Volume 88, Issue 7, 2010
August-September 2010
- Identifier:
- nela.2010_088_07
- Title:
- Volume 88, Issue 7, 2010
- Issue Name:
- August-September 2010
- Date Issued:
- 2010-08-01
- year:
- 2010
- Season:
- Summer
- PDF filename:
- NL_88.07_2010_Aug_Sep_Spreads_Entire.pdf
- Publisher:
- Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
- Format:
- Periodical
- volume:
- 088
- issue:
- 07
- number:
- 088.07
- Decade:
- 2010s
- Type:
- Rights Holder:
- Copyright Nebraskaland Magazine/Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, all rights reserved.
- Extracted Text:
-
At 63 feet, Smith Falls is the highest waterfall in Nebraska. Located 18 miles east of Valentine, the falls
are part of Smith Falls State Park and are adjacent to the Niobrara National Scenic River. The state park
was established by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission in 1992.
Photo by Eric Fowler.
Volume 88, Number 7, August-September 2010
14 AppleJack Festival
With something to offer visitors of all ages, the AppleJack
Festival held in Nebraska City the third weekend of every
September is just good ol’ small town fun.
BY PASQUALE MINGARELLI
20 The North American Badger
Known for its fierce disposition, the North American badger is
a key component of the grassland food chain.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY MICHAEL FORSBERG
24 Cats on the Niobrara
An extensive study of catfish popluations in the Niobrara
River had some surprising results. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JON FARRAR
30 Meanderings
An introspective look at where meanders come from, where
they go and where they can take us. BY LISA KNOPP
32 How Spiders Hunt
More than you want to know about these creepy but
impressive predators. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY CHRIS HELZER
38 Ethanol – are Next-generation Biofuels the Answer?
32
●
While corn-based ethanol helps the state in many ways, it
has some negative consequences for wildlife. The next
generation of biofuels may bring about a win-win situation.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY ERIC FOWLER
Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Mixed Bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
In the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Parks & Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Outdoor Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Nature Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Portraits from the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
24
●
20
●
38
●
Cover: Held the third weekend of September, this year’s Nebraska City
Applejack Festival will, as always, be full of apples, people and fun. See
story on page 14. Photo by Jeff Kurrus. Opposite: With it’s pink eye
indicating it’s true albinism, an albino squirrel pokes its head out of a hole
in a tree. Photo by Gerry Steinauer.
NEBRASKAland (VOL. 88 / NO. 7, ISSN 0028-1964) is published monthly, except for the
combined Jan./Feb. and Aug./Sept. issues, by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission,
2200 N. 33rd St., Lincoln, NE. Periodicals postage paid at Lincoln, Nebraska, and additional
mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NEBRASKAland, P.O. Box 30370,
Lincoln, NE 68503-0370.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 3
just jumped out at me. The beetle is on
the letter "N" of Nebraska. Saw it
before I opened the magazine.
Lawrence Burman
Rockville, Nebraska
Goose Daycare
Attached is a picture that I think this
is rare: A pair of Canada geese with at
least 25 goslings. Must be a daycare
program. I took the picture at
Community Park in Schuyler.
I enjoy your magazine. Father
Meister, who was pictured in the July
issue, was our pastor, so we enjoyed
seeing him feeding turkeys. He hunted
waterfowl with us when he was in
Schuyler.
Francis Svoboda
Schuyler, Nebraska
To the Rescue
My buddy, Ken Korte and I were
driving on a gravel road east of
Chadron this spring trying to locate
the remains of the Spotted Tail Indian
Agency when Ken, who lives in
Chadron, happened to see a yearling
deer that had become entangled in a
barbed wire fence along the road. We
didn’t know how long the deer had
been there, or even if she was still
alive.
She was okay, but was getting pretty
weak in her struggle for freedom. With
the help of a wrench he had in his
pickup, Ken was able to twist the wire
and free her foot.
She lay there for a few minutes, got
up on her feet and easily jumped over
the fence, and then dashed over the
nearby hill. That was our good deed
for the day!
Dan McGlynn
Omaha, Nebraska
A Steady Diet of Worms
I thought you might be interested in
the enclosed photo. This is an estimated
five pound channel catfish caught in
late June on Lewis and Clark Lake by
Stan and Joann Eisenbeiss
All of these worms were in the
stomach of the fish.
Wes Eisenbeiss
Center, Nebraska
4 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
Caught Red-handed
My hired man, Matt Whitson, took
this picture with his cell phone. It’s not
the best, however it is something most
people don’t get a chance to ever see.
We were checking pastures and came
across him.
Obviously this rattlesnake was taking
cottontail rabbits out of season
(poaching) and was attempting to hide
the evidence before he got caught. The
crime was committed in the panhandle
of Gosper County.
Tom Andrews
Holbrook, Nebraska
NEBRASKAland Visitor Letters
This was a tough one. We received
many responses (143 total) and a large
number had not seen the snout
beetle/weevil on page 52 (the outside
back cover) of the July 2010 issue.
We want to thank all the readers that
sent e-mails and letters (see page 13
for the winner, rules and this issue’s
hint). Here are just a few of the many
wonderful responses we received:
My son, Alex, and I had just given up
on finding the July visitor after
combing through the magazine when
my wife picked it up to have a look.
As she held it up, looking at the front
cover, Alex spotted the weevil on the
N in Nebraska on the back cover (page
52?).
Thanks for giving us this fun little
challenge each month. NEBRASKAland
is a first-class publication with articles
and photography that hold up to any
other.
Scott Carson
Omaha, Nebraska
I just looked at the back of the
outside cover page with the picture of
the pronghorn and the "snout beetle"
I have been unable to find the visitor
in almost every issue to date, but this
one jumped out at me from the back
page. A small weevil is attempting to
take over Nebraska.
Rev. Jonathan Sorensen
Grand Island, Nebraska
I found the insect on the very back
page of the magazine for the month of
July 2010, its a holly hock weevil,
Apion longirostre the order Caleopetra,
family Curculionidae.
I had to look for a long time for this
one, it was diffucult with all the other
photos of insect, Go Huskers!!!
Welcome to the Big Ten
I look forward to the next issue
Ben Horst
Ogden, Iowa
The snout beetle is a true weevil of the
family Curculionidae, having the front
of the head elongated to form a snout.
Weevils can cause destruction to crops
feeding on grains and nuts. In some
cases, the adult appears in summer
and chews a hole through the
acorn husk and deposits an
egg into the nut. The larva
consumes the “meat”
inside and matures in the
autumn, when it chews an
exit-hole through the
husk and drops to the soil to pupate.
Special thanks to Jim Kalisch, Department of
Entomology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Send your comments to:
Doug Carroll, Editor
NEBRASKAland Magazine
P.O. Box 30370
Lincoln, NE 68503
or e-mail Doug.Carroll@Nebraska.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).
COMMISSION
CONSERV
CONSERVATION OFFICERS
Director Rex Amack
Assistant Directors Roger Kuhn, Kirk Nelson,
Sam Sidner
Commissioners
Chairman - Jerrod Burke, Curtis
Vice Chairman - Mick Jensen, Blair
2nd Vice Chairman - Ron Stave, Waterloo
Dr. Mark Pinkerton, Wilber
Dr. Kent Forney, Lincoln
Lynn Berggren, Broken Bow
Rex Fisher, Omaha
Mark Spurgin, Paxton
Norris Marshall, Kearney
PANHANDLE
Officer
Jim Zimmerman (S)
Scott Brandt
Heath Packett
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MAGAZINE
MAGAZINE STAFF
STAFF
Editor Doug Carroll
Associate Editor Jeff Kurrus
Art Director Tim Reigert
Senior Editor Jon Farrar
Regional Editor Eric Fowler
Contributing Editor Michael Forsberg
Regular Contributors Bill Hager, Chris Helzer,
Lisa Knopp
Photo Librarian Sarah Johnson
Circulation Donna Robinson
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NEBRASKAland Magazine Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.
NEBRASKAland is available on audio cassette from the Nebraska
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St., Lincoln, NE 68508. (800) 742-7691. NEBRASKAland Magazine and
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COMMISSION OFFICES
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
City
Gering
Gering
Gordon
Ogallala
Ogallala
Oshkosh
Valentine
Harrison
SOUTHWEST
Officer
City
Roger Thompson (S) N. Platte
Ray Dierking
Brkn. Bow
George Sund
Cambridge
Michael Thome
Cozad
Matt Andrews
Elwood
Dirk Greene
Imperial
Virgil Gosch
McCook
Dudley Sorensen
N. Platte
Rich Routh
Rep. City
Phone (308)
763-2940
631-0663
360-0682
289-0755
289-3399
778-7101
(402)389-0444
430-0572
Phone (308)
535-8025
870-0322
655-0028
529-8146
746-2418
882-0015
340-2440
530-0016
920-0367
SOUTH-CENTRAL
Officer
Jerry Pecha (Sup.)
Jeff Jones
Terry Brentzel
Randy Pomplun
Darin Gress
Dale Johnson
Robert Finke
City
Phone (308)
Kearney
865-5327
Clay Center(402)762-5022
Doniphan (402)469-5795
Fullerton
550-0489
Hebron
(402)768-8665
Kearney
440-3847
Milford
(402)947-1363
NORTHEAST
Officer
Tom Zimmer (Sup.)
Dale Davis
Steve Oberg
Daniel Roberts
Jon Reeves
Marion Shafer
Pat George
Tim Williams
Cory Krause
City
Norfolk
Bassett
Columbus
Fremont
Kennard
Norfolk
O’Neill
Neligh
West Point
Phone (402)
370-3374
760-0712
910-3366
719-1108
889-8508
992-7590
340-0787
929-0051
380-6410
SOUTHEAST
Officer
Duane Arp (Sup.)
Sean McKeehan
William Krause
Mike Luben
Douglas Kramer
Dina Barta
Stacey Lewton
Levi Krause
Russell Mort
Dan Evasco
Jeff Clauson
City
Gretna
Ashland
Auburn
Colon
Lincoln
Lincoln
Lincoln
Louisville
Nebr. City
Papillion
Waterloo
Phone (402)
332-2965
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890-7140
949-0593
209-1506
616-5961
658-7057
ADMINISTRATION
Officer
Ted Blume (Adm.)
Craig Stover (Asst.)
Wes Loos (Asst.)
