Volume 86, Issue 5, 2008
June 2008
- Identifier:
- nela.2008_086_05
- Title:
- Volume 86, Issue 5, 2008
- Issue Name:
- June 2008
- Date Issued:
- 2008-06-01
- year:
- 2008
- month:
- June
- Season:
- Spring
- PDF filename:
- NL_86.05_2008_Jun_Spreads_Entire.pdf
- Publisher:
- Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
- Format:
- Periodical
- volume:
- 086
- issue:
- 05
- number:
- 086.05
- Decade:
- 2000s
- Type:
- Rights Holder:
- Copyright Nebraskaland Magazine/Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, all rights reserved.
- Extracted Text:
-
A whitetail fawn pauses in a grassland south of Gretna on a summer afternoon.
Photo by Eric Fowler.
NEBRASKAland Magazine
Published by the
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
NebraskalandMagazine.com
$4.95
Volume 86, Number 5, June 2008
10 Blowouts
A look at this fascinating topographical feature of the
Nebraska Sandhills. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JON FARRAR
20 Catch and Release?
Turnng loose a potential meal may seem to defeat the
purpose of fishing, but there is a way to have your “cake” and
release it too – selective harvest. BY DARYL BAUER
22 Archery for Novices
In this first of a two part series, we give advice on choosing
bowhunting equipment and developing good shooting form.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY DOUG CARROLL
28 20 Lakes – 20 Parks
Each visitor comes to Fremont Lakes State Recreation Area,
with a different purpose in mind, and the area gladly
accommodates. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JEFF KURRUS
32 Nine-mile Creek
The history and future of a western Nebraska trout stream.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY BOB GRIER
38 Transplanting a Rare Orchid
20
●
The small white lady’s-slipper is one of Nebraska’s rarest
native plants. BY GERRY STEINAUER
40 Blow Boat Cats
22
●
Catfishing from an airboat on the Platte River with Dave
Ortlieb. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY ERIC FOWLER
9 Outdoor Business
Recent regulation changes should attract more hunters.
46 Outdoor Update
Hybrid bass hatchery production.
47 In the Field
38
●
Pronghorn antlers.
49 Parks and Places
Exit 285.
Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Outdoor News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Portraits from the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Cover: Richard Reichenbach and Joe Delgado of Lincoln and Paul Seitler of Ogallala found
just enough wind to go for an evening sail on Lake McConaughy. Photo by Eric Fowler.
Opposite: Bractless mentzelia (Mentzelia nuda), is one of the first pioneer plants to colonize raw
sands on the margins of Sandhills blowouts. See story on page 10 Photo by Jon Farrar.
28
●
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 3
Published by the
Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission
Director: Rex Amack
Assistant Directors:
Roger Kuhn, Kirk Nelson, Sam Sidner
Information & Education Administrator:
Doug Bauch
Commissioners
Chairman:
James Ziebarth, Wilcox
Vice Chairman:
George E. Hall, Bridgeport
2nd Vice Chairman:
Jerrod Burke, Curtis
Dr. Mark Pinkerton, Wilber
Ron Stave, Waterloo
Dr. Kent Forney, Lincoln
Lynn Berggren, Broken Bow
Mick Jensen, Blair
Magazine Staff
Editor: Doug Carroll
Associate Editor: Jeff Kurrus
Art Director: Tim Reigert
Senior Editor: Jon Farrar
Regional Editors:
Eric Fowler, Bob Grier, Rocky Hoffmann
Contributing Editor: Michael Forsberg
Circulation: Donna Robinson
Photo Librarian: Sarah Johnson
NEBRASKAland
ISSN: 0028-1964
VOL. 86 / NO. 5
JUNE 2008
Published monthly, except for Jan./Feb. and Aug./Sept.
issues, by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, 2200
N. 33rd St., Lincoln, NE. Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.
Please address comments or questions to this address.
Periodicals postage paid at Lincoln, Nebraska, and other
locations. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to
NEBRASKAland, P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370.
NEBRASKAland is available on audio cassette from the
Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille
Service, Suite 120, 1200 N St., Lincoln, NE 68508. (800)
742-7691.
Rates: $18 for one year; $33 for two years; $44 for
three years. Nebraska residents must add
appropriate sales tax.
To subscribe call 1-800-NEBLAND (632-5263),
or go online to: NebraskalandMagazine.com.
For address changes and questions about your
subscription, e-mail donna.robinson@ngpc.ne.gov.
4 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
Nebraska-made Decoys
I appreciated the article in your
April issue regarding Nebraska-made
decoys. The picture of Joe Cole’s
decoys attracted my attention
because my dad’s decoys are the
same. Joe and Vi Cole were our
next-door neighbors in Kearney. My
dad, Glen Matson, (now deceased)
spent many evenings with Joe in the
basement of the World Theatre
making duck decoys. We have my
dad’s decoy bag, blanks ready to be
stacked and glued to make the hollow
decoys, and numerous finished
decoys that are identical to those of
Cole’s featured in your article. Dad
and Joe probably made a couple of
hundred of these. Dad put a rock in
each of his to show it was hollow, and
he signed the bottom using an electric
pencil. In the late 60’s he sold most
of his inventory that I was aware of
(possibly 50) to an individual for $2
apiece.
The boards were glued together
using “Jorgensen” type clamps –
no nails or screws. Glen was a
cabinetmaker by trade, so all of the
boards that he and Joe would have
used were no doubt yellow pine
scraps from his shop. I’m fairly
certain that Joe and his family did
not move from Kearney until after
1952, since I was working for him at
the World Theatre as an usher until
that time. Dad hunted from a blind
on the Platte River. His last wish
was to have his ashes spread over
his duck blind.
Marilyn Matson Fiebig
Bella Vista, Arizona
Thanks for the Memories
I was born and raised in/around
Atkinson and currently reside in
Friendswood, Texas. I read
NEBRASKAland thanks to a gift
subscription from my parents.
I keep tabs on “hometown news”
via the Internet and was saddened to
read of Bill Horst’s death in March.
Ironically, the article about him was
published just one month after his
death. I’m sure he was very proud to
have been the subject of the story.
“Coach” Horst
was my football
coach in 1968-69 for
the newly formed
West Holt High
School, located in
Atkinson. I graduated
Bill Horst
from there in 1970
and went on to graduate from UN-L
in 1974. I remember he and his wife
Diane taking long walks, holding
hands like young lovers, in the
summer evenings before the school
year started. As memory serves, they
had their first child while he
taught/coached in Atkinson. I’m
sure you’ve heard from many of his
former student-athletes.
As Bob Hope would have said –
“thanks for the memories.”
Randy Rothchild
Friendswood, Texas
Tucker’s First Turkey
Dear Rex Amack,
Thank you and NGPC staff for
all your efforts in recent years to
promote youth hunting in Nebraska.
Lowering the eligible age for big
game hunting opens up the sport to
young hunters during their formative
years, before they’ve become too set
in their ways to take an interest in
hunting. And by offering a ‘youth
season,’ young hunters the chance to
hunt at their own pace without the
competition, pressure or stress of
trying to keep up with more
experienced outdoorsmen.
Enclosed is a picture of my
10-year-old-son, Tucker Harders, with
my dad, Shawn Harders, and Tucker’s
first turkey. My mom, Nancy, called
it in on their Loup River frontage near
Cairo. Tucker sat in the blind with me
all day for the youth season opener
(except for a few hours that afternoon
when he stopped hunting to catch two
catfish) and got his tom the following
morning while hunting with his
grandparents. Tucker’s just beside
himself and truly had a weekend he’ll
remember for the rest of his life.
Please continue to make outdoor
recreation fun, easy, safe, and
affordable for kids so they’ll develop
the interest, skills and passion to
preserve hunting and fishing long
after we’re gone.
Shane Harders
Omaha, Nebraska
A Welcome Read Far Away
I would like to say thanks for a
great magazine. The pictures are
great and the narrative is good,
interesting and timely, even if read a
few years later.
I discovered this when I started
forwarding my son’s magazine to
him in Iraq. All the guys are enjoying
them. I’ve ended up sending them as
packing in boxes and have even sent
back issues from 2002 and they are
enjoyed.
Keep up the good work.
Rozanne Hintz (mother of John
Hintz)
Dixon, Nebraska
Send your comments to:
Doug Carroll, Editor
NEBRASKAland Magazine
P.O. Box 30370
Lincoln, NE 68503
or e-mail doug.carroll@ngpc.ne.gov
Please include your postal address
and telephone number.
Letters may be condensed and edited
for clarity. Photographs are
welcome and will be returned.
Under federal and/or state law, discrimination is prohibited on the
basis of race, color, religion, age, gender, marital status, national
origin, disability or political affiliation. If you think you have been
discriminated against in any program, activity or facility by the
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission or want more information,
contact the Commission in Lincoln, NE, at (402) 471-0641 or the
Equal Opportunity Commission, Lincoln, NE, (402) 471-2024,
TTY/TDD (402) 471-4693).
Headquarters
2200 N. 33rd Street
Lincoln, NE 68503
Phone (402) 471-0641
District Office I
East Hwy. 2, Box 725
Alliance, NE 69301
Phone (308) 763-2940
District Office II
524 Panzer St., Box 508
Bassett, NE 68714
Phone (402) 684-2921
District Office III
2201 N. 13th St.
Norfolk, NE 68701
Phone (402) 370-3374
District Office IV
301 E. State Farm Rd.
North Platte, NE 69101
Phone (308) 535-8025
District Office VI
1617 First Ave.
Kearney, NE 68847
Phone (308) 865-5310
Omaha Office
1212 Bob Gibson Blvd.
Omaha, NE 68108
Phone (402) 595-2144
Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium
21502 W. Highway 31
Gretna, NE 68028
Phone (402) 332-3901
World Wide Web site: www.OutdoorNebraska.org
E-mail: info@ngpc.ne.gov
Administration
Ted Blume (Adm.)
Craig Stover (Asst.)
Wes Loos (Asst.)
Rod Loos (Asst.)
Murray Johnson
Lincoln
471-5531
Lincoln
471-5532
Lincoln
471-5591
Ogallala (308) 284-8056
Lincoln
471-5003
Panhandle
Officer
City
Phone (308)
Jim Zimmerman (Sup.) Gering
436-7561
Walt Meyer
Chadron
432-4398
Scott Brandt
Gering
436-3418
Heath Packett
Gordon
282-2553
Dennis Thompson
Ogallala
284-6450
Dan Zuehlke
Ogallala
284-4815
Doug Pollard
Oshkosh
772-9950
Frank Miller
Valentine (402) 376-1183
Dan Kling
Whitney
432-8367
Southwest
Officer
City
Phone (308)
Roger Thompson (Sup.) N. Platte
532-9175
Ray Dierking
Brkn. Bow
872-3078
George Sund
Cambridge
697-4629
Michael Thome
Cozad
784-4362
Matt Andrews
Elwood
785-3025
Dirk Greene
Imperial
882-5328
Virgil Gosch
McCook
345-2185
Dudley Sorensen
N. Platte
532-0747
Rich Routh
Rep. City
799-2085
South-central
Officer
Jerry Pecha (Sup.)
Jeff Jones
Terry Brentzel
City
Phone (308)
Kearney
865-5327
Clay Center(402)762-3124
Doniphan (402)845-2021
Randy Pomplun
Darin Gress
Dale Johnson
Mark Reeves
Robert Finke
Richard Seward
Fullerton
536-2987
Hebron (402) 768-2287
Kearney
237-1079
Loup City
745-0662
Milford (402) 761-3537
Ord
728-3115
Northeast
Officer
Tom Zimmer (Sup.)
Dale Davis
Ross Oestmann
Steve Oberg
Daniel Roberts
Jon Reeves
Marion Shafer
Pat George
Eric Wiebe
Tim Williams
Cory Krause
City
Phone (402)
Norfolk
371-6625
Bassett
273-1700
Bloomfield
373-4412
Columbus
564-5937
Fremont
721-7852
Kennard
427-7378
Norfolk
371-2031
O’Neill
336-1588
Ponca
755-2566
Neligh
887-1335
West Point
372-6979
Southeast
Officer
Duane Arp (Sup.)
Sean McKeehan
William Krause
Jeremy TenKley
Mike Luben
Douglas Kramer
Dina Barta
Stacey Lewton
Levi Krause
Russell Mort
Dan Evasco
Jeff Clauson
City
Gretna
Ashland
Auburn
Beatrice
Colon
Lincoln
Lincoln
Lincoln
Louisville
Nebr. City
Papillion
Waterloo
Phone (402)
332-2965
944-4174
274-3789
228-1437
443-4278
466-9001
483-2358
476-0436
234-2212
873-5684
592-6733
359-5301
Nebraska Wildlife Crimestoppers 1-800-742-7627
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 5
Participants take aim during the Nebraska Archery in the Schools Program State
Tournament that was held at State Fair Park in Lincoln this past April.
NASP Tournament Held
A total of 230 fourth- to 12th- grade
students from 11 schools participated
in the Nebraska National Archery in
the Schools Program (NASP) State
Tournament held April 26 in Lincoln,
according to Aaron Hershberger,
Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission outdoor education
specialist and NASP state coordinator.
The young archers had been
participating in NASP during their
physical education classes in their
schools. Awards and trophies were
presented to individual students and
teams in several categories. Saunders
Archery provided $500 Tom Saunders
scholarships to Lisa Geckle and
Rapheal Erdie of Mater Dei
Academy in Omaha, the top scoring
female and male high school seniors
respectively. Samantha Griffin of
Lincoln North Star High School
recorded the tournaments top score –
268 out of a possible 300. The top
score male score was 264, recorded
by Ryan Hedges of Dawes Middle
School in Lincoln. Lincoln’s North
Star High School won the high
school division state championship
and Dawes Middle School won the
middle school division.
The tournament was coordinated
by the Commission, Nebraska State
Archery Association, Lincoln Prairie
Bowmen Archery Club, Golden
Arrow Archery Club of Omaha and
6 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
many volunteers.
“The National Archery in the
Schools Program is very unique as a
curriculum in its ability to teach not
only the life skill of archery, but to
improve self-confidence and selfdiscipline in students as well,”
Hersberger said. “When you walk
into a NASP tournament and look at
the participants, you are amazed by
the diversity of the archers taking
part – from the skinny fourth grader
to the big, high school senior.
Everyone can take part in archery
and have an absolute blast doing it.
You don’t have be super tall or
extremely muscular to be good at
archery, and that’s the reason that
NASP is so popular – everyone can
do it.”
Peregrines Using Capitol
Nest Box Again
For the fourth consecutive year, a
pair of peregrine falcons has produced
eggs in a nest box outside the
18th floor of the State Capitol
building. As of April 15, four eggs
were present in the box, and the eggs
were expected to hatch in early May,
said Joel Jorgensen, the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commissions
nongame bird program manager.
Jorgensen said biologists read the
leg bands of the adult female and
have confirmed it is the same bird
(A/*Y) present since 2005. The male
is assumed to be the same bird (19/K)
as well, but no positive identification
had been made yet.
The Commissions popular
FalconCam, a video camera mounted
at the top of the State Capitol
building, provides direct pictures to a
television in the capitol rotunda and
to the Commission’s web site at
www.OutdoorNebraska.org, so
interested people can observe
activities in the falcons’ nest box. The
photos are updated every 60 seconds.
The direct link to the webcam is:
http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/
falcon.asp.
In 2005, the pair successfully
raised one chick that, through the
Name the Chick Contest, was called
Pioneer. In 2006, three chicks fledged
and were named Willa, Bess, and
Sterling after famous Nebraskans
Willa Cather, Bess Streeter Aldrich,
and J. Sterling Morton. Last year,
four chicks fledged and were named
Boreas, Notus, Eurus and Zephyrus
after the four wind gods from Greek
mythology that are ascribed to the
cardinal directions North, South,
East, and West. If the falcons
successfully raise young again this
year, the Name the Chick Contest
will be renewed.
