Brute’s Bleat by Harold Brutlag-September 19, 2018

 

I did a solo fishing run out to Rock Lake Friday morning getting there about 9:00 a.m. and quitting at noon when the sun and humidity started to heat up Vanna and myself, more than we wanted. We found some sunnies about 10 a.m. that were willing to bite on the power bait (minnows) I was using. It wasn’t a fast bite and it took some sorting to come up with a dozen, which was my quota for that morning. Sometimes they would be way on the bottom (10 ft.) and other times they were only about 8 ft. down. I had to move around a lot to find any concentration fishing all the way from 17 feet and getting nothing to 10 ft. where they seemed to congregate. It was more of a challenge than I’ve been used to the past month, but I caught fish, so who’s to complain. The humidity was pretty high, I’d say in the 70’s and that coupled with 75 degree heat made for an extremely warm and sticky morning considering it was already the 14th of September. I don’t know if hurricane Florence and the Carolinas had anything to do with Minnesota’s weather, but the weekend was just too warm to give much thought to ruffed grouse hunting. * * * Bear hunting is underway, as is the deer archery season which began last Saturday. Camp Ripley has two seasons, the first one is an archery season for four days starting on Oct. 18; and the second one for rifles starts Nov. 3 and runs through the 18th. There’s a special youth deer hunting season Oct. 27 and 28th and I’d suggest consulting the DNR book for other seasons and the dates which vary in the different zones. * * * I watched the second half of the Vikings/Packers football game Sunday afternoon which the Vikings should have won, but had to settle for a 29-29 tie when Vikings field goal kicker, Daniel Carlson, missed his third attempt of the day. It was a 30-something chip shot and he just may be looking for a job! Regardless it was an exciting 4th quarter and it looked to me like the Viking defense was getting tired and couldn’t keep up with the passing pace Aaron Rodgers used. Kirk Cousins was outstanding at quarterback for the Vikings and fans, except the diehards, will quickly forget last year’s ace, Case Keenum. * * * I’m thinking about grouse hunting, but prefer to hold off until the weather cools down and some of the leaves fall. It’s too early to get a feel on a good area to hunt, but I’m toying with making a radical change and hunt in the northwestern part of the state rather than the northeastern area. Years ago I hunted moose in Kittson County and had a couple of extra days to hunt ruffed grouse. At that time we hunted mostly fire break road for grouse toward evening and the numbers were up. We were pleased with number of grouse we saw and harvested. Sharptail hunting was also open back then and I recall bagging one in some corn stubble my father-in-law, Henry Weick, and I were walking. Two of my brothers and us made up our four person moose hunting party and we were successful, but didn’t get the huge horns big game hunters dream about. That was one of those one in a lifetime events that I can check off the bucket list!

Mike Muller, Maple Lake and Peter Flatland, South Haven harvested
three Canada geese Saturday in the closing weekend of Minnesota’s
early season goose hunt. Muller said Flatland shot two of
the geese out of one flock and the third goose that came in as a single.
Muller said he got one shot off, but then his shotgun jammed. One
of the adult geese was banded which added to the hunt.
Muller said they saw quite a few geese and some ducks, but the
geese didn’t decoy very well. He said they were using A-Frame
blinds, a realatively new blind, rather than the coffin type which are
difficult to sit up in when the geese get into range.

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