Rod Loos (Asst.)
City
Lincoln
Lincoln
Lincoln
Ogallala
Phone (402)
471-5531
471-5532
471-5591
(308)284-8056
Nebraska Wildlife Crimestoppers 1-800-742-7627
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
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 5
PHOTO BY PASQUALE MINGARELLI
Raccoons
Pasquale Mingarelli
Shadowy characters
can be seen crossing the
streets at night in urban
Omaha just south of
downtown. The way
they walk gives one the
idea that they’re up to
no good. Word is these
guys are more common
throughout Nebraska
then ever before and the
last thing you would
want to do is confront one – despite their small size, these
masked bandits are especially fierce.
The shadowy characters in question are raccoons.
Although native to Nebraska, our modern urban, suburban
and country landscapes have provided several ideal
habitats for the raccoon population to boom. According
to Sam Wilson, Nongame Mammal/Furbearer Program
Manager with Nebraska Game and Parks Commission,
just 9,774 raccoons were harvested in the 1958/59 season
Fetching Open Road
Kristen Friesen
With the dog days of summer
breathing heavy down your collar, now
is a perfect time to hit Nebraska’s
glorious open road. Fuel up, saddle up,
shine up, rev up and pump up … just
don’t forget your parachute. It doesn’t
matter how you roll, but below are a
few suggestions, all perfectly good
excuses to visit another piece of this
big backyard. And just in case the wind
through your hair makes you feel like a
puppy again, we’ve included a nearby
campsite at the tail end of each listing.
For more information, visit nebraska
stateparks.reserveamerica.com.)
compared with 170,817 during the 2008/09 season.
Wilson said with today’s lack of prairie fires, there are
far more quality trees in the Nebraskan countryside,
providing plenty of den areas. As for the urban raccoons,
they den just about anywhere they feel secure – dens can
be found in sewers, fireplaces, attics and crawl spaces
under buildings.
Wilson also said that in addition to the quality trees, we
have provided more quality foods for the raccoons: If you
eat it, they will too, plus a whole lot more. In the urban
and suburban areas there are many trash cans to scavenge,
dumpsters to dive in and gardens to raid. In the country,
coons feast on Nebraska’s corn.
The biggest causes for raccoon mortality are
hunting/trapping, motor vehicles and disease. Although
rabies is common in raccoons living east of the Mississippi,
it’s not much of problem here. Wilson said canine distemper
is a big raccoon killer in Nebraska – when dead raccoons
are tested here, it’s the disease found most often. Canine
distemper has symptoms similar to rabies and can be
confused for it. Unlike rabies, it is not consider zoonotic
but unvaccinated dogs can get it. So whether you live in
the country or the city keep your pooch vaccinated to keep
him safe from these nighttime prowlers.
• Show and Shine Car Show: Arapahoe
City Park; August 7, (308) 962-7777 –
Johnson Lake SRA.
• Sandhills Open Road Challenge:
Arnold; August 13-14, (308) 848-2522
– Victoria Springs SRA.
• Nebraska Balloon and Wine Festival:
Omaha; August 13-14, (402) 346-8003
– Mahoney State Park.
• Kool-Aid Classic Bicycle Tour:
Hastings’ Highland Park; August 14,
(402) 463-1138 – Mormon Island SRA.
• 27th Annual Vintage & Classic
Wheels Car Show: Grand Island;
August 15, (308) 384-7106 – Mormon
Island SRA.
• 28th Annual Deer Creak Sodbusters
Antique Machinery Show: Sterling;
Kool-Aid Days
6 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
Kelsea Nore
Hastings, Nebraska will be celebrating its most
famous beverage August 14-16th. The 13th KoolAid Days festival is annually celebrated on the
second weekend of August and includes the world’s
largest Kool-Aid stand, a live concert and boat races
among 30 other events. Last year’s attendance was
32,000 (or about 1,921 gallons according their
web site).
August 8, (402) 866-2122 – Pawnee
SRA.
• Corporate Cycling Challenge:
Omaha; August 15, (402) 346-8003 –
Mahoney State Park.
• Thunder by the River Truck and
Tractor Pull: Wisner; August 20-21,
(402) 529-3338 – Willow Creek SRA.
• Heartland MX Series Racing:
Sargent; August 22, (308) 215-0564 –
Calamus SRA.
• Antique Airplane Association Fly-in:
Minden; August 27-29, (308) 832-1181
– Ft. Kearny SRA.
• Defenders of Freedom Air Show:
Bellevue; August 28-29, (402) 2943663 – Louisville SRA.
• Nebraska State Antique Tractor and
Horse Plowing Bee: Petersburg; August
28-29, (402) 386-5334 – Willow Creek
SRA.
• Labor Day Trail Ride: Crawford;
September 6, (308) 665-1580 –
Ft. Robinson State Park.
• Old Trusty Antique Engine and
Collectors Show: Clay Center;
September 11-12, (402) 726-2487 –
Mormon Island SRA.
• Old Time Threshing Bee and John
Deere Roundup: Pierce; Sept. 17-19,
(402) 329-4245 – Willow Creek SRA.
Jeff Kurrus
Why Can’t I Catch Fish in
the Summer?
Daryl Bauer
By this point in the year, there are
probably 963,412 excuses made by
anglers that swear fish are harder to
catch during July and August. One of
the most popular excuses is that the
fish become lethargic during the heat –
it is hot and uncomfortable and they just
do not feel like feeding. Baloney.
Fish are not humans; they do not “feel”
or respond to their environment the same
way we do. They are poikilotherms,
which means their body temperature
is the same as their environment and,
for the most part, that means the
metabolism rate of the fish increases
as the water temperature increases. As
these rates increase, fish feed as much
or more during the summer than they
Kristen Friesen
Some folks just don’t know when to
quit, least of all Nebraskans – good,
hearty stock who’d sooner roll around
on a bee hive then retire.
Such was the sentiment around the
table at the old Hyannis Hotel back in
1974. As the story goes, Stan and Doris
McKillip and a few friends came up
with the notion that Hyannis – smack
dab in the heart of the Sandhills –
would be as good a place as any for the
first-ever Old Timers Rodeo … anywhere.
Not the sort to let grass grow,
Hyannis’ planners pulled off the first
such event the following year. By 1979,
the idea had jumped the fence and gone
national.
If Hyannis’ event was the
“Granddaddy of ‘em All” (and it was),
then the National Senior Pro Rodeo
Association – active today in 20 states
and several Canadian provinces – is its
grandbaby. And with roots in Nebraska,
we believe it has a long ride ahead of it.
If you’ve got some kick and would
welcome a chance to qualify for more
than the senior discount at your diner
of choice, consider these two upcoming
Nebraska events:
Nebraska Senior Games in Kearney;
August 12-15, (308) 237-4644.
Old Timers Rodeo at the Garfield
County Fairgrounds in Burwell;
September 4, (308) 346-5638.
It’s a Long Way Down
visited national monuments – Cape
Krusenstern boasted 1,810 visitors last
year, while Aniakchak National
Monument and Preserve had a grand
total of 14 visitors, not including the
bears.
If you decide to help Agate Fossil
Beds boost its number or are simply
looking for a quiet, though fascinating
location in Nebraska to visit, check out
www.nps.gov/agfo for information and
directions.
If You Were Wondering
Elizabeth Mack
This time of year, you may notice
some odd, discolored growths protruding
from the beaks of white pelicans. This
isn’t disease related or a deformity –
according to Paul Johnsgard, these are
just odd growth variations of the horny
knob atop the bill that sheds after the
breeding season, “much like overgrown
fingernails,” said Johnsgard.
To read more on white pelicans, see
“Sublime Beauty: The American White
Pelican” in the April 2010 issue of
NEBRASKAland.
Jeff Kurrus
8 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
News Not From Abroad
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
During this year’s deer
seasons, many hunters will
climb really high into a deer
stand with nothing to keep
them from falling and
suffering a serious injury.
These accidents can be
prevented, however, by
using one of the many safety
harnesses available today.
A high quality and
surprisingly comfortable
fall-restraint system often
costs less than $100 – a
small price to be much
safer in the stand.
Kelsea Nore
A Los Angeles Times Travel article –
“Hidden Gems: America’s 20 Least
Visited National Monuments” – lists
Nebraska’s Agate Fossil Beds as the
fifth loneliest monument in the United
States. In 2009, 12,694 visitors made
their way to the secluded attraction,
which is about 25 miles away from the
nearest town. In the article author Erin
Kinney writes of “trails that lead to the
sites where fossils have been found –
one leads through the Niobrara River
wetlands, the other provides a view of
the petrified spiral-shaped burrows of
dryland beavers.”
Not to be outdone, Alaska takes first
(and second) prize for the two leastAUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 9
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
Fifteen years before publishing
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo
Leopold’s work was appearing in
Outdoor Nebraska, the predecessor to NEBRASKAland Magazine.
In his article entitled “The Game
Cycle – A Challenge to Science,”
Leopold, then-Game Manager at
the University of Wisconsin, wrote
“Between 1933 and 1935 perhaps
half a billion grouse, rabbits, and
fur-bearers will die or disappear in
northern North America from
causes still largely mysterious.”
This issue also featured
“Commission Field Activities,”
which was a news and notes
section regarding the Nebraska
outdoors; information on the
shortened pheasant season, a
game bird hit hard in the state
that year due to drought; and a
short article about the rabbit
bounty in Deuel County: “The
number of rabbits has increased
so that the bounty plan has been
selected to rid the county of the
pests,” the article read.
However, there was one
Nebraska animal that readers
were being encouraged not to kill:
“In Defense of the Eagle” made a
plea to hunters to not shoot our
national bird that “stands for
Americanism first, last, and all the
time.” Six years later, the Bald
Eagle Protection Act was amended.
To read Leopold’s article, go to
NebraskalandMagazine.com and
click on “A Look Back.”
Nebraska’s Golden Oldies
do in any other season of the year.
This fact takes us back to the original
complaint – why are they so hard to
catch this time of year?
Fishing gets tough during the middle
of the summer because of the abundance
of natural prey that is available. With
warm water temperatures, the entire
aquatic food chain is operating at
maximum capacity and zooplankton,
aquatic insects, small fish and a host of
other fish food organisms are at their
peak abundance during the middle of
the summer.