Kearney Expo 2008 Well
Attended
Kearney Expo 2008, held April 1719, drew 9,600 participants and was
deemed a great success by organizers.
The second annual Expo, hosted
by the Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission and presenting sponsor
Cabela’s, was an opportunity for
Nebraskans of all ages to celebrate
their outdoor heritage. The first two
days of the Expo designed for school
groups and drew 2,600 students from
90 schools.
A new feature added to the Expo
this year was the Cabela’s Outdoor
Challenge, which allowed participants
to compete for free in six skilled
events. Adults competed in shotgun,
3-D archery, trapping, kayaking, rod
and reel casting, and camping games.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 7
Youths competed in pellet gun,
archery, trapping, fishing, rod and
reel casting, and camping games. A
total of 165 people competed in the
Challenge, which was won by Julie
Campbell of Hildreth (Female
Adult), Brian Blankenship of
Kearney (Male Adult) and Aaron
Winberg of Hazard (Youth).
This fall’s Missouri River Expo
will be held September 20-21 at
Ponca State Park.
Cornhusker Trapshoot
Successful Again
The 2008 Cornhusker Trapshoot,
held May 1-3 at the home grounds
of the Nebraska Trapshooting
Association (NTA) at Doniphan,
attracted nearly 1,700 junior high
school and high school boys and
girls. When the last bluerock turned
to dust during Saturday’s 100-yard
handicap competition, Jeremy Denny
of Fremont had won the prestigious
Cornhusker Cup, awarded to the high
overall individual score, by breaking
194 of 200 targets. Ari Bowhay of
Scottsbluff won the High Lady Trophy
by hitting 190 targets. Wyatt Lanik
of Norris won the boy’s junior high
division, while Hannah Korak of the
Wilber won the girl’s junior high title.
The shoot is sponsored by the
Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission and the NTA. Next
year’s event, the 40th annual
Recent regulation changes should attract more hunters.
Waterfest to be held at
Lincoln’s Holmes Lake
Lincoln’s second Waterfest, a free
event celebrating recreation and
water quality awareness, will be held
Saturday, June 14 from 5 to 8 p.m.
at Holmes Lake Park in Lincoln.
Waterfest activities will include
fishing, canoeing, kite flying and
games. There will also be a raptor
release, a live radio broadcast, a
performance by the String Beans,
educational exhibits and free
refreshments.
The first Waterfest was held in
2006 to celebrate the completion of
a major improvement project at the
lake and park, which are managed
by the Lincoln Parks and Recreation
Department. The two-year,
$5.6 million renovation project
included the removal of 321,000
cubic yards of sediment that had
accumulated from 40 years of
development and agricultural use
upstream. The dredging project
extended the recreational life span of
the lake by more than 100 years and
was funded by Lincoln, the Nebraska
Department of Environmental
Quality, the Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission, the Nebraska
Environmental Trust Fund and other
partners. ■
By Doug Carroll
be accompanied by a
licensed, “experienced”
hunter age 19 or older at
all times while hunting
with this certificate. The
hunting mentor can
accompany no more
than two hunters at one
time that are under age
12 or using an apprentice
exemption, and he or
she must at all times be
within unaided
visual and verbal
communication with
the other hunters.
LB 690 also lowered
New hunting regulations that take effect in July will make it easier
the
age requirements for
for young hunters and people new to the sport to try hunting for
deer hunting in Nebraska
the first time.
to 10, but hunters age
LB 299
10 through 15 must still be
Enacted in 2007, this bill removed has changed: Now only hunters age
accompanied at all times by a
12 through 29 must carry proof of
the minimum age limit for turkey
licensed hunter age 19 or older
having successfully completed
hunters and the requirement that
while hunting. Until this change,
Firearm Hunter Education while
archery turkey hunters take a
the Nebraska Game and Parks
hunting with either a firearm or
bowhunting education class prior to
Commission was prevented from
crossbow, and they have to have
hunting. Young hunters must still be
allowing anyone under age 12 to
proof of completion of Bow Hunter
accompanied by an adult and kept
hunt deer. If a child is under the
Education while hunting deer,
under close supervision, but
minimum age now but will be at or
hundreds of young hunters were able pronghorn, elk or mountain sheep
above the minimum age during deer
with bow and arrow. Prior to the
to enjoy the thrill of the hunt this
season, a permit may be purchased
passage of this bill, firearm hunter
past spring turkey season for the
for them only when they have
education or bowhunter education
first time.
reached the minimum age.
was required of all hunters born on
When and if a child will begin
or after January 1, 1977.
LB 690
Another change made will make it hunting still remains a parental
As successful as LB 299 was in
increasing young hunter participation even easier for new hunters to safely decision that should be based upon
the maturity of each individual child
in the sport, a bill passed during this try the sport and learn from an
– while some 10 year olds are
year’s state legislative session probably experienced hunter before investing
mature and responsible enough to
the time required to complete a
will have a much greater effect.
hunter safety course – the creation of handle deer hunting, some 14 year
Passed by the legislature and
olds are not. Children can still
an Apprentice Hunter Education
signed by Nebraska Governor Dave
participate in the hunting experience
Exemption Certificate.
Heineman this spring, LB 690
as an observer and hunt small game
Hunters age 12 through age 29
becomes effective on July 17 and
whenever their parents decide to
who have not yet completed a
involves a substantial change in
allow them to, but now they have the
Firearm Hunter or Bowhunter
Nebraska’s hunter education
option to hunt bigger game. That
requirements and lowers the minimum Education course and want to give
will help ensure that Nebraska’s
age required to hunt deer in the state. hunting a try may now obtain an
strong hunting heritage continues to
First and foremost, the requirement “apprentice hunter education
be passed on from generation to
exemption certificate” from the
of who must complete a hunter
generation. ■
Commission, but they must be must
education program prior to hunting
ecent changes in
minimum age
limits and hunter
education
requirements have
made it much easier for
young hunters, and older,
potential hunters who
may not have grown up in
a hunting household, to
try out the sport. While
some of these changes
have not yet officially
taken effect, here’s an
quick recap on what each
change involves, and how
it might affect you and
other hunters.
R
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 9
PHOTO BY DOUG CARROLL
8 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
New Hunting Regulations Passed
Cornhusker Trapshoot, will be held
April 30-May 2.
BLOWOUTS
Fascinating topographical features
of the Nebraska Sandhills
Text and photos by Jon Farrar
“Wherever the sand is not held together by the roots of plants or by
moisture, or is not otherwise protected, it is little by little carried away
by the wind. If a spot on a dry hill becomes bare, the loose sand is
blown away; a hollow is made; the surrounding grass dies from the
drought; the dry sand, no longer held together by the roots, slides down
into the hollow and in its turn is borne away; and thus the hollow
becomes larger and larger.”
– Native Vegetation of Nebraska by J.E. Weaver, 1965
lowouts are sort of like
anchovies – you either love
them or you hate them.
There is a rumor going around
Cherry County that one of the
first things a Texas land investor did
after buying a ranch in the Sandhills
was to cover up the blowouts. Within
months of closing the deal, the Texan
brought in dozers and scrapers, filled
what he saw as offensive eyesores, and
B
had the scar seeded with heaven knows
what, maybe some exotic grass that
never should have been allowed to
leave Europe. Granted, there is little
love lost on Texans in that part of the
country, coming to the Sandhills with
their oily money and buying land after
first sucking all the groundwater they
could from under Texas, so the rumor
might be a bit harsh. Or not.
On the other side of the coin are the
During the early 1900s, the vegetative cover in the Sandhills was sparser than
today. Where blowouts carved deep enough, they often filled with groundwater.
10 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
blowout lovers – mostly botanists
because only in blowouts does the rare
blowout penstemon prosper; ranch
children who for generations have slid
down a blowout’s steep sandy slope;
artifact hunters who currycomb them
hoping to find an 11,000-year-old
Clovis projectile point exposed by the
wind; or folks who find the grassed
dunes monotonous, and welcome any
feature on the landscape.
There is a middle ground between
penstemon-huggers and Texans, and its
the most important range of the opinion
spectrum – that of traditional Sandhills
ranchers who have always owned most
of the blowouts and decided what to do
with them, as much as that has ever been
possible. Blowouts, like hailstorms and
sunny days, are to a large degree free
agents of climate and weather, and
control of them mostly falls in the
realm of powerful earth forces. Still,
ranchers, by either managing their
grasslands wisely for the long-term, or
by extracting as much value as possible
from them in the short-term, play a big
hand in how many blowouts are on
their ranches. Ranchers, though, are
often subject to forces beyond their
control – cash flow, cattle markets, beef
embargos, drought and mortgages –
forces that can dictate stocking rates,
how many cow-calf units stay in a
pasture for how long, and ultimately
the range condition. But before
blowouts can be described, the region
where they are found requires definition.
Restless Sand
The Sandhills region in central and
north-central Nebraska is the largest
sand dune area in the Western
Hemisphere, covering more than onefourth of the state, about 18,000 square
miles, 265 miles east to west and
130 miles north to south, about the size
A sparse cover of plants holds the
Sandhills region in place. Only 700 years
ago, the region would have looked more
like North Africa’s Sahara desert.
of states of New Hampshire and
Vermont combined. But where did all
that sand come from? The answer,
though relatively simple, is somewhat
unsatisfying – it came from many places.
Approximately 98 million years ago,
during the Cretaceous period of geologic
history (the so-called “age of giant
reptiles”), shallow seas covered much
of the continental interior. Sediments
were deposited in that sea for about 33
million years, sediments that would be
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 11
exposed when the sea level fell, eroded
and reworked as silts and sands. So
much of the sand found in central
Nebraska today was made in place.
More gravel and sand was carried by
wind and water from present-day
Wyoming and Colorado into what
became the Sandhills region. By
60,000 years ago, modern-day drainage
systems were forming across Nebraska,
carrying even more gravel and sand
from the west. At that time, the region
was a series of small dune fields with
Incessant winds have eroded sand away
from the once deeply buried root of bush
morning-glory (below), leaving it hanging
on the side of a blowout crater.
Struggling to survive, new shoots emerge
from the sand. Some blowout craters,
(opposite) may be 300 to 900 feet in
circumference and up to 75 feet deep
before the wind can carve no deeper.
12 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
streams flowing between them,
according to University of Nebraska
geologist James Swinehart.
About 12,000 years ago the midcontinent climate became more arid,
and the last of the glaciers retreated
north. By 10,000 years before the
present, grasslands had replaced spruce
forests and aspen and pine parklands.
Swinehart and his earth science
colleagues believe the Sandhills region
was largely shaped during the last
24,000 years. During that time the
wind has been a relentless sculptress,
fashioning and refashioning the surface
of the region whenever prolonged
drought stripped the dunes of its binding
vegetation. Between 24,000 and 12,000
years ago, north winds windrowed the
sand into enormous east-west ridges,
some 25 miles long, a mile wide and
more than 400 feet higher than adjacent
valley floors. These
dunes became active
again between 9,000
and 6,000 years ago,
cannibalizing themselves and moving as
much as three-fourths
of a mile. Researchers
currently believe the
Sandhills region
assumed its present
appearance within the
last 900 years during a
200-year dry period,
when northwest and
southwest winds laid a
second generation of
small dunes over the
old dunes, dunes no
more than two miles
long and 300 to 600
feet wide, oriented in a
northwest-southeast
fashion. Since that
time, drought has sent
dunes rolling over the
landscape, but on a
relatively small scale
compared to the past,
and the wind has
pocked the dunes with
small, closely spaced
blowouts.
Using a relatively
new technique called
“optically stimulated
luminescence” dating
that measures when a
grain of sand was last exposed to
sunlight, hence when dune movement
buried it, university researchers suggest
the last “mega-drought,” lasting “at
least several decades” and resulting in
“full mobilization of the sand sea,”
ended only 700 years ago.
Those findings in the early 2000s,
and earlier findings in the 1990s based
on core samples taken from the dune
field, set off a flurry of newspaper articles
under alarming headlines – “Good-bye,
Nebraska” and “Great Plains or Great
Desert? A Sea of Dunes Lies in Wait” –
suggesting it was only a matter of time
before massive ridges of sand dunes
would be knocking on Grand Island’s
back door and rolling southeasterly
toward Memorial Stadium.
Pock on the Land
“The most striking habitats of the
uplands are the ‘blow-outs.’ Blow-outs
are conical or rounded depressions of
varying depth and diameter formed by
the blowing of the sand and vegetation
from certain spots on the upper slopes
and crests of the hills. The rim of the
more or less conical depression is
sometimes almost circular, but it is
usually irregular with a general circular
outline.” So wrote University of
Nebraska botanist Raymond J. Pool in
his 1912 booklet Glimpses of the
Nebraska Sand Hills. His detailed
description of blowouts, and how they
form, are still apt today.
Pool speculated that no sooner had
vegetation colonized the newly created
dunes than disruptive forces of nature
and men began to work to again put
them in motion – massive herds of
bison that occasionally grazed the
region, native people who burned the
grasslands to improve it for wild grazers
and their own stock, periodic drought
and wildfires. When the first ranchers
came to the Sandhills, Texas longhorns
replaced bison as the primary animal
agent of soil disturbance. During the
early years of cattle ranching, stock
was run on government land, and there
was no incentive to pasture moderately.
Many ranchers overstocked, and cattle
concentrated on grasslands near lakes
and streams, their hooves breaking the
vegetative tie that bound the sand.
Wildfires swept at will across hills that
had not been overgrazed, exposing
ridges to the work of winter winds.
Turn-of-the-century photos show more
sand than vegetation on the sandy
uplands. Since the early 1900s, ranchers
who owned their land, and took the long
view pasturing it, have increased the
density of plants in the region many fold.
Stock tanks and mineral licks dispersed
across ranches, smaller pastures and
grazing systems encouraging better
livestock distribution have all reduced
erosion and the creation of blowouts.
In his 1913 doctoral thesis, Pool
wrote: “A single hill sometimes shows
only one blow-out although this one
may be so large that the whole side or
top of the hill is occupied. Frequently
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 13
several blow-outs originate upon a single
hill or ridge and they may coalesce
rather early so that a single large crater
is formed which possesses several
secondary depressions.” Left to work, a
ridgeline blowout can eventually severe
a dune or migrate down its full length.
Blowouts are most common on
northwest-facing slopes. They are
uncommon on northeast-facing slopes,
in part because they are more sheltered
from summer heat, hence the soil retains
moisture more efficiently, fostering a
wind-resistant cloak of woody shrubs,
grasses and forbs (broad-leaved plants
that die back to the ground each year).
Northwesterly winds predominate in
winter and early spring when plant
cover is most sparse and the soil surface
susceptible to erosion. By the time
southerly winds predominate, the
growing season is underway and a new
growth of vegetation helps hold surface
sand in place on south-facing slopes.
Once the cover of vegetation is broken,
the wind carves deeper and deeper into
the dune, carrying loose sand over the
hillcrest and depositing it on the lee
side of the crater rim. Coarse sand falls
out first, finer sand and silt is carried
farther away. Because the windward
side of the crater is the source of sand,
its rim is usually lower than the lee side
where sand is being deposited, and the
angles of their slopes reflect that – the
windward slope longer with a gradient
into the bottom of the crater. In this way
a spiral wind movement is frequently
developed and the wind reaches to the
very bottom of the blow-out, which
may now be fifty or more feet below
the rim. This grinding action of the
wind continues to loosen more sand at
the sides, causing it to slip more and
more into the bottom, where the wind
catches it and hurls it up over the
sloping interior surface,” Pool wrote.
