottom, off the trail, in the weeds, under her bike. She had gone straight when the trail had turned.

The Brownsville vacation David,
his mom, Malika and Noah, 1991.
 Malika's scabs don't show here!

Her shoulder and knee had bad scrapes, but otherwise she was fine. I guess parents always fear the worst. She was shook up and crying, but not too much that she couldn’t get back on her bike and finish the 10-mile trip. Bike trails have a way of making you forget about a few scrapes.

Then there’s the poison ivy. Mollie must have picked it up on our hike to Crooked Creek. We were so busy looking for rattlesnakes that we ignored the more common dangers. Cindy and I used to make this hike before we had kids, with Crooked Creek the perfect half-way point for a skinny dip. But this time, a herd of cows upstream had muddied the stream, so I just car­ried everyone across, and we hiked and pic­nicked on.

A poison ivy rash bubbled up on Mollie’s leg that evening, and spread to her other leg the next day. She was told not to itch it, but still it spread. Mollie was worried at first, but she soon accepted it, and now points it out to us proudly. Like her scrapes and scabs, it was another red badge of courage, and a sign of a well-spent vacation.

Playgrounds, bike rides, and hikes are only the half of it. Mix in a banjo, some old friends, a swim in the river, a stringer full of sunnies, a family reunion, and a grandmother who en­joyed it as much as we did, and you’ll have the best vacation imaginable. Scrapes and all.