However, there are a few strategies
that can be used to increase your
chances of catching fish during the
summer:
• With an abundance of natural prey,
feeding periods may be short, but they
can be very intense. Identify prime
feeding times and areas. Dawn and
dusk, for most species, are usually best.
• With an abundance of prey fish, fish
may not recognize other things as
potential prey. So “match the hatch,”
using baits that match the abundant
prey in size, shape, behavior and color.
• Having said that, you can also try to
make your bait stand out from the
crowd. Do this by using baits with a
slightly different color, varying your
reel speed, or creating erratic movements
of your lure as you fish it.
Jump-shooting Dove
Jeff Kurrus
In most locales, including across
Nebraska, many people limit dove
hunting to opening day. It’s a sit-onthe-cooler affair at the edge of a cut
sunflower field or near the shore of a
pond. However, many more birds can
be taken after the opening weekend by
jump-shooting. Here’s how:
The field – Locate a cut wheat, corn,
sunflower, or even bean field by asking
permission. It’s must easier after the
opening weekend to gain permission
because most dove hunters have moved
on by this point.
The crop rows – When working
fields, walk across the rows versus
down them. Dove see extremely well,
and will spot you much easier if you
are moving with the rows.
The sun – Always try to walk with
the sun on either your left or right side.
Behind you, it casts a long shadow in
the direction of birds. In front of you
the glimmer from your gun’s metal
may give you away.
The gun – Only load two in the gun.
10 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
Your
third shot
is a
waste
on these
hunts, and is
usually fired in frustration at a bird
at long range.
The first bird – Don’t shoot the first
bird you see. Dove are known for
flying in groups, and rarely will a bird
be feeding by itself. If you let the first
one flush, there will probably be more
on the ground in that same area that
will flush and offer you a better shot.
The recovery – Shoot one dove and
pick it up. Finding one downed dove
in a field is often difficult, much less
trying to find more than one.
The clothes – Dove see well, so
wearing camouflage will help in your
attempts to get close to birds.
Dove season starts September 1 and
ends October 30. For more
information about dove hunting, go to
www.OutdoorNebraska.org.
Turpin Time
See You Out There ... But Where?
Dick Turpin
Boat ramps and
camping pads
can really be
frustrating on a
busy Saturday or
Sunday because
some people have difficulty backing
up a trailer or boat. Let me give
those folks some advice: Don’t
concentrate at the top of the wheel or
the edges, concentrate on the bottom
of the steering wheel because my
guarantee is whichever way you turn
that steering wheel from the bottom is
the way your boat is going to go.
Keep your hand on the bottom of
that wheel and that’s how you’re
going to do a better job of backing
that trailer in. ■
Do you know where this Nebraska photograph was taken?
See answer at the bottom of page 13.
Jakes Day
Jeff Kurrus
Held by the Beatrice chapter of the
National Wild Turkey Federation, there
will be a JAKES (Juniors Acquiring
Knowledge, Ethics and Sportsmanship)
– Levi Krause, Conservation Officer, Louisville
Mike “Jake” Kroeger does a lot of
air-boating on the Platte River near his
Schuyler home, continuing a tradition
started by his dad, who was among the first to fly down the river when he
got an airboat in 1952. A director and president of the Nebraska Airboaters
Association, Kroeger spends time fishing the Platte and “just enjoying all its
splendor.” If you have a unique outdoor message plate you would like to share,
e-mail a photo of it to Eric.Fowler@Nebraska.gov, along with your name,
home town, and brief description of the interests expressed on it.
12 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
The State Tree
Kelsea Nore
The Eastern cottonwood (populus
deltoids) was chosen as Nebraska’s
State Tree in 1972. The cottonwood
was elected to represent the state due to
the tree’s hardiness and quick growth
on the open prairie. Early settlers planted
cottonwoods to serve as markers
toward destinations and, in some
instances, the young and upper branches
of the tree were foraged to feed horses
and oxen.
Don’t forget your to get your
HIP number by calling
1-877-634-8687 after 8-1-2010
Turkey calling is one of the many
activities at Jakes Day in Beatrice.
Day held at east of Beatrice on
August 21 for youngsters up to the
age of 17. Kids will be able to shoot
.22-caliber rifles, muzzleloading shotguns, modern shotguns and air rifles;
throw tomahawks; and learn about
treestand safety, game calling and a
host of other outdoor activities.
This is the 11th year of the event,
one that chapter president Jason Moore
hopes is the largest ever. “Our first year
we had 36 kids, with mostly parents
volunteering. Last year, we had 196
kids. This year, people from all over
the community are working together to
make sure this event is one of the
biggest JAKES Day events in the state.
Our chapter is just trying to do its
small part in exposing youth to the joys
of hunting and the outdoors.”
Families are encouraged to attend
this event, held from 8:30 to 4:30, and
adults should bring lawn chairs. Lunch
will be provided, and in the occasion of
rain, the event will be postponed until
August 28.
For any more information on other
JAKES Days throughout Nebraska, go
to nwtf.org.
NEBRASKAland Visitor
Winner and Hint
Last issue’s winner of
the NEBRASKAland Visitor drawing
was Dixie Wulf of Lincoln, Nebraska
who found the snout beetle (weevil)
on the back cover.
Readers are encouraged to contact
NEBRASKAland within 10 days
after this issue’s publication with the
correct page number and name of
this issue’s “Visitor” – a bug found
in Nebraska that just happened to
find its way onto one of the pages of
our publication.
We will then gather the correct
entries and draw one to win a
NEBRASKAland Visitor mug.
To enter each month, write:
NEBRASKAland Visitor
2200 North 33rd Street,
Lincoln, NE 68503.
Or e-mail:
Tim.Reigert@Nebraska.gov
with “Visitor” in the subject line of
the message.
HINT: This issue’s visitor is not on
page 3, 5, 13, 21, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36,
or 37.
Toadstool Geological Park - Sioux County.
“In case I lose one” – that’s the excuse I usually hear when someone inadvertently mentions that they have
printed extra copies of their deer permits or I find them in the field with multiple copies of the same permit.
With the advent of internet deer permits in Nebraska, it has become simple to print more than one copy of
a deer permit on the personal computer. However, Nebraska game laws prohibit the duplication or copying
of permits. So, whenever that computer printer spits out the second copy of a permit, a violation of game
law has just happened – a misdemeanor violation with a possible penalty of up to five hundred dollars.
Whenever I speak to a hunter education class I take some sample deer permits along to teach the
students the correct way of purchasing, carrying, and canceling a deer permit:
Purchase and print ONE original permit (no “extra” copies).
The person whose name appears on the permit should carry it while hunting (not dad, brother or anyone
else).
Once the deer is killed, found, and IMMEDIATELY after it is determined to be dead, the permit must be
punched or notched in the “tag” section as appropriate for sex of the deer, month and day of the month.
The permit may then be kept with the hunter while in possession of the deer and must be left with the
deer if it not in the hunter’s possession.
The kids in the classes seem to be able to grasp this information and properly notch their sample permits
in a matter of a few minutes.
The reason for the notching the permit is to cancel it so that it cannot be used again. Multiple copies of
deer permits are not allowed so that hunters cannot return to the field with an un-cancelled permit after
taking a deer home on the first copy. The unfortunate hunter who loses a permit can purchase a legal copy
at a Nebraska Game and Parks Commission office or on the website where the original permit was purchased.
One hunter who I contacted in the field had not left permits with his two dead deer (two violations) during
the muzzleloader season. He had walked back to his vehicle, gone to town to get some help with dragging
and loading the deer, and then returned to a nearby field. He admitted to shooting the two deer which I
had found. When I asked to see his deer permits, he turned to his truck and removed a file folder which
contained twenty deer permits – a few more than I usually see for one hunter. Closer
examination revealed that there were actually four different deer permits in his name with
five copies of each (several violations). None of them were punched or notched (two more
violations).
When I asked which permits he intended to use on the two deer, he thought that a
muzzleloader permit would be good for one deer and either a Season Choice 20 or 21
might work for the second one (possible violation). He didn’t know what unit he was in.
When I asked why he had so many copies of each permit, he gave the standard response,
“In case I lose one,” All in one file folder? My response, “Here’s your ticket.”
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
A Plethora of Permits
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 13
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
ABOVE: KIMMEL ORCHARD SELLS THOUSANDS OF APPLES LIKE THESE EACH YEAR AT NEBRASKA CITY’S APPLEJACK FESTIVAL.
OPPOSITE: BRICK STEPS FLANKED BY BEAUTIFUL GARDENS LEAD THE WAY TO ARBOR LODGE.
O
PHOTO BY BILL HAGER
ne cannot help but enjoy the country ride down
U.S. Highway 75 from Omaha to Nebraska City
on a beautiful fall day. The drying soybean and
cornfields fill the rolling hills with the fall colors of
Nebraska while yellow wildflowers highlight the roadside,
all contrasted against a bright blue sky. A day like this a
perfect time to attend the city’s famed AppleJack Festival,
held every third weekend in September.
From the moment one walks onto the property of either
Arbor Day Farms or Kimmel Orchard, it’s easy to see this
is just good ol’ small town fun. The entire atmosphere is
filled with the feeling of family. There are people of all
ages, plenty of activities and an abundance of things to
eat. In the air is scent of grilled sausage and, of course,
apple pie. The gift shop in the Apple House at Arbor Day
Farms is one place to find those apple pies and almost
everything else apple. Festival goers wishing to sample a
bite can stop next door at the Pie Garden to grab some pie
and lunch to enjoy out on the patio.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 15
W
PHOTO BY BILL HAGER
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
ABOVE: AT THE APPLEJACK PARADE, FAMILY AND FRIENDS ARE ENTERTAINED BY A VARIETY OF ATTRACTIONS, INCLUDING BIG MEN IN LITTLE CARS.
BELOW: SATURDAY’S APPLEJACK PARADE THROUGH THE HEART OF NEBRASKA CITY IS ONE OF THE FESTIVAL’S MAIN ATTRACTIONS.