He termed this wind action a “sand
mill.” After years of such scouring,
Pool noted, some blowouts are 300 to
900 feet in circumference and up to
75 feet deep. Where the water table
is close to the surface, craters are
occasionally carved deep enough during
dry periods that water seeps into them
during times of rising groundwater,
creating Pool’s seemingly incongruous
phrase – a “blow-out pond.”
“Sooner or later, however, the blowout reaches a period that may properly
be termed maturity,” Pool continued.
“At this time a depth has been reached
such that even the most vigorous wind
action fails to increase it further, the
sand mill becomes ineffective, and the
sand that slides into the bottom of the
blow-out tends to remain there.”
Pool made a clear distinction
between the classic crater-shaped
blowouts found on ridges and hills,
and expanses of exposed sand found
elsewhere in the region, such as “plane
sand-sweeps that are much broader”
and “sand-draws sometimes more than
a mile long . . . . The term blow-out
should be restricted to the crater-form
depressions which are so numerous in
certain parts of the hills and which
really exhibit the unique blow-sand
conditions of the region.”
moisture a few inches below the
surface of a blowout, so a plant’s
success or failure is initially dependent
on getting roots down to it before being
blown away.
The first plants to pioneer a blowout’s
raw sands usually establish on the
crater’s bottom or lower slopes, where
the wind velocity is lower, and on the
deposition fan outside of the crater.
One of the first species to colonize is
appropriately called blowout grass
(Redfieldia flexuosa). The survival
strategy of blowout grass is a spiderweb
of coarse and tough rhizomes
(underground stems) spreading 40 feet
or more in search of moisture.
“Redfieldia may be the only plant in
such situations for many years,” Pool
wrote. “All during this time it is
extending its area by undermining and
binding the soil with its network of
slender rhizomes. From these rhizomes
there arise tufts of long, flexuous, narrow
leaves gracefully nodding in the gentle
breeze or lashing about like so many
slender wires in the higher winds.
“After Redfieldia has once taken
charge of the habitat other species soon
begin to wander over the rim of the
blow-out and to invade the area occupied
by the first blow-out pioneer,” Pool
continued. Other grasses establishing
on the heels of blowout grass are
sandhill muhly (Muhlenbergia
pungens), plains muhly (Muhlenbergia
cuspidata), sand love grass (Eragrostis
trichodes), Indian rice grass (Stipa
hymenoides), needle-and-thread (Stipa
comata), sand bluestem (Andropogon
halli), and sand reed (Calamovilfa
longifolia). But it is pioneering forbs
that are the most conspicuous: silky
prairie clover (Dalea villosa), lemon
scurf-pea (Psoralidium lanceolata),
prairie spiderwort (Tradescantia
occidentalis), hoary vetchling
(Lathyrus polymorphus), wild begonia
(Rumex venosus), clammy weed
(Polanisia dodecandra), Geyer’s spurge
Pioneer Plants
While seemingly sterile, there is both
plant and animal life in and around a
blowout. Because of the soil disturbance,
weedy plants are often among the first to
colonize. They are prolific seed producers,
an annual crop that attracts small rodents
such as Ord’s kangaroo rat (above).
Northern prairie lizards, (opposite, top)
come to feed on ants and insects drawn
to the flowers of blowout pioneer plants
such as silky prairie clover (opposite).
14 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
of about 30 degrees, the lee side steeper
with a gradient of about 60 degrees.
“Naturally with the increasing depth
of the blow-out the direct force of the
wind becomes considerably checked by
the prominent rim of the crater,” Pool
wrote. “But peculiarly enough, as the
wind strikes the farther slope of the
blow-out a reverse current is developed
which strikes beneath the rim and dips
A blowout is a battleground between
plants struggling to gain and keep a
foothold, and soil disturbance of all
sorts hell-bent on moving sand.
Exposed sand is a hostile environment
for plants – a shifting substrate with
high temperatures and excessive
evaporation. But plants have evolved
devious strategies to persist and
reproduce, such as seeds willing to lie
dormant for decades awaiting the
opportunity to germinate and send down
roots. There is usually adequate soil
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 15
(Euphorbia geyeri), skeletonweed
(Lygodesmia juncea) and others adapted
to early stages of succession.
One of the most peculiar pioneer
plants is painted milk-vetch (Astragalus
ceramicus), a plant with a host of
colloquial and descriptive names –
bird’s-egg vetch, bird’s-egg pea,
rattlepod and painted pod. While the
plant’s flowers are inconspicuous and
pealike, the fruiting pod is showy, from
one to two inches in length, bladderlike,
and cream-colored mottled with reddishpurple, a pattern suggestive of the
mottled eggs of many birds. Within
each pod are several small, brown
seeds. The vetch’s strategy to survive in
unsettled sands is somewhat like
blowout grass. It is a perennial with
grasslike leaves to minimize moisture
loss and physical damage when
whipped about by incessant winds, and
has extensive spreading rhizomes to
anchor the sand, gather moisture and
from which new plants are sent up.
The plant that steals the show,
though, is blowout penstemon
(Penstemon haydeni), better known to
generations of ranch children in
16 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
decades gone by as blowout bluebells.
Unlike other pioneering plants, blowout
penstemon appears lush and extravagant,
forming dense clumps after a few
years and bearing compact clusters of
tubular, pink to milky blue flowers that
are strongly fragrant in late-May and
early June. Until discovered in a dune
field in Wyoming in 1996, the species
was believed to grow only in
Nebraska’s Sandhills. Pool considered
the species “one of the more common
and typical species” of the Sandhills
blowout community in the early 1900s.
By the 1940s, though, it was thought
to be extinct because the control of
wildfires and improved grazing practices
had eliminated so much of the disturbed
habitat it requires. In the early 1980s,
after several years of searching,
Nebraska botanists could locate only
five populations totaling approximately
600 plants in the Sandhills. In 1987,
the species was listed as federally
endangered.
Like other pioneer plants, blowout
penstemon has evolved physical
characteristics to prosper in unstable,
relatively infertile, sandy soils. A thick,
Blowouts (opposite) are most common on
northwest-facing slopes where exposed
to winter winds. Blowout penstemon
(above) requires raw sand to prosper. Its
tubular blue flowers earned it yet another
name – blowout bluebells. It forms into
dense clumps (top), producing many
seeds that can wait years to germinate.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 17
Professor of Grassland Ecology at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
who has studied, propagated and
reestablished blowout penstemon
during the last 30 years, believes that
blowout penstemon has a life span of
only six to eight years. “There is no
reason for it to live longer because its
habitat moves away from it,” he said.
After years of stocking artificially
propagated plants, blowout penstemon
may now be abundant enough to no
longer need an endangered species
designation. Stubbendieck estimates
there are more than 22,000 plants in
Nebraska today, 85 percent of which
are introduced populations.
larvae build new sand funnels, waiting,
concealed at the bottom to engulf
unwary insects falling into their
primitive trap. Skittish earless and
northern prairie lizards come from
hiding to bask, warming their cold
blood enough to dart here and there
after insect prey or mates.
Turn at the Blowout
There was a time in the Sandhills,
not all that many decades ago, when
conspicuous blowouts were landmarks,
often used to guide travelers – “Take
this trail north, and just before the big
Hamilton blowout take the trail west.”
The days of trail roads between isolated,
small Sandhills towns are now resigned
to history, and enduring blowouts are
nearly a thing of the past. Most ranchers wage war on their blowouts. To
some, they are seen as unsightly,
maybe hint at poor range management
such as overgrazing and as lost grazing,
even though blowouts are but a
miniscule fraction of a percent of the
total acreage of most ranches. To some
ranchers, blowouts are like dandelions
in an urban lawn or a weedy fencerow
in farm country. Blowouts have been
filled with tires, old and poor quality
prairie hay, cottonwood branches,
and have served as ranch dumps for
everything from cast-off machinery
and fallen outbuildings to tin cans,
appliances and coils of too-old-to-use
barbed wire. Many are on the verge of
becoming an archeologist’s summer
project, or a treasure hunter’s booty
of Indian head pennies and medicine
bottles from times before screw-top
caps.
Many blowouts could be made to
vanish in a few short years with
moderate grazing and a run of wet years,
but there will always be some – that is
the nature of a dune field only tentatively
held in place by sparse vegetation.
Ranches that have been wisely pastured
for three or four generations have
blowouts, and so do public grasslands
in the region, lands where making a
profit by raising cattle is not a concern,
and so grazing is moderate. There are
even ranchers who sort of like having
a blowout or two, places for grandkids
to play and for blowout bluebells to
blossom in spring. If the wind has its
way, that is assured. ■
Written in Sand
One of the most curious sights in a
blowout are the bladderlike seedpods of
painted milk-vetch (above). Its flowers are
inconspicuous and pealike, and its leaves
stemlike to endure the constant abrasion
of blowing sand. On the rim of blowouts,
more showy flowers are found, such as
bractless mentzelia (opposite). While its
flowers are delicate, the rest of plant is
well adapted to the blowout’s harsh
environment, with modest, tough leaves
covered with small, barbed hairs.
waxy cuticle over its long, narrow
leaves protects the plant from abrasion
by wind-driven sand and slows the loss
of moisture from the plant. The deep
taproots tenaciously hold plants in
place and seek moisture deep in the
blowout’s sands. The stems of the plant
are what botanists term adventitious,
meaning that if sand is eroded from
around a plant and the stalks come to
recline on the sand, new roots are sent
out along it, establishing additional
plants. Wind blows the penstemon’s
seeds into the deposition zone on the lee
side of the crater where they are buried,
but as the blowout advances down or
across a ridge they are uncovered.
Blowout penstemon seeds can be
buried and remain dormant for decades,
ready to germinate when conditions are
favorable. In fact, the seeds need to be
exposed and scarified by blowing sand
to germinate. James Stubbendieck,
18 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
Plants are so sparsely spaced in a
blowout they are conspicuous. Animal
life is not so evident – it doesn’t put
down roots and stay in one place.
There is little reason for most animals
to frequent the near-sterile and unstable
blowout environment, and unlike plants
there are no animals specifically adapted
to life in a blowout.
Animal life in blowouts is mostly
noted by implication – the presence of
tracks and burrows. In the early morning,
after nocturnal animals have been
active and before the wind rises to
erase traces of their passage, there may
be tiny, telltale tracks of native mice
that came to hunt sloughed-off plant
seeds, perhaps the serpentine trail of a
western hog-nosed snake on the hunt
for lizards or toads, or the ploddingly
parallel tracks of a passing ornate box
turtle in search of a mate. Badgers
and skunks have long since recused
themselves to dark dens excavated in
the still firm sand near the tops of the
crater. On the margins, or where
vegetation has gained a toehold in the
blowout, are the multiple entrances to
Ord’s kangaroo rats’ underground
labyrinths. And if the little mice were
active during the night, there will be an
apron of fresh sand kicked out of the
burrow’s mouth. As the day warms,
ants resume their thoughtless labor,
burrowing deeper, working to keep
windblown sand from covering their
previous day’s progress. Maroon-andcream tiger beetles skate across the
sands like water striders on a film of
pond water, and their grotesque ant lion
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 19
Catch and Release?
By Daryl Bauer, Fisheries Biologist
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
Turnng loose a potential meal may seem to defeat the purpose of fishing,
but there is a way to have your “cake” and release it too – selective harvest.
ull up a chair with any group of
anglers sharing a few beverages
and telling stories nowadays
and it’s a good bet that at some point
the words “catch-and-release” will
come up. Depending on the group, the
Author Daryl Bauer carefully shows off a 25-inch trophy wiper caught and released
while fishing at Lake Ogallala.
20 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
to this debate?
There are many examples of the
benefits of catch-and-release sport
fishing. To qualify for a Nebraska
Master Angler award, a largemouth
bass has to weigh five pounds or
measure at least 20 inches if it is
immediately released. If it isn’t, it can
only qualify for the award by meeting
the weight requirement, which is harder
to do. Because anglers consistently
release more than 80 percent of the
Master Angler bass caught in
Nebraska, there are almost always
more largemouth bass entered in the
Master Angler program each year
than any other species, proving how
released fish can continue to provide
angling excitement for others.
Another example comes from 2006,
when the top waters for Master Angler
fish of any species were Red Willow
and Branched Oak reservoirs. At Red
Willow, 161 of 165 (98 percent) of
all trophy fish were released, while
142 of 149 (95 percent) were released
at Branched Oak. Both waters have
consistently produced large numbers
of trophy fish in recent years because
of the long-term practice of voluntary
catch-and-release of big fish at Red
Willow, and the mandated release of
all flathead catfish and wipers at
Branched Oak since 2000.
Catch-and-release can be an
important tool in developing and
maintaining quality fishing, but never
forget that fish are a renewable
resource and anglers should continue
the tradition of savoring a good meal
of fresh fish if they want to. So is
there a general rule to apply to which
fish should be harvested and which
ones should be released? In some
places, length limit or other
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
PHOTO BY DANIEL BAUER
P
discussion may become a little
more animated at that point – some
anglers practice catch-and-release
with religious fervor, while others
“catch all they can, and can all
they catch.” Is there a happy medium
regulations require catch-and-release
because fisheries managers have
specific objectives they want to
achieve, such as ensuring there are
enough large predators available to
keep panfish, prey fish or rough fish
in check.
In many cases, however, the decision
to catch and release or catch and keep
is the responsibility of the individual
angler. No one can tell an angler what
his or her ethics or standards should
be, but in recent years more and more
anglers are adopting the philosophy
of “selective harvest,” a term coined
by In-Fisherman magazine to
describe the practice of keeping only
the species or sizes of fish that can
withstand some harvest while
releasing those that are less abundant.
In most cases, practicing selective
harvest dictates that anglers harvest
only as many fish as needed to enjoy
a meal or two of fresh fish – it is not
about filling the freezer with fillets.
Some of the species that are
typically more abundant and can
withstand some harvest are those of
the panfish family: crappie, bluegills
and even bass. Conveniently, these are
also some of the best on the table.
Large predator fish are almost always
less abundant and better candidates
for release in order to maintain quality
fishing. In fact, large individuals of
any species, even panfish, are almost
always less abundant and therefore
good candidates for release. In practice,
on a reservoir with a 15-inch minimum
length limit for walleye, selective
harvest would prescribe taking a few
15- to 18-inch walleyes for a meal of
walleye almondine while taking a
picture of a 28-incher and turning her
loose. Another example would be
throwing a few of those 7- to 8-inch
bluegills on the ice while slipping that
honest to goodness “pounder” back
down the ice hole. How about a
40-inch flathead or muskie? Those
large predators are the least abundant
and therefore the best candidates for
release. Big fish are hard to catch not
because they are so smart, but
because they are so rare. By releasing
those fish, the fun of catching them
Get hooked fish in and back to the water quickly, carefully supporting their body
while unhooking or taking pictures, to increase their odds of survival.
can be enjoyed again.
But how about the joy of showing off
that big fish? Many anglers decide to
keep a trophy fish to have it mounted,
but modern technology gives us the
option of releasing that memorable
fish and still having a great-looking
mount to show off. With a few
pictures and measurements of the
fish, many taxidermists can match
its exact size and coloration with a
reproduction mount that is of better
quality and will last longer than a
skin mount of the actual fish.
Again, the decision to keep or
release a legal fish is one that anglers
have to make on their own, but angler
attitudes are evolving. A lot of us
enjoy eating fresh fish, but the
emphasis on harvest is a lot less
than it used to be. That is a good
thing, because if the oceans can be
overfished, there isn’t a body of water
in Nebraska that can’t be. Catch-andrelease or selective harvest is being
practiced by many anglers, and it’s a
practice that can help maintain and
improve the fishing for all of us. ■
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 21
Archery For Novices
Photos and text by
Doug Carroll
Bowhunting is a great sport, but it’s one that
requires a lot of practice and preparation.This
first of a two part series gives you some tips on
buying equipment and shooting correctly.
practicing with broadheads, scouting
and stand placement. Remember, fall
seems like a long way away, but it really
isn’t. If you want to try bowhunting for
the first time this year, now is the time
to start.
