I’m lying in the sunshine on a very large rock. This piece of ancient igneous is located on the North Shore of Pine Lake in northeastern Minnesota. I did not kill myself getting here. No arduous portages. Mosquitoes? Non-existent. Paddling easily at two miles per hour with a nicely loaded canoe made for a leisurely pace...

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Now I let go with the word fishing, and not in a canyon. No echo. But the sound waves go forth. To my ears, it is first and foremost brook trout fishing in small streams. Its how I acquired my nickname. The first feeling that wells up in others could be a daredevil tossed for pike, the next, hand lining for lake trout, or jig and minnow for walleyes...

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You ever catch yourself sniffing empty shotgun shells? In the heat of battle most of my spent twelve gauges hit the bottom of the duck boat. Exceptions to the rule occur, and those are the three inch mags that I tuck in my pocket after poking at Canadian honkers...

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There was plenty of time to ponder as my Labrador Charlie and I sat in my SUV on a dark, quiet country road the other night. Not much else to do, actually, when stranded by a flat tire that won't come off the axle...

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Now right there after filleting our pike, I can take a zip lock bag and sprinkle the enclosed fillets lightly with lemon juice and squeeze out all the air. By duct taping this bag to an anchor line and submerging to a depth of thirty feet, I am marinating under pressure those fillets in a pelagic refrigerator...

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So lets say its 1823 and you’re strolling into Oneida county, New York, and you have this brain child of an idea. You were hatching this plan while walking for days. The first blacksmith or forge you come to is getting a visit. The wood shingle outside sez, Lars' forge. So you go up to the big timber framed door and you can hear all the clanking and pounding but you yell...

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I have a very good canoeing buddy. I trap and he traps, we both hunt and fish but the only thing we end up doing together most years is canoeing. I might add these are not cute little paddle around the quiet lakeshore canoe trips...

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They say deer hunting involves a lot of luck, but not all of it is good. It was calm that morning, and sharply cold, with the temp somewhere between -5 and 0. The luck that day started early. While loading the muzzleloader in my office, it slipped and fell to the floor, breaking the front sight into 4 pieces. Bad luck? Yeah, but there was also a bit of brain fog left over from ice fishing the night before. I hastily attempted to recover by using my spare muzzleloader for loaner parts, the front sights were similar, but not identical, and I knew where I was going hunting was a 30 yard maximum range for a shot. It would have to do...

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Whitetail deer hunting - An intriguing short story and old deer camp photos of Minnesota deer camp in 1947. See what it what like in the old timers deer shack and deer camp on Bear Island Lake. Dedicated to the memory of my father, Russ (the Swede) Anderson and his lifetime hunting partner Ben Lahti (5 parts)

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A deer camp-ought to allow you to forget whatever you had to leave to get there.  It should not be equipped with a bell that any person in the world with a similar device can ring at any time of the day or night...

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