ABOVE: LINCOLN NATIVE MUSICIAN CHRIS SAYRE PERFORMS
OUTSIDE THE TREE ADVENTURE BUILDING WITH MASCOT CARLY
CARDINAL AT ARBOR DAY FARMS. BELOW RIGHT: RIDES AND
GAMES ARE AVAILABLE FOR PEOPLE OF ALL AGES.
hen the kids start looking for something more
then just food, it’s time to head over to Arbor
Day Farm’s Tree House Trail. This well-shaded
and wooded trail allows the imaginative young mind to
drift off to an adventure deep in a forest. It is only a
short distance along the trail before the tree house
emerges. At 50 feet tall, it’s a towering sight for kids to
come upon, and there are fun things for them to do
inside, such as trekking to the top or visiting the displays
inside to learn more about the natural world. At the
base of the tree house outside is a place for face painting,
and a walk further down the trail leads to an open area
where kids can experience tree climbing and join with
dad to see how fast they can saw through a cedar log.
Another festival activity to enjoy at the farm is the
Discovery Ride – a trailer hooked up to a farm tractor
that travels back into the orchard to a spot where you
can pick your own apples. Apple picking can be done at
Kimmel Orchard as well, and is part of the fun hayrack
ride that takes you into the orchard. Kimmel also has
a barrel train, pony rides, rope making and apple
doughnuts to munch on. The extremely family friendly
Kimmel also has something a little more adult friendly
to offer – wine tasting. They have more than 12 different
fruit wines to sample including grape, apple, peach and
strawberry.
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
16 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 17
O
catch a glimpse of Nebraska life during the mid-19th
to early 20th centuries. Volunteers as well as park
employees give demonstrations ranging from cider
pressing to blacksmithing, and from hoop quilting
to sausage making. Alongside those practicing
as artisans from the past are artists of today
displaying their work at an art and craft show.
Visiting Arbor Lodge, especially during the
AppleJack Festival, makes for a relaxing way to
end a perfect September day or weekend celebrating
small town family fun in Nebraska. ■
PHOTO BY PASQUALE MINGARELLI
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
utside of the apples and historical displays, there
are plenty other events to fill a family weekend,
including an antique car show with up to 250
classic cars; go-kart street races, which in the past has
had more than 170 participants from five states; a parade
with marching bands from across eastern and central
Nebraska; and a Miss AppleJack Pageant.
Before leaving town, don’t forgot to take a trip back in
time at Arbor Lodge State Historical Park. Walks
through J. Sterling Morton’s home, the carriage house
and among the living history displays allows visitors to
ABOVE RIGHT: STEPHANIE BOYETT OF BELLEVUE BITES INTO THE FESTIVAL’S BIGGEST ATTRACTION. BELOW LEFT: JASON BARTLING HOLDS UP HIS SON GAVIN TO GRAB JUST THE RIGHT APPLE AT THE
U-PICK PORTION OF KIMMEL ORCHARD. ABOVE OPPOSITE: BAYLEE GDOWSKI OF OMAHA CLIMBS A TREE ALONG THE TREE HOUSE TRAIL AT ARBOR DAY FARM. BELOW OPPOSITE: CALE CARLSON AND HIS
SON ETHAN OF MARQUETTE CHECK OUT A 1923 FORD OWNED BY DEB PINNEO-MADDOX OF OMAHA AT THE RIVER CITY CLASSIC CAR SHOW.
PHOTO LEFT BY JEFF KURRUS, PHOTO RIGHT BY PASQUALE MINGARELLI
18 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 19
The
North
American
Badger
Text and photos by Michael Forsberg
Known for its fierce disposition, the North American
badger is a key component of the grassland food
chain and an important controller of rodent
populations throughout its range.
“S
hould one hear a badger call,
And then an ullot cry, Make thy
peace with God, good soul, For
thee shall shortly die.”
This old rhyme, somehow wedged
in my mind from my youth, now kept
running through my head as I sat on a
hillside with adrenaline pumping
through my veins. I thought I was
going to have a heart attack.
I was on a hike with my eyes fixed to
the sky, watching a pair of burrowing
owls hovering as they hunted over a
shortgrass pasture, when my foot
suddenly sank in soft dirt, triggering
the most fierce, hissing, snarling sound
I had ever heard coming from a hole in
the ground where my foot was half
planted. I must have leaped five feet in
the air before stumbling away over the
prairie at top speed until I was half a
football field away and in the relative
comfort of an uninterested band of
grazing cows.
As I looked back, all I could see was
dirt shooting up like a small geyser
from something digging furiously
underground. When the digging
stopped, the black and white banded
face of a badger emerged, smeared
with dirt, sniffing the air and looking in
my direction. Once he caught wind of
me he crouched over the hole with his
guard hairs up in a steely gaze. When
he realized I was no threat, he went
back to the chore of digging up his
prize, an unlucky ground squirrel that
became a noon day meal.
Badgers are members of the weasel
family. Their brave nature and fierce
disposition are legendary, and their
popularity in folklore spans cultures
across the globe. They have been made
out to be objects of both good fortune
and evil, but like all wild creatures,
badgers of course are neither good or
bad – they are just badgers, trying to
live out their lives and stay out of the
way of humans.
Of the six badger species in the world,
the North American badger (Taxidea
taxus) has the largest geographic range,
extending from southern Canada to
central Mexico and from parts of the
West Coast to the Great Lakes region.
It is a creature of open grasslands and
can be found from the high mountain
20 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
In early April, a female badger emerges from her natal den at twilight on a
hillside at Audubon's Spring Creek Prairie in Lancaster County.
meadows of the Rockies to the low
desert grasslands of southern California
and across the prairies of the Great
Plains. In Nebraska, they are found
statewide.
A full grown badger can measure
27-34 inches long from head to tip of
tail, and can weigh 14 to 19 pounds. On
average, males are roughly 25 percent
larger than females. A badger’s coat
ranges from gray to yellow brown on top
and is mostly buff-colored underneath.
Its wedge-shaped head resembles a
painted warrior’s, with a wash of black
up the middle of its face, two triangular
black markings on its cheeks, and a
long white stripe from the tip of the
nose to its tail. Its feet look like they
have been dipped in chocolate.
Badgers live in burrows and dig for
their prey, so they are highly efficient
digging machines. Built burly and strong,
their bodies are slightly flattened, with
short, stocky legs. Their front claws
are long and recurved to dig deep,
while their back claws are short and
shovel-like to throw dirt out of the way.
Badgers are primarily carnivores,
with strong jaws and sharp teeth. Their
diet consists primarily of smaller
rodents. In the Great Plains, they hunt a
variety of species of ground squirrels
and mice, as well as kangaroo rats,
pocket gophers, prairie voles and
prairie dogs. They also have been
known to consume ground-nesting bird
eggs and nestlings, reptiles and
amphibians, and even a small amount
of plant material. One study showed
that two pocket gophers were an adequate meal per day for a badger. An
adult prairie dog, roughly five times the
mass of two pocket gophers, is a true feast.
Strong but not swift, badgers rely on
their digging skills to catch their prey
and can generally dig faster than the
prey that’s trying to escape. If their
intended prey has multiple holes as
escape routes, such as the complex
burrow systems of the Plains pocket
gopher that is common in the Nebraska
Sandhills, a badger will sometimes
cover up all but one of the holes before
it starts digging, forcing its prey to use
only one entrance. On rare occasions
badgers and coyotes have been observed
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 21
protect badger populations year-round,
others offer seasonal protection except
during designated trapping seasons. In
Nebraska badgers are listed in state
statute as furbearers and can only be
harvested during a specified season.
The badger’s biggest challenge is
the loss of habitat from continued
agricultural conversion, as well as
increasing road densities in certain
locales due to development, which
make them more susceptible to road
kills. Badgers are also sometimes still
killed as pests because they dig holes,
or are inadvertently poisoned by rodent
control efforts – the same creatures
they prey upon.
Looking forward, the North
American badger will keep its rightful
place on the prairie as a keen predator
protecting nature’s balance for
generations to come, but only if
remaining grassland habitats can be
kept intact far into the future. ■
Badgers may dig several burrows throughout the year, and their burrows can often be distinguished from
those made by other animals by their somewhat flat, elliptical shape.
hunting together. A coyote runs fast but
is no match as a digger, so once prey is
found, a badger will dig up the rodents
and a coyote will catch anything that
escapes. Apart from the company, I’m
not quite sure how a badger benefits
from communal hunting with a coyote,
but a coyote certainly benefits by
hunting with a badger.
Badgers are most active at night, but
can also be seen out during the day.
They are solitary except during the fall
mating season and when a female has a
litter of cubs. Litter size ranges from one
to five cubs, which are born underground
in early spring. The cubs will nurse five
to six weeks, mixing in some solid
foods, and will come above ground in
four to five weeks. After 10-12 weeks,
the association between mother and
cubs begins to wane. By early fall, the
cubs are nearly adult size.
A badger’s home range has been
measured from anywhere from 600 to
4,000 acres. Biologists consider it a
somewhat fluid boundary, depending
on quality of habitat, food base and
time of year. Males generally have
larger home ranges than females. The
boundaries are largest during breeding
season, and there can be some overlap
between male and female ranges.
Transient juveniles weaned from their
mother temporarily share ranges with
adults until they establish their own
territories. During winter, when an
adult badger’s metabolism slows and it
decrease its activity above ground, its
range shrinks considerably.
Active badger burrows can be eight
inches to a foot in diameter and are
elliptical in shape, echoing the flattened
body shape of the badger itself. Dens
are either dug from scratch or are
abandoned burrows of other creatures,
such as foxes and coyotes, that the
badgers modify to suit their needs. The
natal den where the female rears her
young is not a simple hole in the
ground – it has a main tunnel and a
secondary tunnel with different
chambers, some which are believed to
function as places to allow badgers to
get out of the way so they can pass
each other underground, bury feces
away from the living area, and other
22 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
uses not yet known to science. Once
the burrows are abandoned, a badger’s
burrow does not sit idle, rather it
becomes a home for a burrowing owl,
rotates back to a fox or coyote den, or
serves as a refuge /retreat for numerous
prairie creatures escaping the elements
and harsh climate above ground.
Although small in stature, badgers
are high up the ladder in the grassland
food chain. As mid-sized predators,
they are important controllers of rodent
populations. Historically, badger
populations declined significantly in
certain parts of their range as they were
trapped primarily for their hair, which
was used on paint brushes, the trim of
coats and even rugs. They also declined
in population with other grassland
specialists such as swift fox, as vast
prairie dog towns were poisoned out or
effectively eliminated from many areas
of the Great Plains and Desert Southwest
through agricultural conversion.