Buying Equipment
Nathan Michl of Lincoln practices his shooting form at the Prairie Bowmen Archery Club range in Lincoln.
re you tired of watching the
bucks you’ve patterned all
summer suddenly vanish into
thin air by the time the
firearm deer season rolls
around? Tired of knocking on doors,
trying to get permission to hunt during
the gun season, only to be told no
because there’s already going to be too
many deer hunters on the land?
Maybe you’re just looking for a new
A
22 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
challenge, a way to start the deer season
earlier or the chance to possibly harvest
a doe or two for the freezer while you
wait for Mr. Big to trot past your stand.
If this sounds like you, I’ve got your
answer – bowhunting.
Bowhunting deer is a challenge, but
it’s a sport that is also terribly addictive.
To be able to harvest a game animal
with a bow, you have to be very quiet
and still, so you’ll see and hear things
in the woods that many people never
get to enjoy.
Because learning to accurately shoot
a bow requires time and lots of practice,
however, bowhunting is not a sport you
should try to pick up two weeks before
the season starts. While most people
can pick up a modern deer rifle and
become fairly competent with it after
just a few trips to the rifle range,
shooting a bow well enough to harvest
a deer requires a lot of practice. In
addition, the close proximity needed
for ethical shots at deer requires extra
attention to stand placement and
knowledge of deer movement. This
month I’ll cover some basic equipment
needs and shooting form suggestions to
get you started in this great sport, and
in the August/September issue I’ll
give you some tips on making final
preparations for the season, including
When my friend Norman and I started
bowhunting some 25 years ago, it was
both easier and harder than it is today.
It was easier because we didn’t have as
many choices to make when it came to
equipment, but it was harder because
the gear available wasn’t nearly as
good as it is now. With that increase in
quality, however, has come an increase
in price – to the degree that the sport
may be intimidating to the pocketbook.
It doesn’t have to be, however.
While there is a plethora of better,
fancier equipment available today, the
basic equipment needed to bowhunt
deer is the same today as it was when I
started – you need a bow, some arrows
and some sharp broadheads.
Some archers prefer to use recurve or
other traditional bows, but the majority
of bowhunters today use compound
bows, and that is what I would
recommend that you start off with.
Because a compound bow has a series
of off-round pulleys or cams at the
ends of the bow limbs that store energy
in the string itself as well as the limbs,
it can create more power and a a faster
arrow) than a similarly sized ttraditional
bow. This design also gives the archer
“let-off,” which means that at a certain
point of the bow being drawn back, the
cams begin holding most of the weight
instead of the archer. As a result, the
archer can aim the bow more easily
and can wait longer for a deer to present
a suitable target.
The first time you visit a serious
archery shop, you may be surprised to
find that many of today’s top-of- theline bows cost as much, or more, than a
high-powered rifle, even without any
accessories. While these marvels of
technology may be the latest, greatest
thing to fling an arrow, they’re probably
not what you need or want to start your
bowhunting adventures. In fact, they
may be the last things you want
because many of these speed burners
require perfect form to shoot correctly,
and they might drive you nuts before
you can achieve this form.
Luckily you don’t need an expensive,
or even new, bow to kill your first deer.
The first deer I harvested fell from an
arrow launched by a very basic, early
model Bear compound, and while part
of me really wants to upgrade my
current bow, it’s just as effective today
as it was when I bought it used almost
15 years ago. Look for some type of
mid-priced new or used bow. A lot of
good, used bows can often be found at
Harvesting game animals with a bow and
arrow requires hours of practice and
careful attention to detail.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 23
Bowhunter Ed
Proper follow-through means keeping your bow arm on target while pulling straight back with your release hand, as illustrated by
the shooting form of Erica Anshutz, a world-class archer from Grand Island.
archery shops as people trade up for
newer bows, but make sure the bow
has been checked for defects before
buying it.
The most important thing to do is to
buy a bow that fits you and can meet
the minimum poundage required for
hunting deer in Nebraska (at least
40 pounds of draw weight at or before
28 inches of draw). If you have little or
no experience in archery, enlist the help
of an experienced friend or an archery
pro shop when looking for a bow. I
consider a bow to be a good fit when
my release hand is at my anchor point
(discussed later), the bow is drawn
back as far as it can go and my bow
arm has only a slight bend in it.
Drawing a 40-pound bow is easily
done by most adult men, but it can be
difficult to do for some women and
young archers. Don’t worry about it
too much, however, when you’re just
starting out, because the back and arm
Archery shops like this one at Scheels All Sports in Lincoln are great places to look at a variety of equipment and get expert advice.
24 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
muscles used to draw a bow develop
quickly with plenty of practice. If
possible, try to purchase a bow that is
adjustable both in poundage and draw
length. The draw weights of many
bows can be easily changed, so a
young or beginning archer can begin
practicing at say, 25 pounds of pull,
and gradually increase the poundage up
to the minimum legal weight of 40 as
their muscles develop. Bows with
adjustable draw lengths work well
for growing kids or if you want to
experiment with different types of
arrow releases or rests.
Another thing to think about when
choosing a bow is whether or not you
plan on using an arrow release, a
mechanism used by some hunters to
release the string instead of using their
fingers, because using a release may
affect your draw length. The advantages
of using a release are that it is easier on
your fingers, it gives you a cleaner,
more consistent release and the fact
that many modern bows are so short
that the string angle created when the
bow is drawn demands that a release be
used for consistent shot placement. The
type of arrow rest you use might also
affect your need to use a release. The
disadvantage of using a release is that
it is another thing you have to buy and
it is something else that can break, get
lost or be forgotten in the car or back
home.
One thing Norman and I didn’t have
to think much about when we started
out were arrows. Our choices back then
were arrows with wooden shafts (not
readily available or very cheap) or
aluminum (readily available and fairly
cheap, but somewhat prone to bending
and sometimes mass-produced with
less-then-great quality assurances).
Today carbon composite-type arrows
dominate the market, although
aluminum arrows are still available and
are of much better quality than those I
started out with. Whatever type of
arrow you choose, make sure it matches
the draw weight and poundage your
bow is set at.
Practice, practice,
practice
Once you have suitable equipment,
perhaps the single-most important thing
that will determine your success or
failure in the woods this fall is your
ability to place arrows where you want
them. You can be hunting the best spot
in the woods, where deer are constantly
around you, but if you can’t shoot
accurately, you’re going to miss the
deer completely or, worse yet, simply
wound it. The way to keep this from
happening is to practice, practice,
practice, but you have to do so with
good form or you won’t achieve your
maximum ability.
The key to shooting a bow well
is consistency. In the woods you
sometimes have to shoot from awkward
Hunters ages 12 through
29 hunting deer, antelope,
elk or bighorn sheep with
bow and arrow must
successfully complete a
bowhunter education
course prior to hunting or
purchase an Apprentice
Hunter Education Exemption
Certificate from the Nebraska
Game and Parks
Commission.
The Bowhunter Education
class lasts a minimum of
ten hours and is taught by
volunteer instructors
across the state throughout
the year. It’s a great class
for new archers to take
even if they don’t have to,
because it teaches a lot of
things they can use in the
field.
For a list of classes
scheduled in your area,
contact your local NGPC
office, or go online to
outdoornebraska.org, click
on Hunting, then Bowhunter
Classes.
positions, but as you begin developing
your archery skills, try to be consistent
with your form. If you do, you’ll soon
start thinking more about the target
than how you’re holding or drawing the
bow, and your accuracy will increase
dramatically.
Start by developing a good stance,
your feet at a 90-degree angle to the
target, shoulder-width apart and your
body weight equal on both legs. Your
shoulders should line up with an
imaginary line drawn from the center
of the target. Now move your front foot
(the one closet to the target) back so
that your toes are even with the midpoint of your back foot and turn your
front foot slightly toward the target.
This will give you a solid base to shoot
from.
The ideal way to “hold” a bow at full
draw is by forming a “V” with the
thumb and forefinger and putting the
bow’s grip against the meaty part of
your thumb. During the draw and
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 25
release of the arrow, the bow should
not be gripped as much as it is simply
pushed away from the body. To help
achieve a proper grip, many archers use
a bow sling to prevent the bow from
falling out of their hand upon arrow
release. Note: If you have to “reach for
the sky” in order to get your bow
pulled back, then you’re “over bowed”
and need to lower your draw weight.
Dropping the poundage will give you
better form and allow you to practice
more without getting overly tired. If
needed, you can always increase the
draw weight later as you gain strength
from practicing. If you continue to
draw too heavy of a bow, you risk
developing poor form and may be
spotted by that big buck walking past
your tree stand next fall, wondering what
the heck all that grunting, groaning and
movement above him is about.
At full draw, the elbow of your
release arm ideally should line up with
the arrow and pointed straight behind
you, while your fingers or arrow release
are “anchored” at a spot on your face
or head that feels comfortable and
which you can easily return to shot
after shot. Some people like to anchor
at the corner of their mouth, some at
the tip of their nose and some release
shooters tuck their index knuckle into
the notch just below their ear. Whatever
anchor point you choose, be consistent
with it if you want to be accurate.
While some people do very well by
aiming instinctively, most people are
better off using a bow sight, which
requires the shooter to line the sight up
with the target before releasing the
arrow. Some sights have built-in levels,
which really help in making sure you
aren’t canting your bow (turning the
bow to the left or right) during a shot.
Combined with the use of peep sights,
an aiming device that can be attached
to the bowstring, bow sights make it
much easier for bowhunters to hit their
targets consistently.
As you work on your shooting form,
you’ll find it is much easier to start
with your bow arm a bit high and slowly
lower your sight pin onto to the target
versus starting low and trying to raise
the pin up gradually. When your sight
is centered on the target, gently release
the arrow. If you’re using proper follow
through, your slightly bent bow arm
will straighten out toward the target
while your release arm stays put or
travels straight back and your shoulder
blades come together. It’s almost like
ripping a towel in half. During the
release, try to keep your sight on target
until the arrow strikes. Doing so will
help ensure that you are using proper
form and aren’t dropping your bow
arm, which can cause the arrow to
strike low.
The first couple of times you shoot,
don’t worry too much about where
your arrows are hitting. The first couple
of weeks should be about developing
muscle strength and proper shooting
form. I would recommend shooting a
couple dozen arrows per session at first
and building up repetitions from there.
If that feels like too many, shoot fewer
– if it’s too few, shoot more. Just make
sure you don’t overdue things.
As you get stronger and become
comfortable with the bow, then you
can start worrying about where the
Bowfishing is a lot of fun and is a great way to practice archery skills during the summer.
arrows are hitting. Even then, pay more
attention to how small of a grouping
you can get with your arrows than with
how many bull’s-eyes you are getting –
your bow sight can always be adjusted
to indicate where the arrows will land,
but only after you achieve consistent
form.
Following these tips should get you
headed down the road to bowhunting
success. If you need a good place to
practice and want to pick the brains of
experienced bowhunters, ask local
sporting goods store about archery
ranges, clubs and shooting competitions
in your area. Even if you don’t yet feel
comfortable competing yourself,
competitions can be a great way to see
how other people shoot. Good luck and
good shooting. ■
Travis Stevenson of Lincoln shows how he anchors his mechanical release prior to shooting an arrow.
26 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
In the August/September issue, we’ll
talk about broadhead selection,
practicing for real hunting situations,
shot selection and touch briefly on
scouting and stand placement.
Mentored Archery Program
When I started bowhunting with a friend in high school,
neither Norman or I had any experience with deer hunting and
neither did any of our family members or friends. Needless to
say, we weren’t very successful the first couple of years – the
learning curve was just too steep.
If you are between the ages of 12 and 17, the Nebraska Game
and Parks Commission might be able to help you avoid many of
the mistakes we made. Through its mentored youth archery
program, the Commission pairs youth with experienced
mentors who can help guide them to bowhunting success and
provide hunting opportunities they might otherwise lack.
Interested youth must have successfully completed a state
certified bowhunter education program and submit a
completed application and parental release form by August 1.
Chosen youth will need to provide their own archery equipment
and pass a profiency test. Mentor programs are currently
underway in the Omaha, Lincoln, Wayne, Grand Island, Kearney,
North Platte, Scottsbluff areas, but more may be added if
additional hunting areas and mentors are found. For more
information or to receive a registration form, contact Aaron
Hershberger at aaron.hershberger@ngpc.ne.gov or (402) 4716144.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 27
Text and photos by Jeff Kurrus
Each visitor comes to Fremont Lakes State
Recreation Area, 30 miles northwest of Omaha,
with a different purpose in mind, and the area
gladly accommodates.
T
his year over 800,000 people
will visit Fremont Lakes State
Recreation Area (SRA), 30
miles northwest of Omaha.
With only 210 acres of water
available, numbers this high make it
seem as if a person would never be able
to find a patch of water for themselves.
That, however, is not the case. Instead,
there is more than enough water for an
angler, water skier, canoeist or swimmer,
and most certainly enough land for the
walker, bicyclist, motorist or beach
bum passing through. All one needs at
a place like this is a spot to camp.
Which the area can gladly oblige.
On a summer day late last year,
catfish angler Robert Bells sat at a
picnic table by Lake No. 3, an
afternoon trip providing a very
necessary after-work break. Legs crossed
and arms folded, he enjoyed the last
moments of the day at a lake where his
was the only line in the water – a
somewhat odd occurrence considering
how good the fishing can be at this SRA.
In 2007, Fremont Lakes SRA was
listed in Field & Stream magazine as
one of the top 150 places to fish in the
United States. With 20 sandpit lakes
spread out over 667 acres of land, this
SRA offers a variety of fish species,
including channel catfish, bluegill,
muskellunge and largemouth bass. With
both deep and shallow water, wooded
cover, submerged vegetation, rip-rap
and other man-made structures available,
Fremont gives anglers options when
searching for their favorite sport fish.
In addition, Lake No. 3 has been
made into a bullhead lake – a project
started last June by the Nebraska Game
and Parks Commission to increase
fishing interest. Because bullheads are
so easy to catch, it’s a great spot for
kids to take a bobber and a worm and
Fremont Lakes SRA’s Victory Lake provides one of eastern Nebraska’s best options for water recreation.
Canada geese swim across Lake No. 5 at Fremont Lakes SRA during a thunderstorm.
28 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
start fishing.
The SRA also accommodates a variety
of watercraft. Lakes 4, 17 and 19 have
dirt and rock boat ramps while 1, 2, 10,
11, 12, 18, 20 and Victory Lake (No. 15)
have concrete boat ramps for bigger
boats. Kayaks, canoes and johnboats
are welcome on all the lakes, and land
anglers often have as much luck as the
boat anglers. Even on its busiest
holiday weekends, when it seems as if
there would be an angler behind every
tree, there is still good, fishable water
available. “While the fishing pressure is
constant,” said park superintendent Bill
Booth, “spreading it over 20 lakes is
beneficial.”
True to Booth’s words, a group of
anglers were bluegill fishing at Lake
No. 5 that afternoon. Donovan and
Chloe Tuttle had their dad, Patrick,
fishing in circles – rigging rods here
and casting bait there. Chloe pointed
toward a family of geese swimming
across the lake, her interest in
everything around her much more
prevalent than her desire to pay
attention to a silly old bobber.
Another group of waterfowl walked
close to young Paige Sandness at
Victory Lake as she pointed at them,
smiled, then watched the jet skiers circle
Victory Lake’s island. At 86 surface
acres, Victory Lake (with attached
Lake No. 10) is one of the metropolitan
area’s most popular watersport hotspots
throughout the summer due to the
limited number of skiable lakes in
eastern Nebraska.
Recent projects by the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission have
improved the water recreation
experience at Victory by widening its
channels and scraping back points on
the south side of the lake in an effort to
provide more surface area for personal
watercraft. That day, Dale Demont was
one of those participants, taking a lap
at Victory on his jet ski. His extended
family looked on, deciding whether a
leisurely stroll through the park or a
campfire chat by the lake seemed the
best ticket for the afternoon.
Others also watched Demont, as well
as the other boats and jet skis, pass.
Some did so from the buoyed swimming
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 29
To Fremont
6
7
3a
4
8
3
5
2
1
Railroad Line
★
Mil
itar
yA
ven
ue
9
APPROXIMATELY
ONE-HALF MILE
Fremont Lakes
State Recreation Area
Fremont Lakes SRA offers more than 200
camping sites with electrical hookups and 600
without electricity. Under mature shade trees,
the area also offers modern showers, trailer
dump stations and four swimming beaches.
10
11
16
12
17
15
18
20
To
Do
wn
tow
nF
rem
ont
13
19
14
SRA Boundary
areas added on Victory Lake, and others
from the 70 modern and 15 primitive
campsites overlooking Victory.
A hot ticket item during the summer
months, this SRA’s padded sites fill up
quick, and can receive reservations up
to 12 months in advance. Along Victory
is a high-energy camping section. On
the south section of the SRA, where
Victory is located, there are 168 modern
camping pad sites with 60 primitive
sites available. But, as Booth pointed
out, depending on the camping
atmosphere desired, there are plenty of
other options for visitors as well.
On the area’s north side, across
Military Avenue, a much quieter,
reserved camping option is available at
Paige Sandness looks at a group of waterfowl on Victory Lake.
The use of personal watercraft is permitted at lake Nos. 10, Victory Lake (15) and 20.
30 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
Along Victory Lake is a high-action campsite that allows visitors to either watch personal watercraft on the lake or
participate in watersports themselves.
both Fisherman’s Point and
Cottonwood Cove, where 25 modern
pads can be found. On this side of the
SRA, tent campers can also set up
anywhere there’s an open spot.
“You can rough it in a primitive
setting, making your own food over fire,”
said Booth, “or you can use your cell
phone to call in an order of food from
the concession, the Lakeside Country
Store and Grill. At night you can look
at the stars over the campfire, or take
the kids to a movie four miles away.”
Campers that afternoon, as well as
day visitors, took advantage of all the
amenities the area had to offer. A couple
dined by sunset at a picnic table while
Fremont native Jeff Kumm pushed his
three kids, T.J., Jayden, and Elle, on the
playground swings near Lake No. 10.
Dogs and their owners raced to see who
could pull who the quickest; bike riders
rolled through the park as kids camping
with their parents attempted to give chase
on their own bikes; walkers moved
through a group of ducks walking down
the street with them, and a group of
teenagers swam at one of the SRA’s
four beaches.
After the summer, the numbers of
boaters will decrease dramatically, and
Fremont Lakes SRA will turn into
another, entirely different, public area.
Quiet and reserved throughout, the
yellow glow of fall cottonwood trees
will prevail, and a walk or ride through
the area might even prompt an afternoon
nap by the lakeside.
It will be just another day at Fremont
Lakes SRA, where a new park will
welcome visitors each time they arrive. ■
David Carpenter and his grandson Patrick Carpenter fish for largemouth
bass at Lake No. 16.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 31
Nine-mile
Creek
The history and future of a
western Nebraska trout stream
Text and photos by Bob Grier
T
hroughout most of its history,
Nine Mile Creek east of
Scottsbluff in the Nebraska
Panhandle has been described
as one of the High Plains’s
finest coldwater trout streams. The
story of the migratory strain of rainbow
trout that traveled up the North Platte
River from Lake McConaughy to spawn
in Nine Mile and other tributaries has
been told many times. Surprisingly, the
real story of Nine Mile Creek is even
more complex than the development of
an upstream migrating rainbow trout
population – Nine Mile’s story is a
story of human industry, intrigue,
indifference, foresight, and continuing
promise and peril.
Nine Mile Creek in its present
appearance didn’t exist before the
arrival of the first ranchers, cowboys,
frontier job-seekers, community boosters
and homesteaders in western
Nebraska’s North Platte River Valley as
recently as the
1870s. Nine Mile’s
history actually
began quietly on a
mid-summer day
in 1886 on a small
spring just west of
the current Nine
Mile drainage.
The summer
heat and the
prairie’s relentless
winds were taking
a toll on a five-acre
Marked by clipped
tail fins, recaptured
rainbow (upper) and
brown trout (lower)
provide the data
needed for trout
population
estimates in Nine
Mile Creek. The
clipped tail fins
quickly regrow and
a second sampling
is needed within
weeks for accurate
data.
32 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
Winter’s higher flows and sheltered streambanks provide some of the best opportunities of the year on Nine Mile Creek
for anglers like Wayne Sedivy of Alliance.
millet field just south of B.F. Gentry’s
homestead near a rare, life-giving
spring later named in honor of Rebecca
Winters, who died on the Mormon
Trail on August 15, 1852. Her grave,
including the engraved iron wheel rim
used to mark it, can still be seen along
Highway 26 just west of Winters Creek
on the east edge of Scottsbluff.
In all probability, Mr. Gentry and a
neighbor hadn’t ever heard the word
“irrigation,” but with the spirit that
helped pioneers overcome adversity
wherever it was encountered across the
still-young nation, the men used shovels
to dig a quarter-mile-long furrow from
the spring to the millet field. Their
small effort was quick to blossom all
along the North Platte River.
Several far-sighted individuals
arrived in the North Platte Valley about
that same time, men who had already
seen the promise of irrigation in other
states. They quickly set about organizing
the construction of a system of canals
and laterals that would deliver water
from the North Platte River to farmers’
fields.
In just five years, a list of the region’s
irrigation canals included Winter Creek,
Minatare, Mutual, Mitchell, Enterprise,
Castle Rock, Bayard, Chimney Rock,
Interstate, Tri-State, Farmer’s and Nine
Mile. What had started as a region that
looked everything like the land that
early explorers had described as the
Great American Desert had become the
state’s leading irrigation region. Word
of the bountiful crops of grains and
vegetables spread far and wide.
With the arrival of large-scale surface
irrigation, however, came unintended
consequences, including newly formed
wetlands, probably from elevated
groundwater plus seepage and flooding
that occurred when rainfall during the
irrigation season required district
irrigation managers to release excess
water in order to prevent blow-outs of
the earthen canal banks. As early as
1904, Bayard’s newspaper, The
★
Nine Mile Creek Wildlife Management
Area, located three miles east of Minatare
on U.S. 26 and six miles north on a county
road, offers 178 acres of fishing and
hunting access. Public access is also
available on private land enrolled in walk-in
access agreements and marked by signs
such as the one on page 37.
Transcript, noted losses from “waste
water flooding” and shortly thereafter,
judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 33
Nine Mile Creek is known as the best of all of
the North Platte Valley’s trout streams, but
declining water levels related to the High Plains
drought, restricted water use and more efficient
irrigation application systems are taking their toll.
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission fisheries biologists Tony Munter and Al Hanson use electro-fishing gear on the creek at
Nine Mile WMA to capture trout for their on-going population study.
ruled that owners of canals were
responsible for seepage water.
Drains to carry the spillwater and
rainfall from prairie thunderstorms
during the irrigation season were
originally dug by hand, but Frank
McCarter of Bayard later invented a
canal digging machine that could cut
through the large wetlands created by
rising groundwater levels and seepage,
digging a five-foot deep, sixteen-foot
wide canal.
Described as “simply a corn lister
only many times larger,” McCarter’s
invention was tied to three large
capstans, each with a team of four
horses and holding up to a quarter-mile
of steel cable. One history of the region
34 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
says that “the summer of 1917 was
exceedingly busy” for McCarter and
his canal machine. The North Platte
Valley wetlands were quickly converted
into fertile agriculture fields tied into
the surface water irrigation systems.
The tremendous seepage from the
porous canal water delivery system,
added to the subsurface groundwater
table that was trapped above
impermeable layers of Brule clay below
the North Platte Valley floor, set the
stage for Nine Mile’s drain and other
hand-dug drains located downstream of
the major irrigation canals to become
full-fledged, perennial flowing streams.
Historically, permanently flowing
North Platte River tributaries included
only Sheep Creek along the WyomingNebraska border and perhaps a few
others, including Winter Creek, that
had short stretches of permanent stream.
Pioneer historians noted there were very
few opportunities for homesteading on
the north side of the North Platte
because of the difficulty of finding water.
The earliest settlers were forced to
carry water from the river. Additionally,
the region’s only wood was located
south of the river near the Wildcat Hills
escarpment.
During the first years of the 20th
century, maps of the North Platte River
Valley were replete with the names of
wet and dry creeks – designating full
and part-time, intermittent drains and
streams, including Nine Mile, Wet and
Dry Wild Horse, Wet and Dry Red
Willow, Stuckenhole Creek, Mitchell
Drain, Alliance Drain and other streams.
Nine Mile and Red Willow became the
largest streams feeding into the North
Platte River.
Construction of Kingsley Dam on the
North Platte River began in 1936 and
Lake McConaughy filled by 1952. But
even earlier, at least by the 1930s, state
and private individuals had stocked
Panhandle streams, including Otter
Creek and Lonegren Creek, which flow
directly into McConaughy, as well as
Nine Mile and other North Platte
tributary streams, with rainbow trout.
According to Rod VanVelson, a
fisheries biologist and trout specialist
with the Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission in the Panhandle between
1966 and 1978, the early stocking of
rainbow trout from Nebraska hatcheries
and other state and federal hatcheries
across the country was the prelude to
the development of migratory rainbows
in Nine Mile Creek and other North
Platte Valley streams.
“It is not too difficult to believe that
trout stockings in those early days relied
on numerous sources and strains of
rainbows and it was likely that some
of them, possibly from federal fish
hatcheries in the northwest, had
steelhead genetics and migratory
tendencies.
“One scenario of how migratory
rainbow runs developed in the upper
North Platte Valley could be that during
the filling of McConaughy, rainbow
from a variety of hatchery sources were
stocked in the upstream drainage and in
the three small streams flowing directly
into McConaughy. Some of these
rainbow may have moved downstream
either by random movement,
displacement by floods or as a response
to temporary changes in water quality
possibly due to any number of factors,
including irrigation return and high
water temperatures. These displaced
rainbows matured in McConaughy and
they naturally began seeking out
spawning sites in streams above the
lake since rainbow require running
water in gravel habitats to successfully
spawn.
“Early conservation officers reported
anglers catching tremendous five- and
even ten-pound rainbows in North
Platte Valley streams and at Lake
McConaughy during the ‘50s. Those
fish became the migratory rainbow
population that migrated into the North
Platte tributary streams and produced
some of the finest trophy trout fishing
found anywhere.”
Trout and other fish are momentarily
stunned by the electrical current flowing
between the hand-held electrodes. Fish
captured for the population study are
measured, marked, recorded and released
back into the stream.
The nearly immediate evolution of
the migratory strain of rainbow trout in
McConaughy and the North Platte Valley
feeder streams was dramatic.
“The migratory rainbow runs in Nine
Mile and other tributary streams
continued through the 1970s before
environmental changes in the upstream
drainage and in Lake McConaughy
created serious impacts on the migratory
population. These changes included the
stocking of striped bass that became
efficient trout predators, especially
when small rainbows from the tributary
streams migrated into the lake, and later
in the summer when the lower reservoir
water levels had reduced the size of the
summer trout habitat – water less than
70 degrees with oxygen levels greater
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 35
Nine Mile Creek provides a haven for flora and fauna in the fertile North Platte River Valley’s extensive agricultural landscape.
Stream improvement projects, like this one in 1996, reduced erosion and promoted productive meanders and associated wetlands.
New efforts to enroll landowners to buffer streambanks and reduce livestock use in the streambed are also paying dividends.
than 3.0 ppm. The narrower band of
summer trout-supporting water may
have made it easier for large stripers to
target rainbow trout.”
During the late-1960s and early
1970s, a nursery stream stocking
program for those North Platte Valley
streams lacking adequate trout spawning
habitat was initiated by Commission
fisheries biologists. The survivors of
nearly 100,000 fingerling migratory
rainbow stocked annually in the upper
North Platte Valley streams migrated
downstream one year later to bolster
the trout fishing in Lake McConaughy.
The program included trout habitat
improvement projects on the tributary
streams and better land-use and riparian
stream-side management to help develop
the coldwater potential in the upper
North Platte River drainage.
Even with the migratory strain of
rainbow stockings, the runs of migratory
rainbow into the North Platte feeder
streams from McConaughy continued
to diminish until biologists walking the
streambanks eventually were unable to
find any “redds” – the rainbow’s
characteristic spawning sites dug in the
36 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
stream-bottom gravel. In addition,
after 2000 and the low-water period
at McConaughy brought on by a
serious High Plains drought-cycle,
the shallower lake’s summer water
temperatures no longer were able to
support trout.
A Nine Mile Creek trout population
study between 1967 and 1999 found
that rainbows dominated the stream’s
trout population from 1967 to about
1982, at which time brown trout began
to significantly exceed rainbow
numbers. Nine Mile’s current trout
fishery evolved to include naturally
reproducing brown trout and rainbow
populations. Commission biologists
continue their fisheries research,
including a catch, mark and release
study to better understand and manage
the resources currently available.
A severe flood in the Nine Mile
watershed in the late 1980s led to the
Commission’s largest Nine Mile stream
improvement project to date. The flood
had cut a nearly straight channel across
one of the stream’s productive meanders
and channelized an adjacent wetland
marsh. Commission biologists contracted
to return the original curve and also
buried large “root wads” – mature tree
stumps with sections of root tangles –
along the outside curve of the channel
to prevent additional erosion into the
nearby farm field. The biologists also
planted willows along the stream bank
to help reduce erosion.
Efforts and interest to step up other
stream improvement projects coalesced
by 2003, when a working agreement
between the Commission, the
Department of Environmental Quality
and the North Platte Natural Resources
Commission created a temporary
watershed coordinator position to
coordinate Nine Mile watershed
projects and activities.
Dennis Beyer, who was hired to fill
the position, said his assignment was
“completely new and a true job
description didn’t exist, so we
immediately started discussions to
determine what we could do in the
Nine Mile watershed. I’m from a farm
and ranch background and felt that one
of the first priorities would be to
contact Nine Mile Creek landowners to
see if there were cooperative efforts
and projects we could agree on. During
this period, Nebraska received a grant
from the U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency for exotic and noxious
vegetation control and since our group
was best able to initiate an exotic
invader project, we found some of the
funding necessary to get started.”
A Nine Mile Creek Watershed
Association was formed and a board of
directors was chosen to formulate and
adopt a management plan. The draft
water resources plan for the creek
included improved flood control,
improved water quality and quantity,
increased habitat quality and quantity
for trout and other riparian wildlife, and
other projects.
The watershed project’s milestones
include signing contracts with several
landowners to participate in buffering
their portion of the riparian area
adjacent to the creek, placing instream
structures, including vortex weirs, and
the group applied for additional EPA
and Nebraska Environmental Trust
grants and other funding to eradicate
salt cedar and Russian olive trees.
A total of eight landowners on Nine
Mile Creek signed riparian buffer
contracts to buffer riparian areas as
well as to restore altered wetlands back
to their original condition over a 10year period. In May 2005, a contract
was awarded to begin the removal of
Russian olive trees along the stream, as
well as an additional contract to grind
the trees in place and dispose of the
mulch.