Today badger populations are
considered stable across much of their
range, including Nebraska, but their
level of protection varies – some states
Michael Forsberg is a
nature photographer
living on the road and
eating rhubarb pie. He
lives in Lincoln when
not in the field with his
camera.
Many years ago, people believed all
sorts of things about badgers. These
old sayings and stories (folklore)
seem very strange today.
For instance, people used to say
that badgers had legs that were
shorter on one side than the other.
This was supposed to be because
badgers often walked on sloping
ground on the sides of hills.
Some people thought that badgers
could bring bad luck. This rhyme
dates from about 200 years ago:
Should one hear a badger call,
And then an ullot cry,
Make thy peace with God, good soul,
For thou shall shortly die.
So, according to this bit of folklore,
if you hear a badger call, then hear
an "Ullot" (an owl) hoot, you are not
long for this world.
Another 200-year-old story says
that badgers – like black cats – can
bring bad luck or good luck. If the
badger walks across the path that
you have just walked on, you are in
for very good luck. However, if the
badger walks across the path in front
of you, and if it happens to scrape up
a bit of earth as it goes, then it is
time for you to choose your coffin.
The old rhyme goes like this:
Should a badger cross the path
Which thou hast taken, then
Good luck is thine, so it be said,
Beyond the luck of men.
But if it cross in front of thee,
Beyond where thou shalt tread,
And if by chance doth turn the mould,
Thou art numbered with the dead.
Finally, some people believed that
badgers could help to protect you
against witchcraft. All you needed was
some badger hair and a bag made
from the skin of a black cat. You also
needed to be a bit of a star gazer:
"A tuft of hair gotten from the head
of a full-grown Brock is powerful to
ward off all manner of witchcraft;
these must be worn in a little bag
made of cat's skin – a black cat –
and tied about the neck when the
moon be not more than seven days
old, and under that aspect when the
planet Jupiter be mid-heaven at
midnight."
I found the above stories in "The
Badger," written by Ernest Neal in
1948.
Source – Steve Jackson
www.badgers.org.uk/brocks-world
Hunting at night, a badger emerges from a prairie dog hole after searching for prey. Badgers are important
mid-sized predators in grassland ecosystems, feeding primarily on rodents.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 23
PHOTO BY KEN BOUC
Channel catfish, above, are the primary game fish found in the Niobrara River. A recent survey shows catfish
are abundant upstream as far as the rocky chute, opposite, at the Norden Bridge north of Johnstown.
A
sk most Nebraska anglers to name the state’s best
catfishing rivers and the Niobrara would be far down
the list. The Niobrara is better known as a river
where recreation means canoes, kayaks and tube floating,
and for 30 years or more it has been at the center of
controversy – if its flows are best used to grow corn or for
recreation. Local anglers, though, have long known that the
lower Niobrara was catfish waters.
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission fisheries biologists
also knew about the river’s catfish – they just didn’t have
much recent information about them. So from April through
September of 2009, biologists sampled channel catfish
populations in the Niobrara to determine where and how
abundant they were on the river, as well as population
demographics such as sizes, year classes and growth rates.
“It had been so many years since there was any sampling
work done on the Niobrara,” said Jeff Schuckman,
Commission fisheries biologist for northeastern Nebraska.
“We didn’t know the density of the catfish and we didn’t
have current age and growth information. We just didn’t
know as much as we should about channel catfish in parts of
the Niobrara River. We needed a comprehensive look.”
The survey meshed with an ongoing study of Niobrara fish
species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and research
being done by the Commission to determine the recreational
importance of the Niobrara as part of a possible instream
flow appropriation application in the future.
The study broke the middle and lower Niobrara into three
segments, each of which included a barrier preventing
catfish from moving upstream: The mouth of the Niobrara
upstream to Spencer Dam, a hydroelectric plant near U.S.
Highway 281, north of O’Neill; Spencer Dam upstream to
the Norden Bridge north of Johnstown, where a natural
chute created by the river carving down through rock for
several feet prevents catfish movement upriver; and upstream
from the Norden Bridge to Cornell Dam, a decommissioned
hydroelectric plant just east of Valentine.
Four sampling sites were selected below Spencer Dam,
four between Spencer Dam and the Norden Bridge chute,
three between the chute and Cornell Dam, and three above
Cornell Dam. Baited hoop nets were set at each site once a
month from April into September. Channel catfish caught
were counted, measured, weighed and a representative sample
of spine removed to gather age and growth information.
Catfish of the Lower Niobrara
Anglers and biologists knew there were catfish in the
Niobrara downstream from Spencer Dam – each spring
catfish leave the Missouri River and move upriver on
spawning runs, only to stack up when they encounter
Spencer Dam, a favorite fishing spot for decades. Set-line
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 25
even at low levels, if the water is warm. The hydrogen sulfide
in this case probably was coming from the bacterial breakdown
of organic matter released during the flushing. To remedy
the problem, in recent years NPPD has moved its biannual
flushes to April and October, when the Niobrara’s water was
colder. But there still may be problems for channel catfish
below the dam.
“There is a tremendous amount of sediment flushed out of
the Niobrara,” Schuckman said. “It changes channels, covers
invertebrates – there are some negative environmental effects
of the flushing. I do not have thorough documentation to
support this yet, but the channel catfish we sampled below
Spencer Dam had more parasites, more bacterial infections,
and some were skinny to the point of looking emaciated.
Something is going on there that is not good for channel
catfish, whether it is stress from the spawning run up
through that stretch of river, the effects of low invertebrate
populations or some other factor. The stretch of the Niobrara
below Spencer is not functioning as you would expect a
natural river to function. At this point we do not have
enough information to say more than that.”
Surprise in the Middle Niobrara
Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission fisheries biologists
Zac Brashears (left in both
photos) and Andrew Glidden
set baited hoop nets in the
middle Niobrara River in the
summer of 2009 to sample
catfish populations. Each fish
was weighed, measured and part
of the spine was removed from
some to gather age and growth
information before being
returned to the river.
The survey showed more catfish
above Spencer Dam than below,
and they were in better condition.
Northeastern Nebraska fisheries
biologist Jeff Schuckman said
he was “impressed with the
sport fishing potential above
Spencer Dam.”
26 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
and pole fishing has long been popular along that entire
stretch of river. The fish study showed that catfish increased
in abundance from the mouth of the Niobrara upstream and
peaked just below Spencer Dam.
“It looks to me, without having done the habitat analysis,”
said Schuckman, “that the habitat features for channel
catfish are about the same above Spencer Dam as below.
Catfish are coming out of the Missouri River. I don’t think
there is any question about that, that there is a migratory run
up the Niobrara. The Missouri River and Lewis and Clark
Lake, though, provide better wintering opportunities than the
Niobrara River.”
The study revealed, however, that catfish sampled below
Spencer Dam were, on average, not in as good a condition as
those above. Schuckman explained that in the past the
Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) had opened the
gates at its Spencer hydro plant twice each summer to flush
out upstream silt, and there were often fish kills associated
with these releases. The apparent explanation was elevated
levels of hydrogen sulfide that can be toxic to aquatic life,
Schuckman and other fisheries biologists were surprised at
what they found on the river from Spencer Dam to Norden
Bridge – that segment showed higher densities of channel
catfish than below Spencer Dam with a good representation
of age classes, indicating of a prospering population. To no
one’s surprise, the highest densities of channel catfish were
just below the rocky chute at the Norden Bridge, as it
functions the same as Spencer Dam in stopping upstream
migration, hence fish stack up there, particularly during the
spring spawning run. And there were other surprises.
“Above Spencer the catfish looked wonderful,” said
Schuckman. “They’re fat. They’re sassy. And, they had few
parasites or bacterial infections. We have a healthy catfish
population. Catfish abundance is higher above Spencer Dam
than I anticipated it was going to be, catfishing opportunities
exist up there, and some of the locals will say, ‘Yeah, well, we
knew that.’ Well, we documented it, taking a comprehensive
look at the catfish up and down that system.
“Historically, they used to catch catfish up to Cornell Dam
at Valentine,” Schuckman said, “but the Norden chute didn’t
use to be an obstacle to upstream movement. As the chute
eroded, it’s become very steep and apparently, even during
flooding situations, is a natural barrier for channel catfish.
But the bottom line was, which surprised us, we have a
healthy catfish population above Spencer Dam. And they
seem to be finding adequate wintering habitat there.”
Catfish, however, are essentially absent upstream from the
Norden Bridge chute and Cornell Dam.
Were There No Barriers
Schuckman knows catfishing opportunities on the Niobrara
would be more extensive were it not for the presence of the
Spencer and Cornell dams. And catfish could again be found
further upstream if a way could be found for migratory
catfish to bypass the Norden Bridge chute. Both Cornell
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 27
Dam and the chute fall within the boundaries of the Niobrara
Scenic River created by Congress in 1991 to protect the
natural and historical values of the river from Nebraska
Highway 137 north of Newport upstream to Valentine. As
Cornell Dam falls within the realm of “historical value” of
the river and the Norden chute is a “natural value,” any
changes to either will come ponderously slow if at all,
although the environment effects of breaching Cornell Dam
are currently being studied by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, as it is located on the Fort Niobrara National
Wildlife Refuge.
Were there no obstacles on the Niobrara River, how far
upstream would catfish move? Schuckman said no one knows
how far they would move before the water temperature
became too cold for them, the aquatic habitat didn’t meet their
needs, or an adequate food source was no longer available.
What is known, he said, is that “catfish migrate for many,
many miles unless they encounter a barrier.”
The Bottom Line
“I’m impressed with the sport fishing potential above
Spencer Dam,” Schuckman said. “There are some good
opportunities if people want to wet a line. They will be
successful at it. They don’t have to think ‘Well, you can’t go
above Spencer.’ It’s not just all about below Spencer Dam.
“And oxbows and backwaters along the Niobrara also
warrant attention by anglers and further scientific scrutiny.
Oxbows and marshy lakes along the Niobrara River are part
of that system, part of the natural river system. There is a
whole different fish community in them – green sunfish,
crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass, probably some pickerel
and maybe some pike. They are productive, have clear water
and are vegetated. When people think of river fishing in
Nebraska they think of channel catfish, but there is more
than just catfish in the Niobrara system.”
The channel catfish study was not designed to determine
the volume and timing of flows required to sustain the river’s
catfish population, but does provide baseline data. How
many cubic feet per second, and when it is needed for people
floating the river and for wildlife will be determined by a
computer model developed once all the known variables of
the river system have been studied.
“Common sense tells you that to maintain the catfish
population we currently have, we have to have at least the
water we have now,” said Schuckman. “The more the
Niobrara River is dewatered, the fewer catfish we will have,
and what we do have may very well be lower quality catfish.
There is a delicate balance, absolutely. Fish and water go
together; and we’ve got to have the quality of habitat and the
quantity of water necessary to maintain this population. We
are going to look at this system periodically. Within five
years we need to get back to the Niobrara River and trap
catfish again, and compare what we find then to what we
found in our sampling during the summer of 2009.” ■
Randy Bathke (left) and Danny Jackson, both from Sioux City,
put a channel catfish on a stringer below Spencer Dam north
of O’Neill while David Bathke of Laurel tries his luck in the
background.
28 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 29
Meanderings
By Lisa Knopp
he morning after a heavy spring
rain, I started my car and drove
but a few feet before a drag and
a raking sound stopped me. I looked
under my car to see a mass of sticks –
a sloppy bird’s nest. I removed what I
could. When I got an oil change and
travel check the next day, the mechanic
said that he had “cleaned out lots of
sticks and leaves” from the grill and
underneath my car. “Were you in a
flood?” he asked. An interesting question,
since I had gotten my car serviced so I
could drive to my hometown on the
Mississippi River and help sandbag
during the Iowa Flood of 2008.
“Nope. I park it on the street in front
of my house. No floods.” Then I
remembered that in the heavy rains
of the night before, a wide and fast
stream of water – a flood of sorts – had
rushed down the sloping street in front
of my house.
A few weeks later my son told me
that his landlord, who lives near me,
said our street used to be a creek. So
that the creekbed could be paved, the
waters were diverted east into Antelope
Park and now flow north, into Antelope
Creek. Suddenly I could see it: Sevenblock-long Jefferson Avenue sweeps
down an incline, making three wide
and graceful curves. The avenue ends
in Antelope Park at Memorial Drive,
which makes a broad turn before
ending at “A” Street.” I named the
creek bed and the water that once
flowed there “Phantom Creek,” since
I could feel its presence, even though it
wasn’t physically there.
Jefferson Avenue is an anomaly in
the older part of Lincoln, where the
numbered and lettered streets run, for
the most part, in straight lines. But
Antelope Park near the center of the
city and its creeks – Phantom, Antelope
and the unnamed tributary of the latter
– make a mess of the grid. Jefferson
Avenue is also an anomaly in a city
where most houses and yards are level
with the street: I have the highest yard
and house on my block because I
am located atop the outer curve of a
meander, which is why I climb five
steps up a terrace – “the creek bank” –
T
and another seven steps to my porch,
yet I only go down five steps in the
house and one outside to be in my
back yard. In a heavy rain, the water
remembers where to go and flows
down the sloping, meandering bed of
Phantom Creek, carrying sticks, leaves
and food wrappers.
On summer evenings I sit on my
porch high above the street and read,
write, converse with company, watch
my neighbors and wait for the bats that
cut sharp turns in the night air. And I
think about meanders – where they
come from and what they’re good for.
The shortest distance between the top
and bottom of an incline is a straight
line, yet water rarely flows in such a
logical path. When water flows down a
slope and encounters an obstacle in the
streambed, say a fallen tree, big rock or
an irregularity in the substrate, it flows
around it. The water runs deep and fast
at the outer or concave portion of the
bend; it runs slow and shallow at the
inner, or convex, portion of the bend.
The faster, diverted current collides into
the opposite bank, gradually wearing it
away and depositing the eroded silt at
the convex curve of the next bend,
forming a point bar. This meandering
pattern repeats again and again as the
current crosses at the point of inflection,
the straight area between two bends,
and bounces off the opposite bank on
its way downstream.
But a meander, a pair of loops
pointing in opposite directions, also
develops in the absence of obstacles.
For instance, rainwater meanders down
a clean windshield. Nor does the
obstacle theory account for the
predictable pattern one sees in
meandering streams. Theoretically, a
stream can wander all over the
floodplain in a string of cursive “m’s,”
lower case “e’s,” zigzags or a more
random form. But it doesn’t. For the
most part, it flows in irregular waves,
what river expert Luna Leopold called
a “sine-generated curve.”
What initiates the turning that results
in a meander is a mystery. In “Theories
of Stream Meander Causation,”
30 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
published in Earth Sciences Reviews,
geographer Peter P. Sakalowsky says
that meandering is “dependent not only
on stream flow but also on the rate of
stream discharge, sediment load, size
and type of sediment, channel roughness,
depth, width, velocity of flow and
quality of water itself.” Sakalowsky
says that the characteristics of
helicoidal flow seem to be the best
explanation for why meanders develop.
Helicoidal flow refers to the corkscrew
motion of water as it flows in a channel.
It is caused by the tendency of the
thalweg (the deepest part of the river)
to flow in a straight line, transferring
momentum from one bank to the
opposite bank and back, creating a
sinuous channel in the process.
Because this shape minimizes such
variables as the angle of deflection of
the current, the water-surface slope,
and the total work of turning done by
the river, it is the shape by which the
stream does the least amount of work
with a minimum expenditure of energy.
Thus the meander is, in Leopold’s
words, “the most probable geometry
for a river.”
Most meanders have a characteristic
scale, proportional to the width of the
river. In a June 1966 article in Scientific
American, Leopold writes that after
sampling fifty typical meanders, he
found that the average length of a
meander is 10 to 14 times the full-bank
channel width, with 11 being average
and that the distance a river is straight
between bends doesn’t exceed 10 times
its width at that point. Leopold also
found that the ratio between the
wavelength of the curve (the distance
along the ground between two successive
bends in the same direction) and its
radius of curvature (the radius of the
arc that the bend makes) averages
4.7-to-1; the ratio of the radius of
curvature to the width of the stream
was 2-to-1. Leopold referred to these
proportions as “the nearly geometric
regularity of river meanders.”
When I drive, bike or walk down
Phantom Creek’s smooth and sweeping
shifts of direction, it’s not the widthradius of curvature ratio I’m thinking
of, but that I don’t know what awaits
me around the next bend – danger or
delight, the marvelous or the mundane
– until I get there.
A few blocks east of my house, near
the bike and pedestrian paths in
Antelope Park, is a creek that flows
north for about eight blocks. I say
“flows” even though it is dry most
of the year. If my son’s landlord is
correct, the waters that once flowed in
Phantom Creek were diverted there so
that my house and others could be built
along its banks 80-some years ago.
Perhaps the waters were diverted into
a creek bed that was already there in
the park, or perhaps someone made a
channel in what seemed like a good
place for a creek. Diversion Creek, as I
call it, disappears through an iron gate
into a graffiti-filled tunnel beneath
Memorial Drive at what might have
been Phantom Creek’s widest and lowest
point.
While Diversion Creek is dry most of
the year, heavy rains cause flash floods.
Over the years, the flooding created
steep banks and a clogged channel. In
2006 as part of a storm water project,
the city of Lincoln corrected the
problems with Diversion Creek not by
straightening the channel, but by making
it meander. J.J. Yost, construction
manager for the Lincoln Parks and
Recreation Department, told the
Lincoln Journal-Star that a meandering
channel will slow the water flow and
reduce erosion; during big floods the
channel will convey water without
backing up. To further slow erosion,
workers gave the creek gently sloping
banks, piled big white rocks on some
bends, and planted purple-flowered
legumes, yellow composites, red clover
and other vegetation that doesn’t have
to be mowed. For the most part, the
southern part of Diversion Creek runs
straight and the northern part moves in
one tight, human-made loop after
another.
We humans have a deep preference
for single-thread, meandering streams.
In The Analysis of Beauty (1753),
William Hogarth, a British painter,
social critic and philosopher, explained
the importance of the serpentine line to
our perception of beauty: “The eye
hath this sort of enjoyment in winding
walks, and serpentine rivers, and all
sorts of objects, whose forms . . . are
composed principally of what I call
waving and serpentine lines . . . that
leads the eye in a wanton kind of
chase, and from the pleasure that gives
the mind, entitles it to the name of
‘beautiful.”’ Hogarth admired the
elongated “S,” the line of grace and
beauty that he saw in many places,
including candle holders, country
dancing, curly hair, women’s corsets
(a woman’s form could also meander!)
and even the worm gears on fireplace
controls. Hogarth’s notions of beauty
were put into practice by such
landscape designers as Capability
Brown, who fashioned serpentine
forms on the estates of his wealthy
clients so that they had the pleasure of
expectation and revelation as they
strolled along sinuous rills and paths.
The love of the serpentine form in the
landscape isn’t limited to 18th century
England. Perhaps people of all times
have taken pleasure in anticipating
what awaits them around the next bend
of a winding creek, river, footpath or
highway. But Diversion Creek, with its
tight, close meanders, fails to evoke the
wonder and mystery that I feel when
rounding one of the wide and gentle
contours of Phantom Creek.
To see the meandering process and
pattern writ large, look at a map of
Nebraska. At the city of North Platte,
the North and South Platte rivers meet.
East of that point, a single river begins
its southeastern descent, swinging low
like a hammock, swayed back or
catenary curve as it flows through the
Big Bend in south-central Nebraska.
The Platte rises in a wide meander
known as the North Bend, then it
descends again and flows through a
small crook of a meander, the South
Bend, before rising to meet the Missouri.
Dams, reservoirs, and irrigation have
restricted the Platte, replacing many
with fewer channels and reducing the
water volume. But these unnatural acts
haven’t straightened the river’s gentle,
serpentine turns as it flows down from
the Rockies, across the High Plains and
toward the center of the continent.
As I sit on my front porch on a
summer evening, my thoughts meander.
My house and others should have been
built where Diversion Creek now
flows. Antelope Park should be here,
on the banks of this meandering creek,
with trails, benches and picnic tables
nearby, with people fishing in the creek
or ruminating as they watch the crinkled,
light-filled water flow past. Instead of
pin oaks, cottonwoods and willows
should grow on the creek’s brushy
banks.
I imagine the pavement dissolving
and water flowing again in Phantom
Creek. During spring rains, the creek
overflows its banks and I throw out a
fishing line from my front porch. The
waters draw down and I gather mussel
shells. Kingfishers rattle and dive.