Under the contract, a tracked tree
harvester would cut the Russian olive
trunks above ground level and Habitat,
a herbicide approved for riparian use,
was spot-applied to kill the tree’s root
system. The harvester then piled the
trees for grinding or chipping to
produce mulch. Some of the piles of
Russian olive trees were left in place to
provide small game habitat structures,
and the watershed group plans to
follow the Russian olive removal with
plantings of native shrubs, including
buffalo berry and other native
vegetation.
The Russian olive eradication along
Nine Mile was completed in March
2006 and a limited amount of followup chemical spraying of re-sprouts and
noxious weeds continues.
“We were gratified that the tree
removal sites almost immediately
grassed over. Everyone’s concern was
the potential for increased stands of
noxious weeds, including musk thistle,”
Beyer said shortly after the Russian
olive removal was completed. “As part
of the contract, we’ll continue to address
noxious weeds and possible Russian
olive re-sprouts. The grassed stream
banks, with the Russian olive’s roots
and tree stumps left in place to help
reduce erosion potential, and the new
buffer strips along the riparian corridor
have been very positive.”
Seen from the air today, Nine Mile
cuts through a patchwork of irrigated
farm fields and pastures. The stream’s
banks include mature and younger
cottonwoods, willows and scattered
cattail marshes. Anglers can access the
stream on the 178-acre Nine Mile
Wildlife Management Area, located
three miles east of Minatare on U.S.
Highway 26 and six miles north. In
addition, several landowners on Nine
Mile signed contracts to permit walk-in
fishing access to the public on their
section of the stream, and signs along
county road right-of-ways identify these
open areas.
Annual electrofishing by fisheries
biologists continues to find populations
of catchable brown and rainbow trout
in the stream and the studies show that
the populations have remained fairly
static for several years. Irrigation return
water during the May through October
irrigation season, as it has since the
early 1900s, annually increases the
stream’s turbidity and water
temperatures, and a few stretches of the
stream show the impact of continued
use by livestock and overgrazing.
Long stretches of the stream, especially
below U.S. Highway 26, remain as
they have since the arrival of
homesteaders in the valley – hand dug,
narrow, swift-flowing drainage ditches.
Nine Mile Creek empties into the
North Platte River just northwest of
McGrew.
Nine Mile’s history is intertwined
with the arrival of ranchers, cowboys,
homesteaders and the beginnings of
irrigation in the North Platte Valley,
but its future is equally entwined with
human activities.
Advanced agricultural practices,
including the increased use of
groundwater irrigation, more efficient
and limited applications of surface
water and the impact of continuing
drought on the High Plains all seem to
suggest that Nine Mile’s watershed and
creek will continue to change for years
to come. ■
Private land enrolled in public walk-in only access and other stream improvement
projects are in part funded by the Nebraska Environmental Trust.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 37
Transplanting a
Rare Orchid
By Gerry Steinauer, Botanist
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
The small white lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium candidum) is one of Nebraska’s rarest native
plants. Recently, a wet prairie north of Columbus in Platte County containing a large lady’sslipper population was slated for development. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
and volunteers have undertaken an effort to save these orchids.
T
he small white lady’s-slipper
is one of two lady’s-slippers
native to Nebraska, the other
being the yellow lady’sslipper (Cypripedium
parviflorum) of eastern woodlands.
Both members of the orchid family,
the white lady’s-slipper was historically
known from 20 counties in eastern
and central Nebraska, mostly in the
Loup, Elkhorn and Platte river valleys.
Since 1990 it has been observed at
only 15 sites in seven counties.
Range-wide, the white lady’s-slipper
is now restricted to 13 northeastern
and central states and two southeastern
Canadian provinces.
Nebraska’s two largest known white
lady’s-slipper populations, located in
the Loup River Valley, contain several
hundred plants. The Columbus site
contains about 100. Most of Nebraska’s
white lady’s-slipper populations support
only a few plants. This orchid’s
38 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
The author and Jim Pyrzynski plant white lady’s-slippers taken from the Columbus site.
the fungi with the orchid, soil clumps
approximately 10 inches in diameter
were left around each spade-dug orchid
rhizome. The orchids were dormant at
this time with only withered, dry
stems aboveground. Because of their
dependence on the fungi, white lady’sslippers and other orchids are sensitive
to environmental change and often do
not survive transplanting. If an orchid’s
symbiotic fungi are unable to inhabit
the new site due to intolerance of soil
chemistry, hydrology, or other factors,
the orchid transplant will not survive.
At the preserve, holes were dug and
the soil clumps containing the orchids
placed in them. Loose soil was tamped
around each clump.
The orchids were planted about a
yard apart in rows aligned along slight
elevation gradients, which thus changed
the distance to available groundwater.
Hopefully this would ensure that some
orchids were planted in areas with
appropriate soil moisture. The location
of each transplant was triangulated
from set posts to aid in future location,
and the transplant areas were fenced
to prevent cattle disturbance.
In October 2006 and 2007, an
additional 42 orchids were transplanted
from the Columbus site to the
preserve. In 2007, 19 orchids were
also transplanted to the Commission’s
Wood Duck Wildlife Management
Area located in the Elkhorn River
Valley in Stanton County. Four of these
orchids were planted at the edge of a
spring-fed, oxbow wetland, and the rest
were planted in a shallow wetland
located between low sand dunes. The
remainder of the Columbus orchids
will be transplanted this fall.
Of the 21 orchids transplanted to the
preserve in 2005, nine were still alive
in the fall of 2007 and three had
bloomed earlier that spring. Eleven of
the 22 orchids transplanted to the
preserve in 2006 were alive in 2007.
These survival rates are acceptable
considering 2005 and 2006 were
droughty in central Nebraska.
The orchid transplant effort will be
successful only if the transplants
eventually set seed and produce new
plants. It may take several years to
determine if the orchids reproduce as
orchid seedlings often grow slowly. If
the required mycorrhizal fungi are not
present at the transplant sites, or do not
spread from the transplanted soil, orchid
seeds will never successfully germinate
and the populations will disappear.
In a few years, the transplant areas
will be occasionally burned and
grazed along with the wet prairies and
wetlands in which they occur. These
management actions will reduce
plant litter and set back surrounding
vegetation reducing competition for
sunlight and soil moisture for orchids
and their potential seedlings.
Transplanting white lady’s-slippers
from the Columbus prairie may save an
otherwise doomed population. Only time
will tell if the effort was successful. ■
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 39
PHOTOS BY JIM PYRZYNSKI
One of Nebraska’s rarest native plants, small white lady’s-slippers require wet
prairie habitat and are now found in only seven of the state’s counties.
decline in our state has resulted from the
plowing of wet prairie habitat, the
annual mid-summer haying of prairies
that removes flowers and seed heads
in remnant prairies, competition from
invasive plants, such as smooth brome
and reed canary grass, and herbicides
used to control invasive weeds.
The white lady’s-slipper root system
consists of a mass of white, fleshy
rhizomes (underground stems) lying a
few inches below the soil surface.
During unfavorable growing conditions,
such as drought, the orchid can survive
as a rhizome only for a year or possibly
more. The orchid has a symbiotic
relationship with several species of
mycorrhizal fungi. Branching,
threadlike hyphae of the fungi
penetrate the orchid’s rhizomes and
help with soil moisture and nutrient
uptake. In exchange, the plant provides
the fungi with carbohydrates produced
by photosynthesis.
In late-April or early May, white
lady’s-slipper stems sprout from one to
several buds located on the rhizomes.
The erect stems are often clumped and
grow to a foot tall. Ascending, elliptic,
up-to-five-inch-long leaves sheath the
stem.
The orchid flowers from mid-May
through early June. The one or two
terminal flowers have three petals and
three sepals, which are highly modified
for insect pollination. The lower petal,
known as the lip, forms a slipperlike
pouch – hence the name lady’s-slipper.
This lip is about 3/4 to one inch long and
is white with purple stripes or spots,
most of which are on the inside of the
pouch. The remaining petals and sepals
are somewhat leaflike in appearance and
are greenish-yellow with brownishpurple stripes along their lengths. Two
spirally twisted, inch-long petals are
carried on the side of the slipper. Two
small sepals are fused and hidden below
the slipper while the other is about an
inch long and carried above the slipper.
Small bees and, less commonly,
beetles and flies, pollinate the flowers.
The insects are deceived into visiting
the flowers by color and fragrance, as
the flowers provide no nectar as reward
to the insects for pollination. The
insects enter the pouch from above
and can exit only through smaller
openings toward the rear of the lip. In
the process they rub against the stamens
and stigma completing pollination.
Occasionally, larger insects, such as
bumblebees, enter the lip but cannot
fit through the exit holes and are
sometimes trapped and die.
The orchid’s inch-long seed capsules
mature in late summer. They can contain
thousands of microscopic seeds, but in
most years, few capsules reach maturity.
The orchid’s relationship with fungi is
especially important during seed
germination, as the microscopic seeds
contain no stored nutrients for seedling
growth. The fungi provide all water
and nutrients to the young seedlings
until they begin to photosynthesize.
In 2004, the Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission learned that a 40acre wet prairie north of Columbus
had changed ownership and was soon
to be developed. Years of mid-summer
haying had likely eliminated them
from the prairie, but white lady’sslipper orchids still survived in the
adjacent, unhayed road ditches. To
save these orchids, Tim Janssen and
Jim Pyrzynski of the Greater Omaha
Orchid Society and Commission staff
began a transplant effort.
In October 2005, 21 of the Columbus
orchids were transplanted to two
native wet prairies on The Nature
Conservancy’s Platte River Preserve in
Hall County. In an attempt to transplant
Blow Boat Cats
Text and photos by Eric Fowler
Shallow water and plenty of sandbars make navigating
the Platte River nearly impossible in a conventional
motorboat, but those obstacles don’t phase airboats,
making the craft a perfect choice for anglers looking to
pull catfish from its waters.
Dave Ortlieb casts to a logjam along the banks of the Platte River west of Louisville last September.
I
t didn’t take long for Dave Ortlieb
to catch the first channel catfish of
the day and put it in a cooler on ice.
To be exact, it was just six minutes
after he cast his line to a logjam in
the Platte River near Louisville State
Recreation Area and not quite
20 minutes after he pointed his airboat
up the river from the boat ramp at
Highway 50 and hit the gas.
It’s not always that easy, but for
someone who has spent his entire life
fishing this part of the Platte, it can be.
The key is simply dipping a plastic
worm in stink bait and tossing it in
a catfish hole. “If they’re in the
neighborhood, they will be caught,”
Ortlieb said.
40 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
There are plenty of channel cats in
the neighborhood, and a few flatheads
too. Ortlieb, 45, has been fishing for
them since he was old enough to get
himself to the river from his home near
Platte River State Park west of Louisville.
“When I was a kid we’d come down
here and fish all the time,” Ortlieb said.
“We’d ride our bicycles down from
Dad’s and we’d sit right here and fish.
“There were big slabs of limestone
you could walk on out here in the
summer. They’ve been silted over and
undermined and actually sunk down
into the riverbed.”
When those limestone slabs
disappeared, so did the holes they
helped create. But there are plenty of
holes in the Platte. When he turned
16, Ortlieb abandoned his bicycle and
started strapping his rod, a tub of stink
bait and a cooler onto his motorcycle
and heading to the river to find them.
“I’d just ride out on the river, park out
on a sandbar and go fish,” he said. Of
course that strategy only worked when
the river was low. Even then, there
were plenty of holes he couldn’t reach.
As Ortlieb's rod tip danced, he
yanked it from the rod holder and
reared back. “Did I get him,” he asked
rhetorically. “No, I missed him. It’s
just like golf; you’ve got to have a
good follow- through.”
After that, the rod tip quit dancing.
“Well, fish? I’m getting kinda' antsy,”
Ortlieb said after about a half hour
with nothing to do except watch the sun
try to burn through the low clouds and
haze that blanketed the river valley on
this early September morning. “That
one bit and he must’ve went back and
told them all ‘There’s somebody up
there fishing.’”
So off to the next hole he went.
Ortlieb now lives near Elmwood.
While he’s a little further from the
river, fishing it has been easier for him
since 1990, when he finished building
his first airboat. Now no hole on the
Lower Platte is out of reach, and no
catfish living in them is safe. “It’s the
best way to get around here,” he said.
Airboats navigate the sandbar-choked
Platte with ease. They move in little to
no water, and, when necessary, can even
scoot across dry sandbars. Less water is
actually better, Ortlieb said, because of
the reduced drag on the boat. Whenever
possible, Ortlieb tries to run in the
shallow water next to sandbars and in
doing so picks up an extra three or four
miles per hour without changing his
throttle position. That’s a good thing in
a boat that only burns five or six gallons
of gas an hour at 1,700 rpm and more
than twice that at 2,500 rpm. “That’s
the worse thing about these aircraft
engines,” Ortlieb said. “The way gas
prices are these days, I guess I can
keep my foot out of it.”
Ortlieb opted for a 540 cubic-inch,
260 horsepower Lycoming aircraft
engine for his first airboat rather than
the big-block Chevy’s most people
were using. Aircraft engines cost more
to both buy and maintain, but they are
designed to turn a propeller directly,
and produce high torque at low rpm.
Keeping the propeller speed low is
important, because that is the primary
source of noise in airboats. Car
engines, on the other hand, produce
more torque at higher rpm, which
means a reduction drive is needed
between the engine and propeller to
keep performance high and noise low.
About five years ago, Ortlieb put the
same engine on a new 15-foot fiberglass
hull, on which he built a deck with two
fishing chairs. “I like to go fishing,” he
said, “There are guys that got seats,
seats and seats and they just drive
around. I’ve got room for people to
move around and fish.”
When Ortlieb built his first airboat,
there were only four or five others on
the Lower Platte. “A guy pretty much
knew everybody who had an airboat out
here, and now I’d say down in this area
there are probably 40 or 50.” Most of
those are pleasure boats, but some are
owned by catfishermen. Other anglers
use johnboats with Go-Devil motors
designed to run in shallow water. Some
even drop a canoe in upriver and stop
at holes on their way down.
“He’s another eater,” Ortlieb said
with a laugh as he threw another fish
in the cooler at the second stop of the
day, a logjam on one of the footings of
the Lied Platte River Bridge south of
Dip worms and stink bait will catch plenty
of pan-sized catfish in the Platte River.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 41
Gretna, a segment of the abandoned
Rock Island Railroad that is now a
hiking trail. “We need to get a few
more of them. Three or four of them
and a 15-pounder would be nice.”
That hole produced two more fish,
one for the cooler and one that didn’t
quite make the grade size-wise. There
were plenty of bites, most of which
came while Ortlieb was either tightening
the engine’s alternator belt or tying
another dip worm rig after breaking
one off on a snag. “Well by golly, when
I don’t have any worms to tie or boats
to work on, the darned fish won’t bite.
Maybe I should change the oil or
something.”
Or head upriver.
The first place Ortlieb looks for catfish
on the river is usually a logjam, and
there’s no shortage of those. When the
current hits a pile of logs, it scours a
deep hole around them. Catfish like to
tuck themselves between the logs to
stay out of the current and wait for
dinner to float by. Other likely places
to find catfish include cutbanks, banks
protected by riprap, and holes on the
downstream end of sandbars. “There
are times when these holes can be
shoulder deep or deeper,” Ortlieb said.
During his many years fishing the
Platte, Ortlieb has learned a few tricks
for reading the river, including watching
While the Platte occasionally produces big channel catfish and a few flatheads, the big
fish this day was a two-and-a-half pound channel catfish.