Muskrats carry reeds in their mouths
from this bank to that one. In the
evenings, deer come to the creek to
drink and raccoons patrol the banks.
I imagine following Phantom Creek
northwest to Antelope Creek. I imagine
following Antelope Creek west, past
outcroppings of Dakota sandstone and
north through a new and costly,
Armorflex-lined channel to the point
near the Nebraska State Fairgrounds
where the Antelope enters the Salt
Creek. I follow the Salt northeasterly to
its confluence with the Platte at
Ashland in Saunders County, what
Alfred T. Andreas in his 1882 history
of Nebraska called the “best watered
county in the state.” I follow the
Platte east, past wooded bluffs to its
confluence with the Missouri River at
the appropriately named Plattsmouth. I
follow those waters south, as they draw
the borders between Nebraska and
Iowa, then Nebraska and Missouri,
then Kansas and Missouri. The river
angles across Missouri, and enters the
Mississippi just north of St. Louis. For
many millennia, the lower Mississippi
meandered. But after decades of
channel cutoffs, levees, revetments,
and changes in the sediment regime,
it’s a more or less straight shot that I
follow to the Gulf of Mexico and
beyond.
When I imagine the water back into
Phantom Creek, its beautiful, graceful,
and geometrically regular meanders
can take me anywhere. ■
Lisa Knopp is an
award-winning American
essayist and author of
introspective short stories,
essays and creative
nonfiction. She teaches
creative nonfiction at
UNO and has been contributing to
NEBRASKAland since 1992.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 31
How Spiders Hunt
More than you probably want to know about
these creepy but impressive predators
Text and photos by Chris Helzer
I
t’s no accident that a spider scared Miss Muffet off
her tuffet. With the possible exception of snakes, no
creatures in Nebraska are more likely than spiders to
send people into irrational, arm-flailing, high-jumping,
screaming fits. You could make an argument for mice,
but I would counter that it’s usually the surprise of seeing
them skitter across a room that gets people. Spiders don’t
need the element of surprise to be creepy – they just are.
Simply by putting big pictures of spiders in this magazine,
I’ve probably run off 20 percent of NEBRASKAland’s readers
this month. Can you believe they’re paying me for this?
The scary truth is that there are about 34,000 species of
spiders in the world. But while at least 200-300 species can
be found in Nebraska, only two of them are really a threat to
people: the brown recluse and the black widow. The bites of
both species can cause serious injury, but are rarely fatal if
treated.
However, while the vast majority of spiders are harmless
to people, they are very significant predators of insects and
other small creatures. They’re also impressive, even beautiful
creatures, if you can get past the initial, visceral response many
of us have when we see them (They’re also less beautiful
after they’ve been stepped on). The importance of spiders to
Nebraska’s ecosystems is difficult to gauge because we don’t
really know much about their abundance, let alone how much
they eat, but anyone who has seen their vast numbers of webs
on dew-covered grass or tried to walk through woodlands
without a stick to knock webs out of the way knows we have
a lot of spiders. It’s not hard to imagine the kind of impact
spiders have on our environment.
How Spiders Hunt
Spiders are built for killing. First, most spiders have eight
eyes (some spiders have six and a few species have fewer or
none) to find and track their prey. All spider eyes are simple
eyes, as opposed to the compound eyes that insects have.
They usually have two main eyes, surrounded by secondary
eyes. These secondary eyes help them catch the movement
of prey within a broad field of vision, while the main eyes
focus on the prey as it moves closer.
Besides their eyes, spiders have other sensory abilities.
One is that their bodies are covered with hairs, and those
hairs are attached to nerves, making them incredibly sensitive
to vibrations. Some of these hairs are sensitive enough to
pick up sound waves. In many cases, a spider can “hear”
even small prey walking or flying nearby. In addition to
these sensitive hairs, spiders also have what are called slit
sense organs on their legs and elsewhere on their
bodies that are probably used for “smelling.”
Finally, spiders have small appendages called
palps (or pedipalps), that usually resemble small
legs located beneath their eyes. These are actually
sensory organs that function somewhat like the
antennae of many insects. There are hollow hairs
on the palps through which spiders can “taste”
their prey or other things.
Spiders, of course, have eight legs, which they
use to run, jump and climb, but also to catch and
hold prey. In many species, only the front set or
two of legs are typically used to grasp prey, but
in some cases all eight are needed to hold onto
particularly large and powerful creatures. In
addition to the sensory hairs mentioned earlier,
spiders also have fuzzy feet, which help them
walk on vertical surfaces and upside down –
even on very slippery surfaces.
Above: A long-jawed orb weaver dangles from grass in the early morning light
All spiders have the ability to make silk threads,
near Wood River. Opposite: A jumping spider feeds on a fly it captured on a
including wandering spiders. Webs that snare prey
fence post along the Platte River west of Grand Island.
32 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 33
good trait to have.
are one obvious use of that silk, but there are many others.
The two most common prey for spiders are flies and
Jumping spiders use silk as a safety line when jumping,
springtails (Collembola). The latter are very abundant, but
some spiders use silk to pin their prey to the ground before
tiny, insects that live and feed in leaf litter, and they are
biting it, spherical egg cases are woven from silk, and silk is
especially important
commonly employed
sources of food for small
in the construction of
spiders. For larger
various types of safe
spiders, beetles,
shelters for spiders to
grasshoppers, and
retreat into. Spider silk
butterflies are also
is surely one of the
common prey, but
natural wonders of the
nearly any insect is a
world, with a tenacity
possible target. However,
only slightly less than
there are some insects
nylon but with twice its
that have developed
elasticity. Its ability to
defenses against
stretch until broken
spiders, including stink
surpasses that of bone,
bugs, ants, wasps, some
tendon or cellulose, and
beetles, moths and
it is half as strong as
caterpillars. These
the best steel humans
species either have
can make.
chemical defenses, or
Finally, the jaws
Daniel Helzer shows off his new friend. Jumping spiders are fun to observe
simply a bad taste, that
(chelicerae) of spiders
and play with, and pose no danger to people.
make them less attractive
include hollow fangs,
prey.
through which a potent
venom is injected into their victim upon biting them. That
venom contains enzymes that dissolves the inside of the
prey, allowing spiders to then suck that liquid out through
Spiders can be generally categorized into one of two
the bite holes. The fangs of jumping spiders are some of the
groups relative to their hunting strategies – wandering spiders
easiest to see because they are often brightly colored.
or web spiders. Wandering spiders are those species that do
While spiders employ a wide variety of hunting strategies,
not use webs for hunting and are therefore free to wander the
some with webs and some without, most spiders follow a
world in search of food. Although many wandering spiders
fairly consistent set of steps when they capture and kill prey.
can move very quickly in pursuit of prey and have better
Typically, the prey is first grabbed with the spider’s front
eyesight than web spiders, the majority of wandering species
legs and held while the spider bites the prey and injects it
with venom. Once the prey is immobilized by the venom, the are ambush predators. In Nebraska, the three most common
groups of wandering spiders are jumping spiders, wolf spiders,
spider typically lets go with its legs and uses its chelicerae to
and crab spiders.
continue grasping the prey. It then proceeds to feed.
Web spiders rely on silken structures to help them catch
Some spiders, including jumping spiders, crab spiders and
wolf spiders, do most of their hunting during the day, but the their prey. A great variety of web-weaving spiders and web
majority of spiders are more active at night. There are several designs can be found in Nebraska, but three of the most
common and recognizable types are orb weavers, funnel-web
reasons for this, including the fact that many of their prey
species are also nocturnal. Another likely reason for spiders to spiders and sheet-web spiders. All three use their webs to
be active at night is that birds and reptiles, common predators snare prey, after which they run to the prey and subdue it
with a venomous bite. Because they rely on their webs to
of spiders, do most of their hunting during the day. Finally,
catch their prey, web spiders tend to have small eyes and
spiders can avoid desiccation in the dry sun by hiding in the
shade during the day and coming out to hunt in the darkness. poor eyesight, relying on their ability to sense vibration
much more than their vision.
Regardless of strategy, spiders are important predators
in Nebraska. Their abundance and diversity make them
Spiders can be voracious eaters. Many species can eat
valuable parts of the ecosystems they live in, but I
up to 12 percent of their own body weight in a day – the
think they’re worthy of respect for other reasons as
equivalent of a 150-pound person eating an 18-pound steak.
well. Anyone who has watched a jumping spider
However, a large meal can last a spider several days and
pounce on a fly or a garden spider dash out and wrap
their slow metabolism allows spiders to go very long periods, up a startled grasshopper can’t help but be impressed.
Spiders eat many of the same creatures we find to be
even months, without food. Spiders consume only about
one-fifth as much oxygen at rest as cold-blooded vertebrates, pests, so even if you don’t appreciate the aesthetic or
athletic values that spiders have, they can still be
and about one-hundreth as much as warm-blooded animals.
helpful.
In other words, spiders can afford to be very patient. Since
But only if you don’t step on them. ■
the vast majority of spiders are ambush hunters, that’s a
Hunting Strategies
What Spiders Eat
34 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
Following are six examples of spiders
and their hunting strategies.
Jumping Spiders
Perhaps the most charismatic of spiders
is the jumping spider. Its very large eyes
set it apart from other spider species, most
of which have very small eyes and poor
eyesight. Its short legs and compact fuzzy
body make it look more like a tiny teddy bear
than a spider. They are also relatively easy to
catch and tolerate being handled relatively well,
making them fun to play with (assuming you aren’t
in the middle of a screaming fit).
Jumping spiders hunt by ambush, but they see
relatively well, so they generally stalk their prey until
they are close enough to make a final pounce.
Because they often hunt on vertical surfaces,
pouncing can be particularly challenging. To
compensate, jumping spiders attach a safety thread
to whatever they’re standing on before they jump. If
they miss their target or muff the landing, the safety
thread catches them and they can simply climb the
thread back to where they started.
Though most are less than ½-inch long, jumping
spiders justify their name by jumping up to six inches
or more, especially when trying to flee danger. That
distance is even more impressive considering that they
don’t have oversized legs, as do many other invertebrates
known for jumping (grasshoppers, fleas, etc.).