42 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
his boat wake to find holes that can be
hard to spot when the water is murky,
and those that might look good at first
but turn out otherwise. “If you’ve got
one little quick little channel and then
it shallows up, the wave will start
breaking and you know ‘Man, the
water ain’t deep enough. Nobody’s
living in that,’” he said.
With few exceptions, Ortlieb has
always used Doc’s Catfish Getter Dip
Bait. One of many such products
known as stink bait, this thick goo
made with cheese, liver, blood or
other ingredients is a favorite of many
catfishermen. It works well in
reservoirs, and can be deadly in rivers
and streams, where the current slowly
washes the bait off the dip worm and
carries it downstream, leaving a trail of
scent fish can follow to the hook.
“They’re smelling her in,” Ortlieb said.
“You sit here a half hour and you’re
bringing fish in from 200 yards
downriver. They’re coming to try to
find what the smell is.”
He buys worms in bulk in six
different colors and builds his own rigs
by tying a No. 6 Mustad treble hook to
two feet a 20-pound-test monofilament
leader and threading the worm on the
line with a darning needle. He figures
he’s got about a quarter in each rig, a
bargain compared to the $2 or so a
two-pack of commercially tied rigs
costs.
Ortlieb fishes with heavy baitcasting
rods and Abu Garcia reels spooled with
25-pound-test monofilament. He makes
his own three- and four-ounce egg
sinkers every few years at a “smelting
party” with fellow fishermen. Those are
slid onto the line above a heavy snap
swivel, on which he hooks his dip bait
worm rig.
The third stop of the day, a cut bank
on the river’s west side a mile upriver
from the Lied Bridge, didn’t yield a
bite. Neither did the fourth, a deep hole
where the river flowed against a bank
covered with concrete rubble. Not one
to dawdle where the fish aren’t biting,
Ortlieb fired up the boat and headed
across the river to a narrow channel
that flowed between the bank and a
small island.
By now, it was time for the
Hard-mouthed catfish can be hard to sink a hook into, so Ortlieb rears back on the rod on every bite.
photographer to wet a line. To Ortlieb’s
delight, I found a good follow-through
on a hook-set doesn’t always produce a
fish. “That’ll come back and have a set
of dentures on it,” he said with a laugh.
Ortlieb’s next chance felt like a good
fish when he set the hook, but to his
surprise it turned out to be a smooth
soft shell turtle. “If that was about a
15-pound snapper, by golly, we might’ve
had to throw him in the cooler.”
The turtle was the biggest thing that
hole produced. It did give up some fish,
but most were barely longer than the
three-inch dip-bait worms.
“We’re just going to have to move
out of the nursery. We might as well
motor. When four fish come to the boat
and none go in the cooler, we found the
daycare.”
Ortlieb has learned the best bite
comes when the river is rising, which
happens once a day thanks to releases
from the Loup Power District canal.
Water diverted from the Loup River
near Genoa passes through hydroelectric
plants at Monroe and Columbus before
dumping into the Platte. The hydro
plants ramp up production during the
day to meet increased demand, and
when they do, more water ends up in
the Platte, causing what is known as
hydropeaking. Several variables influence when and how much the river
rises when the water reaches Louisville
about two days later. But for the most
part, the river at Louisville is rising for
a half day and falling for the other half.
“Sometimes it really doesn’t come up
much,” Ortlieb said. “I mean sometimes
you’re only talking two inches of
difference, but it’s just enough to turn
them on.”
The rising water washes debris and
food from the sandbars that was left
there when it fell, and hungry catfish
are waiting. Whenever Ortlieb is
thinking about going fishing, he checks
the USGS Web site at
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ne/nwis/sw
and tries to plan his trip around the
rise. “Sometimes it’s peaking down at
Louisville at six in the morning and it’s
like ‘Yeah, right. I don’t want to be
there then,’” he said with a laugh.
Bigger surges often follow heavy
rains elsewhere in Nebraska. While
those rises can be good for fishing,
they aren’t necessarily good for
navigating the river in an airboat. When
the river is high, the cage covering the
prop on Ortlieb’s boat won’t fit under
the Lied Bridge.
Ortlieb has been on the river when
one of those surges hit. “All of a sudden
Ortlieb uses a darning needle to thread
fishing line through the dip worm before
attaching a hook.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 43
a log hits the side of the boat,” he said,
remembering one of those days. “I
mean I’m just parked on a sandbar
like this and the next thing you know.
‘Clunk.’ I look upriver and it was
nothing but logs. You’ve got to beat the
surge to the bridge, otherwise you
don’t make it under the bridge.”
If Ortlieb hasn’t checked river levels
online, he can still tell when the river’s
rising. “There are little things that after
a while a guy kind of gets to paying
attention to,” he said. “You’ve got that
little stick over there floating down
river. I mean that’s a sign. At the high
point of the deal, you can see the
foam.”
Ortlieb’s boat can move much quicker
than the river, which flows along at
about two mph. If he’s on the river
ahead of the rise, Ortlieb will head
upstream, wait for it, and follow it all
the way back to Louisville.
Hole number five, a logjam on the
east bank of the river a few hundred
yards from Interstate 80, produced the
biggest channel cat of the day, a
two-and-a-half pounder and another
12-incher, but not the big fish Ortlieb
was looking for.
“We went to the daycare down the
street,” Ortlieb said. “We’re looking for
the old folks' home. We got
granny out of
there but
all the
kids
Ortlieb keeps
his dip worms in a
contractor’s bag designed to hold screws
and carries the bag in a five-gallon bucket
dubbed his “bucket of happiness.”
44 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
are coming out to play now. We need
some benders, some of them that you
can’t get the rod out of the holder.”
The sun finally burned through the
clouds. But while the temperature was
heating up, the fishing wasn’t. It was
still a better day than the construction
crews working on the I-80 bridge were
having.
Ortlieb decided we’d tortured them
long enough, making them watch us
fish while they worked, and headed
downriver to fish one more hole.
Ortlieb usually doesn’t get much
further upriver than the U.S. Highway 6
bridge near Ashland, but occasionally
makes it as far as the mouth of the
Elkhorn River west of Gretna, a 16-mile
jaunt from Louisville. “There’s good
fishing way upriver but a guy usually
has his limit by the time you get up
that far,” he said.
“You can catch your limit of pansized ones, catch a good mess of fish
and on occasion you’ll pull in a big
one. This year we stopped down there
in one little hole and we caught a couple
of them that were running a pound or
so, maybe a pound-and-a-half. And
then the next throw out, here you come
back with a six pounder. Just fishing
with this stuff here in the broad daylight,
I mean I’ve gotten 15- or 16-pounders
off these piles before.”
For about half of that 16-mile stretch,
the Elkhorn’s muddier water stays on
the east side of the Platte and the water
on the west bank is clearer. While one
would think that water clarity wouldn’t
make much difference when you’re
looking for a fish that feeds more by
taste and smell than sight, Ortlieb said
he does have better luck in clear water.
Worm color can make a big difference
some days as well.
“There are days that it’s actually
the reds and the purples,” he said.
“Whoever’s got them on will catch fish.
In the clearer water, the brighter colors
work. But you get into the black and
the reds and purples, they work when
the water’s a little stained.”
Ortlieb fishes places other than the
Platte, including the Tri-County and
Sutherland canals in western Nebraska.
“We usually go out there for a week
every year and live on catfish and
Outfitted with a Lycoming aircraft engine, Ortlieb’s airboat flies down the Platte at a top speed of 55 mph.
sweet corn,” he said. But the Platte is
always there waiting. He’ll fish it as
soon as he can get the boat on the river.
A few years ago, he hit the water when
the temperature hit 60 one January day.
“There were chunks of ice coming
down the river and I would pull up in
the creeks. The catfish were lying up in
there. I was using jars of shad and man
… in the winter if the creek mouth is
open, you’re only there for an hour and
you’re like, ‘Well, we’re done. Now we
might as well go drive around.’”
In late-March or early April, flatheads
are especially fond of those creek
mouths and a bluegill-baited hook
dropped in front of them. Flatheads put
the feedbag on again in the fall, too,
Ortlieb said. He’s landed his share, and
failed to land a few more. He’ll never
forget one fish that took his bait and
headed for the main channel. After he
finally got his pole out of the holder, he
started tightening the drag. “And I was
tightening and tightening and it never
slowed down and the line just came
down to the end and away she went. It
was like, ‘What can you do?’” he
recalled.
Ortlieb has pulled his share of channel
and flathead catfish from a hole at the
mouth of Fountain Creek. But on this
day, it didn’t even produce a bite.
Ortlieb didn’t mind. There were fish in
the cooler that would be in the fry pan
that evening, a good way to end a day.
“The occasional train kind of breaks
the silence but it’s awful peaceful out
here,” he said. “It’s a good day to be
on the river.” ■
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 45
White Bass Hatchery Production
Pronghorn Sheds
Bringing back the “good ol’ days” of white bass fishing at Big Mac.
Shed once a year, a pronghorn’s headgear is highly unusual.
By Rocky Hoffmann
By Bob Grier
I
good spawning habitat for white bass
has been reduced as well. Secondly,
Eichner feels that predation and
competition from alewife have
significantly restricted recruitment of
white bass through the fry stage.
The Commission’s current
management plan is to stock young
white bass and wipers in Lake
McConaughy on alternate years.
Recent low water levels at the lake,
however, have had an effect on some
stocking plans.
“We have cut back on our stocking
numbers by adjusting the stocking
rate to the surface acres of a much
lower lake,” Eichner said.
This year is a white bass stocking
year at Big Mac, and biologists have
requested nearly 180,000 white bass
fingerlings from the hatchery system.
That’s a tall order considering the
difficulty in culturing white bass.
North Platte Fish Hatchery
reveals a narrow, cone-shaped
lmost everything about
horn already formed at the top
Nebraska’s pronghorn
of the bony core.
(Antilocapra ameriIt’s rare to find cast horn
cana), the world’s
sheaths on Nebraska prairies
second fastest land
and grasslands inhabited by
mammal after the African
pronghorn. The casts are soft
cheetah, is unusual, even to
and can rapidly disintegrate.
scientists and researchers that
Discarded horn sheaths are also
have devoted careers to
chewed by coyotes, badgers,
understanding this prairie
porcupines, ground squirrels,
speedster that is commonly, yet
mice, gophers and prairie dogs.
erronously, called an antelope.
Interestingly, relatively recent
Zoologist, naturalist, taxidermist
research on pronghorn horn
and writer W.T. Hornaday’s
growth has found an additional
description written in 1904
distinction between pronghorn
remains as accurate today as
and many other big game
any modern biologist’s report:
mammals, including deer and
“The prong-horned antelope is
elk. Big game trophies are
found only in North America,
normally classified by the size
and it possesses so many
of the antlers or horns, and it
anatomical peculiarities, found Their horns are one of many unusual aspects that
pronghorns have.
was once thought that the
in no other animal, that
harvest of older, mature deer, elk,
competing bucks.
zoologists have created for it a
pronghorn and other big game
Pronghorn are the only species in
separate Family, which it occupies in
the world that shed horn sheaths that species would have little impact on
solitary state.”
herd propagation. Trophy deer and
Hornaday’s writings also predicted are formed over a bony horn core.
elk, as well as Rocky Mountain
that the pronghorn would be the first Although matted hair fibers are
bighorn sheep and goats, for
North American big game species to usually seen at the base of the
example, are often larger males
become extinct, but his research, and pronghorn’s horn sheath, the sheath
beyond breeding age. But because
is made up of cells called corneum
the fledgling conservation ethic of
the maximum growth for pronghorn
which form on the outer layers of
the period, helped prevent the
horns is reached by three years of
live skin that covers the bony horn
pronghorn’s extinction.
age, pronghorn can become trophies
cores. The corneum, or protective
A pronghorn’s horns are nearly at
before they displace mature herd
layer, is composed of a hard protein
the top of the list of “anatomical
bucks for breeding rights.
peculiarities” described by Hornaday. called keratin that forms hooves,
So Nebraska’s pronghorn is a oneThe triangular prongs on the leading horns, claws and nails.
of-a-kind, horn-shedding, fleet-footed,
The pronghorn’s horn sheath
edge of the horn, commonly known
highly specialized adaptation to
continues to grow and harden for
as cutters, are normally found only
North America’s prairies and
about 9 to 10 months of the year,
on males and early naturalists
recognized that the horns’ daggerlike ending before the late-summer rutting grasslands. Scientists and others will
continue their research of, and their
shapes, with forward-pointing prongs season. Following the rut, the
disagreements on, the fossil record
underlying skin covering the core
and inward-turned horn tips, are
and scientific classification of
begins producing new horn growth
formidable weapons.
A researcher on the National Bison and the increasing growth lifts the old pronghorn, but for the naturalist in
Range near Moiese, Montana recorded sheath from the supporting horn core. all of us, the sight of a pronghorn
extending its strides and speed
In Nebraska, the horn sheaths are
82 fights between pronghorn bucks
alongside a road or highway-bound
usually dropped, or cast, in mid- to
between 1987 and 1994. The fights,
vehicle should be reward enough for
late-November and December.
on average, only lasted about a
the continuing efforts to protect this
Removal of the buck’s horn sheath
minute and a half, yet 12 percent
most singular of species. ■
earlier in November, for example,
of them proved fatal to one of the
A
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 47
PHOTO BY BOB GRIER
46 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
Jim Hand of North Platte shows off a
net full of white bass after a day of
fishing at Lake McConaughy.
superintendent Bryan Sweet said that
although his facility has been very
successful in the hatchery culture of
white bass for Lake McConaughy,
not all aspects of the process are
under a controlled environment, and
that starts with the collection of adult
spawners from the wild.
“We’re not always certain that we
are going to get the males and
females we need to begin the
process,” said Sweet. “And when we
do, there are a lot of factors that will
affect the success of the program.
White bass fry are extremely small
and sensitive.”
Rapid temperature changes or
prolonged cooler water temperatures
as a result of climatic events will
greatly reduce hatchery success rates
or even eliminate a year’s production
all together, said Sweet. Once
hatching occurs and the young fish
are stocked into hatchery ponds, they
are at the mercy of radical changes
in weather. Raising the fish to the
fingerling size of one to two inches
before stocking is key to establishing
a strong year-class at Lake
McConaughy.
Eichner feels that there are at least
two strong year-classes of white bass
in this Ogallala-area reservoir, and
anglers will likely have good success
again this year.
“Regardless of personal preference,
white bass always have been, and
always will be, the bread-and-butter
fish of western reservoirs. Those
who come here to fish for walleye
and find the fishing a bit slow on
any given day want to be able to
fall back on white bass. We also
have a tremendous shoreline fishery
for white bass for those without
boats. And, we have a trickle
down effect on lower Platte River
reservoirs, which produces
exceptional white bass fishing at
inlets and from boats.” ■
PHOTO BY ROCKY HOFFMANN
f there has been one demand
heard loud and clear from fishing
folks who regularly visit Lake
McConaughy, it is “Bring back
the white bass to that of the good
ol’ days.” There were a couple of
phenomenal “good ol’ days” eras at
Lake McConaughy – one in the
early 1970s and the other in the
mid-1980s. Most of today’s anglers
likely are recounting the latter era,
when white bass fishing was fast and
furious, so to speak, and the size of
fish caught was also something to
brag about.
Darrol Eichner of Ogallala, the
Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission’s fisheries manager for
the southwestern part of the state,
answers this “bring ‘em back”
demand with an emphatic, “Maybe
we already have.” Eichner said that
last year’s August creel survey
revealed spectacular angler catches
that totaled 190,000 white bass that
month alone.
This time, however, the presence
of a strong white bass population is
largely the result of hatchery work,
not natural reproduction as was the
case in the 1980s. Personnel at the
Commission’s North Platte Fish
Hatchery have made significant
improvements in the culturing of
white bass, and they did so pretty
much on their own, as there is very
little white bass experience in the
captive culture world.
But why is Big Mac now
dependent on hatchery-stocked fish,
when only 20 years ago it managed
fairly well on its own in producing a
good supply of white bass?
Two reasons, said Eichner: In the
mid-1980s there were more than
sufficient spring flows in the North
Platte River to allow spawning white
bass to travel upstream from the lake
to reproduce. Recent river flows have
been greatly reduced, so access to
ANTIQUES/COLLECTIBLES
WANT NEBRASKA LICENSES: resident and nonresident hunt, fish, trap, tribal, Pre-1930 hunt. $500
finder’s fee for 1901 Hunt that I get bought. Phil
Pfeiffer (402) 429-3181, sodacrowns@aol.com.
ATTRACTIONS/EVENTS
GOT PRAIRIE? We do! Prairie Plains Resource
Institute is Nebraska born and dedicated to the people
and landscape of the Great Plains. Since 1980 we’ve
been planting prairies, getting kids outside and spending time with people on the land. For beautiful photos,
calendar of events or to become a member, visit
www.prairieplains.org or call (402) 694-5535.
DOGS
PLUM CREEK KENNEL. German shorthairs, stud
service, puppies and started dogs. Training for all
pointing breeds. Specialize in training the handler as
well as the dog. Wayne Clark, Percival, Iowa (near
Omaha) (712) 529-4238, clarks1@iowatelecom.net.
WILDERNESS KENNELS. Gun dog training – over
60 years combined experience. Training all sporting
breeds – retrievers, flushing and pointing dogs. All
dogs worked on pen-raised birds and wild game.
Training program also includes obedience training –
heel, sit, stay, down and come when called. Pups,
started dogs and fully trained dogs for sale. Hunting
dogs trained by hunters. Henry Sader, Wilderness
Kennels, Roca, NE (402) 423-4212. Since 1968.
DUCKDAWG RETRIEVERS – Raising exceptional
hunting/field-bred yellow and black Labradors.
Hunting, family and competition companions.
Puppies raised in our home. Written health guarantee.
Stud services available.
Home of GRHRCH
DuckDawg’s Eba Roll The Dice – (Y1w) and
GRHRCH McMac Magic Eyes A’Smilin MH-(Blk).
The only two Grand Hunting Retriever Champions in
Nebraska. www.duckdawg.com. Ron Green DVM
and Libby Milroy, North Platte NE (308) 534-3659.
BRITISH LABRADOR PUPPIES, AKC/UKC,
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Get all the current news,
informative articles and
breathtaking photography
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wildlife
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Don’t miss
this awardwinning
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48 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
WILDWIND BRITISH LABRADOR PUPPIES AKC/UKC, O.F.A./CERF. Guarantees. Parents from
imported British FTCh's. Properly socialized. Calm.
Intelligent. Exceptional hunters / companions. Black,
Yellow, Fox, and Red. www.wildwindbritlabs.com.
(402) 429-1836.
QUAIL CANYON KENNELS. Foot Trailing/Gun
Dog Training. Training for All Pointing Breeds.
English Pointers, stud service, started dogs & puppies.
www.quailcanyonkennels.com, Josh Nieman, Elwood
NE (308) 325-9068
FISH/FISHING
FISH FOR SALE. Catfish, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, perch, crappie, bluegill, walleye, rainbow
trout, grass carp, minnows. Pleasant Valley Fish Farm,
27851 U.S. Highway 83, McCook, NE 69001. (308)
345-6599.
NEBRASKA LAKE MANAGEMENT – Biological
lake surveys, fish stocking, rough fish control, lake
aeration, algae control, shorewall construction.
Rob Hofpar, Aquatic Biologist, licensed, insured and
qualified. Phone (402) 784-6005 (Lincoln), or
toll-free (888) 850-2460.
FOOD/GIFTS/HOME
HOMEBREWING/BEER AND WINEMAKING.
Fermenter’s Supply, 8410 K Plaza, Suite #10, Omaha,
NE 68127. Phone orders only, (888) 655-2739.
Advice line (402) 593-9171. www.fermenters
supply.com.
“NIOBRARA CROSSING” – a novel by Nebraska
native G. Gray McVicker. A contemporary story about
culture-clash violence in the Sandhills. At your
favorite bookstore or on NiobraraCrossing.com.
SANDSTONE GRILL-Burwell NE. A taste of the
city in a rural setting. Inventive menu, including
steak, seafood, deli sandwiches, homemade soups,
specialty salads, gourmet burgers, pasta, homemade
desserts and more. Friday night-prime rib & king
crab legs. Saturday night-steak & seafood specials.
www.sandstonegrill.com , (308)346-4582.
CABIN/BUILDING/HOME
Design
and
Construction. Full-line building materials. Schreier’s
Lumber Company - Verdigre, NE. “Over 100 years
experience” schrlmbr@gpcom.net (402) 668-2624
PLATTE RIVER HOMESTEAD & ACREAGE: 5.1
acres located on the Platte River, Hall County area;
modern 3 bedroom / 3½ bathroom home; added
garage; pool; easy access.
(308) 583-2990;
rdape@gtmc.net
RESIDENTIAL LOTS near the beautiful Calamus
Reservoir close to Burwell, Nebraska. Contact
Ron Shonka, Broker Owner, 46056 W Calamus Dr,
Burwell, NE
68823.
(308) 346-4338,
rshonka@nctc.net
VACATIONS/RESORTS
FOR FISHING AND HUNTING accommodations.
Guided pheasant hunts. Jefco Inn, South Cornell St.,
Gordon, NE 69343 (308) 282-2935.
THE OLDE MAIN STREET INN. A historic bed and
breakfast listed in the National Register of Historic
Places. Beautiful dining room with fireplace.
Featuring prime rib, buffalo, seafood, homemade
soups, chilis and desserts. 115 Main Street, Chadron
NE 69337 (308) 432-3380. www.chadron.com/oldemain.
LORD RANCH RESORT. Hunters, fishermen, family
vacations, family reunions. Deluxe cabins, complete
cooking facilities & TV. Quiet and peaceful in the
middle of the Sandhills. Three miles north of
Valentine Wildlife Refuge, open all year. Aubrey and
Dorothy Lord, HC 37, Box 41, Valentine, NE 69201.
Call (800) 270-0181. www.lordranchresort.com.
DIAMOND B TROUT RESORT & RESTAURANT,
Orchard, Nebraska. Restaurant, lodge, cabins, springfed lakes, playground equipment, paddleboats. Great
for families, groups, hunters. Book your cabin now!
Call for brochure (800) 974-3002. www.diamondbtroutresort.com.
MILL IRON V LODGING has modern cabins for
your vacation pleasure. We are located near Verdigre,
NE in turkey country. Each cabin offers privacy, view
and a birdwatcher’s paradise. Stay with us for a COUNTRY
EXPERIENCE. (402) 668-7488. www.milliron-vlodging.com, jpeinrem@gpcom.net.
DELUXE NIOBRARA RIVER CABIN: Private,
fully furnished. Kids’ adventure or adult
getaway.
Ideal
for
out-of-town
hunters.
www.nolasupertubes.com, (800) 799-9929.
GUIDES/OUTFITTERS
BIG BLUE RANCH & LODGE - Enjoy fishing,
hunting, hiking, birdwatching and ranch adventures
on 2000+ acre cattle ranch in southeastern Nebraska.
Beautiful log cabin, with fireplaces, kitchens & big
covered porches, overlooks 20-acre lake.
www.bigblueranch.com (402) 730-3643.
CANOE THE NIOBRARA with an affordable canoe
trip by Dryland Aquatics. One- and two-day trips ... full
service, or just canoe, tube or kayak. Transportation
furnished. Your Niobrara River specialists ... We do it
your way! Dryland Aquatics, Dept. N, Box 33C,
Sparks, NE 69220 or phone (800) 337-3119. www.drylandaquatics.com, info@drylandaquatics.com.
ASPINWALL LODGING: Rural farmhouse located
near Nemaha among the rolling hills of southeastern
Nebraska. Three bedrooms, full kitchen, washer &
dryer, TV. Situated close to Indian Cave State Park,
historic Brownville, Game and Parks wildlife management areas, Missouri and Nemaha rivers and much
more. Open all year, accepting reservations, brochure
available. (402) 883-2788.
GUNS/SHOOTING/ARCHERY
GUNS – Browning, Benelli, Winchester, Ruger, etc.
1700 guns, buy-sell-trade (402) 729-6112, Bedlan’s,
Fairbury, NE 68352. www.bedlans.com.
OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT
IS PERFORMANCE IMPORTANT? For the finest
canoes and accessories look to Great Plains Canoe Co.,
205 Main, Springfield, NE 68059. Phone (402) 253-2000.
OMAHA CANOE AND KAYAK RENTALS! Visit
website www.canfields.com, click on Rentals page for
rates, or call (800) 333-2263 for reservations.
Canfield’s Sporting Goods.
PHOTOGRAPHY
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS. Matted,
framed and signed. Go to inplainssight.homestead.com,
hathfotofreak@hotmail.com, (402) 848-2358. “The
more you buy, the quicker my wife can retire!”
Exit 285
REAL ESTATE
LODGING AVAILABLE. Bunkhouse located near
Bristow, Nebraska, close to Missouri and Niobrara
Rivers. Sleeps five, Kitchenette, washer/dryer,
shower, Dish TV. www.dringmansbunkhouse.com,
cdring@nntc.net, or (402) 583-0085
WANTED
LOOKING FOR ORIGINAL Claremont "Bud"
Pritchard art- a small piece of original art by this
artist: watercolor, oil, acrylic painting or pen and ink
or charcoal sketch. Needs to be signed and confirmed
as original. (212) 966-4426 - skagel@24seveninc.com
Classified Rates: 85¢ per word, minimum $15.
Closing: First business day six weeks before
issue date. Classified ads are accepted on a
first-come, first-served, space-available basis.
Classified Ads, NEBRASKAland Magazine,
P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370.
Telephone (402) 471-5473. Fax: (402) 471-1984.
E-mail: classifieds@ngpc.ne.gov. Ads are
posted online at NebraskalandMagazine.com at
no additional charge.
Take this exit to fun at Windmill SRA and Rowe Sanctuary.
By Jeff Kurrus
long Interstate 80, there are
a number of places one
could stop for a breather,
camp for the night, wet a
fishing line, take a nice
nature hike or visit an educational
site. Few places, however, combine
all of these opportunities in one
location. Exit 285 is one of them.
First, Windmill State Recreation
Area (SRA) is located just north of
this interstate exit. Known for the
antique windmills on its 154 acres,
this area has six fishing lakes, totaling
23 acres of water. Lake No. 1 is
stocked with trout in October and
March, Lake No. 4 is stocked with
10-inch channel catfish each fall, and
Lake No. 3 holds both wipers and
catfish. The rest of the lakes have
largemouth bass, bluegills and
channel catfish.
A swimming beach, 69 camping
pads with electrical hookups, and
20 primitive sites are also available.
While these sites are at about 85
percent capacity on the summer
weekends, the park resembles more
of a ghost town during the week.
“On our summer weekdays there
may only be 15 units per night being
used,” said park superintendent Mark
Clymer. But that’s exactly why
campers come here, including the
Hayes family from Grand Island.
With three kids in tow, the Hayes
family has simple desires for camping
locations, which Windmill SRA
provides: “It’s clean, has a regular
mowing schedule and it’s close to
home,” said mother Deb Hayes. “We
don’t want to spend a lot of money
to travel because of gas.”
Windmill SRA is 13 miles east of
Kearney and 35 miles west of Grand
Island, but perhaps most importantly
for those visitors looking to
experience nature, it’s just five miles
north of Rowe Sanctuary.
Known for accommodating
A
The Hayes family, (from left to right) Caleb, Allie, Ben, dad John and
mom Deb, cook breakfast while camping at Windmill SRA.
hundreds of thousands of cranes and
thousands of visitors during the
spring migration season, Rowe
Sanctuary becomes just as quiet as
Windmill by the time summer rolls
around. Yet despite the absence of
visitors, there is no absence of
activities for all ages.
Rowe has five miles of hiking
trails near the Platte River that are a
great spot for birding. Other wildlife,
including white-tailed deer and
turkeys, can also be viewed on
morning and afternoon walks. “Leave
your watch at home and wander
around here with a field guide and
binoculars,” said Rowe director Brad
Mellema.
During the summer, Rowe’s Iain
Nicolson Audubon Center is open
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through
Friday and Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. This
“green” building, with gift shop,
educational displays and viewing
area of the Platte River, is the secondlargest building in the United States
constructed of straw bales. “The
uniqueness of the building often
interests people,” said Tony Docherty,
volunteer coordinator at Rowe. “We
can also show people other
conservation aspects concerning
its construction.”
In addition, Rowe hosts Big Bend
SOAR (Summer Orientation About
Rivers) camps for students in grades
2-5. The SOAR dates this year are
June 16-19 and 23-26, and campers
participate in a variety of activities
focusing on the Platte River including
natural and physical science, language
arts, history, agriculture, music and
art. The cost is $80. A few days earlier,
Rowe offers the Flying Higher Camp
on June 10-11 for kids in grades 6-8.
This hands-on ecology camp combines
scientific surveys with fun activities.
Visit Exit 285 during the summer
when it’s quiet. Then come back
during the spring migration, when
this part of Nebraska takes on an
entirely new identity. ■
★
To reserve a camping spot at Windmill
SRA, call (402) 471-1414 or go online at
OutdoorNebraska.org. For questions
regarding Rowe Sanctuary or its
children’s camps, call (308) 468-5282
or go online at Rowe.Sanctuary.org.
JUNE 2008 • NEBRASKALAND 49
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
1-800-632-5263
Call
or online at
O.F.A./CERF. Guarantees. “Wildrose” Dam and Sire.
Exceptional British field trial lines. Free training.
Wildwind British Labradors. (402) 429-1836
steve.macdonald@davisdesign.com.
The photo was taken in the fall of 1955, as all three
of us graduated from Ainsworth High School in 1956.
Sandhills potholes were a favorite place to hunt
ducks. Pictured (from left to right): Harris Lambley,
who owns the sale barn in Burke, South Dakota; Fred
Swett, a real estate agent in Ainsworth; and myself, a
retired firefighter living in Mohave Valley, Arizona.
For you duck counters, the photographer was also
armed. All three of us endured and survived bypass
surgery in our early to mid-60s. God bless all those
healthy vittles mom fed us growing up on the farm in
the 1940s and 50s.
– Merle Alberts, Mohave Valley, Arizona
This is a picture of a pheasant hunt from
November 1961 at Madison, Nebraska.
Pictured (from left to right): Conservation
Officer Walt Meyer in his younger days,
myself, Les Seiler, and my brother, Tom
Nichols. At that time there were lots of birds
and Soil Bank land, and we could hunt
within three miles of town and still be back
for 10 a.m. church. Even back then, before
Walt became an officer, he made sure we
obeyed the law.
– James E. Nichols, Ogallala, Nebraska
This picture was taken on a fishing trip at Long
Pine, Nebraska on August 5, 1931. It includes three
of my uncles and my father: (from left to right) Frank
Wedberg, Emil Wedberg, my father, David Johnson,
and Art Johnson. They went there often in the fall as
my father had asthma.
– Maurece Johnson Engelbart, Norfolk, Nebraska
Send contributions to: Portraits from the Past, NEBRASKAland Magazine, P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370.
Photos should show people enjoying Nebraska outdoor activities, such as camping, boating, hunting or fishing, and must
have been taken before 1970. We will give priority to unusual photos or activities. When possible, please include a story
about the photograph and identify the people, places and approximate date it was taken. Photos will be returned.
50 NEBRASKALAND • JUNE 2008
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