Furthermore, spiders don’t use muscles to extend their
legs when walking or jumping. Spiders contract their
legs muscularly, but they extend their legs hydraulically
– by increasing their blood pressure. (This is why the legs
of dead spiders curl up – they’ve lost blood pressure
and there is no resistance to the contraction muscles.)
So when a jumping spider jumps, it lifts its front legs
and extends its rear legs with a sudden and forceful
boost of its blood pressure. It’s likely that their prey also
experiences a sudden boost of blood pressure when
they realize the jumping spider is pouncing on
them, but that’s difficult to confirm.
Wolf Spiders
In contrast to the cuddly jumping spiders, wolf
spiders are everything arachnophobes dream of –
large, fast spiders with long hairy legs and beady eyes.
Contrary to what their name and speed might indicate,
wolf spiders usually don’t chase and bring down prey
on the run. Instead they tend to sit in quiet ambush for
prey to come to them. In addition, and fortunately for
the world of small animals, wolf spiders hunt alone, not
in packs.
Wolf spiders have two large eyes and six smaller
eyes, but they rely on sensing vibrations from prey as
much or more than they do on their eyesight. They are
sensitive enough that they can sense wingbeats or
footfalls of nearby prey and direct their attack based on
those vibrations. Like jumping spiders, wolf spiders
pounce on their prey, but they have to be much closer
because most can only jump about one to one-and-ahalf times their body length. Wolf spiders usually catch
prey with their front pair or two of legs and hold on while
they bite. With larger and stronger prey they will
sometimes use a basketlike grasp employing all
eight legs.
Smaller wolf spiders roam freely around the
landscape and find shelter where they can, but
larger ones dig burrows and line them with silk.
Burrows can be up to ½-inch in diameter or more,
and are relatively easy to recognize if you’re
looking for them. Wolf spiders are probably best
known for the level of brood care undertaken by
females. After laying eggs, the female attaches
the spherical egg case to her spinnerets and
carries it until hatching time. Then she rips open
the case to release the spiderlings, which ride
around on her back before dispersing.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 35
Crab Spiders
Funnel-web Spiders
Crab spiders get their name from their long
front legs and flattened bodies, which give
them a crablike appearance. They can also
move both sideways and backwards like crabs.
In Nebraska, the species most often seen are
those that sit on flowers, waiting to ambush any
small insect that might land near them. Unlike
most other wandering spiders, crab spiders have
very small eyes. Those eyes function more like
motion detectors than true eyes, but are good
enough to see when prey is within reach.
Crab spiders sit motionless until prey comes within
reach and then quickly grab the prey with their long
front legs and bite it. Accordingly, most crab spiders
are very well camouflaged, including both their color
and the texture of their bodies. Some species can even
change color – between white and yellow – to match
the color of the flower they’re hunting on. Although they
can be difficult to see, if you look closely at flowers it
won’t take long to find crab spiders in just about any
natural area you visit across the state.
Funnel-web spiders are commonly
seen in the corners of buildings or in the
short grass of lawns, where they make
sheetlike webs that narrow to a funnel on
one end. However, the webs are also
abundant outside of town, particularly in
grass and low bushes. The spider sits in the
silken funnel tube, which is open on both
ends so the spider can quickly access the
web or escape through the other end, when
necessary. Funnel web spiders use their front
legs to feel for the vibrations from an insect
hitting the web and then run out to bite the prey
and carry it back to the tube to be eaten. Many
webs have vertical threads that help hold the web up,
but that also are hit by flying insects which then fall to
the sheet and are caught by the spider.
One of the intriguing things about funnel web spiders
is that they can run quickly across their webs without
getting stuck the way other insects do. Unlike orb web
spiders that can simply avoid stepping on the sticky
spiral catching thread, the funnel-web spider’s secret is
that it runs on tip toe. As it crosses its web, only the
very narrow tips of its legs contact the web. In contrast,
prey insects walk or run in a much more flat-footed
manner, and get stuck in the dense network of silken
fibers.
Orb Web Weavers
Among web-weaving spiders, the orb web-weavers
are probably the most familiar. Although there can be
tremendous variability between species, the standard
orb web has three main elements: frame threads,
radial threads and the catching
spiral. The frame
threads
are the rim,
or outside edge,
of the web and give the
web its shape. Radial threads are like the
spokes of a wheel and run from the frame threads to
the hub in the center. The catching spiral consists of
silk that spirals from the center of the web to the
frame, and is the only part of the web that is sticky. The
silk that makes up the catching spiral is studded with
glue droplets that hold hapless insects fast when they
blunder into the web. Most web designs also include a
free zone outside the edge of the hub, which is a gap
between the hub of the web and the beginning of the
catching spiral. The spider can squeeze through this
gap in order to switch from one side of the web to the
other.
In most cases, the spider either sits in the center of
the web or in a retreat on or near the edge of the web
while it waits for prey to come along. Insects that hit the
web get stuck, at least momentarily, and the spider
runs to them and either bites the victim immediately or
wraps it in silk to immobilize it before biting it. Since
orb web spiders have poor vision, they locate the prey
by sensing the vibrations of the web.
The most recognizable of the orb web spiders in
Nebraska are probably the large yellow and black
garden spiders. These spiders sit in the hub of their
webs and are easy to see, especially in late
summer and early fall. Garden spiders seem to
have a system that helps them decide whether to
bite their victims immediately or wrap them before
biting. Small prey are usually just given a quick bite
and carried back to the hub to be eaten. If the prey
is large and difficult to carry, the spider will
sometimes tie a thread to them and drag them.
Potentially dangerous insects such as wasps are
often wrapped up in silk before being bitten.
Moths are often wrapped as well because the
numerous scales on their wings flake off so
easily that they aren’t often trapped for long by
sticky web silk. Other large insects are often
bitten immediately, but grasshoppers are usually
an exception and are wrapped first – presumably to
prevent their strong legs from damaging the web.
36 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
Sheet Web Spiders
There are a number of different kinds of sheet webs
built by a wide variety of spiders, including the
dome- or bowl-like webs often found in bushes. These
webs are delicate, horizontal and convex webs
suspended
by threads above
and below. As with funnel
webs, those vertical threads
are often hit by insects, which fall to the
sheet. Sometimes insects get caught in the vertical
threads themselves and the spider will shake the web
until the insect falls to the sheet. The spider hangs
underneath the bowl or dome while waiting for prey to
arrive, and when an insect hits the sheet of the web
the spider bites it through the web and then drags the
victim through the web to eat it.
Another type of sheet web is called a tangle web or
cobweb, constructed of loose and irregular threads. Glue
droplets are used on some of those threads
(trapping threads). When an insect hits a
trapping thread and sticks to it, the bottom of the thread breaks off and
leaves the insect dangling in the air.
Usually, its struggles carry it to
other nearby trapping threads and
the insect becomes more tangled.
The
spider comes down from its
hiding place above, throws
more sticky threads over the
victim and then bites it.
Chris Helzer lives
in Aurora and is the
Eastern Nebraska
Program Director
for The Nature
Conservancy.
Special thanks to
Bill Beachly, Hastings College, for
help with this article.
NEBRASKALAND 37
are Next-generation Biofuels
the Answer?
Text and photos by Eric Fowler
scrap lumber. Additionally, many of
these materials can even be burned to
generate electricity to power the
processing plants. These segments of
the bioenergy industry, while not yet
operating on a commercial scale, are
catching up to corn ethanol quickly
thanks to more than $1 billion in
government funding in recent years for
research, development and to start pilot
plants around the country.
Some of that research is happening at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
(UN-L). If their findings hold true, not
only is switchgrass a viable source of
fuel, it can also provide environmental
benefits, including water savings and
wildlife habitat, that corn cannot.
While corn ethanol has helped reduce oil
demand and greenhouse gas emissions and has Tallgrass Energy and
been good for farmers and communities with Wildlife
processing plants, the added demand for corn Switchgrass research at UN-L’s
has resulted in land use changes that haven’t Agricultural Research and
Center near Mead has
been good for wildlife, as detailed in last month’s Development
been conducted continuously since
issue. The next generation of biofuels, however, 1936, longer than anywhere in the
world, and has had a bioenergy focus
including producing ethanol from switchgrass, since 1990. When President George W.
could provide benefits on each of those fronts, Bush mentioned the need to produce
ethanol from sources other than corn,
which is what we’ll look at in this story. including switchgrass, in his 2006 State
T
o date, corn ethanol is leading the
race to increase biofuel production
and use with the hopes of reducing
the United States’ dependence on
foreign oil and slowing global warming.
But that lead is due primarily to the
industry’s decades-long headstart.
The cell walls of all plants contain
sugars that can be extracted and converted
to fuel, and researchers are currently
doing just that with switchgrass, crop
residue, wood, sugar cane, algae – even
U.S. Department of Agriculture agronomist Rob Mitchell inspects a switchgrass field at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Agricultural Research and Development Center
near Mead. (Opposite) Rich Gooding swaths switchgrass.
38 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
of the Union address, it sparked even
more interest in switchgrass research at
the university.
U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) and UN-L researchers have
studied all aspects of the equation,
including establishing the crop, how
fertilizer affects yields and how harvest
timing and storage affect energy yield
and plant genetics. “We have a molecular
biologist, a geneticist and an agronomist
working on switchgrass for bioenergy,”
said Rob Mitchell, an agronomist with
the USDA’s Agricultural Research
Service based at the university. “We’re
conducting research from the cellular
level to the field scale.”
Mitchell was part of a recent field
study on 10 farms in North Dakota,
South Dakota and Nebraska that
provided a more accurate measure of the
costs and benefits of raising switchgrass,
which previously had been studied only
in small test plots. The study found that
yields on some farms averaged as much
as 4.2 tons per acre on marginal ground
that would have qualified for the
winter,” Mitchell said. However,
harvesting after a killing frost allows
many of the nutrients to be recycled,
which reduces the fertilizer need and
overall cost of production. “Ethanol
facilities will need feedstock 365 days
a year, so it’s likely harvest will occur
at both times, and may depend on
which fits best into the farm operation,”
Mitchell said.
Mitchell said a 50-million-gallon
ethanol plant would require 625,000
tons of switchgrass to operate yearround, requiring about 10 percent of
the landscape within a 25-mile radius
of an ethanol facility be planted to the
perennial grass. Harvesting an entire
year’s supply at one time and storing it
may be logistically impossible and
could require that the harvest be
staggered, with some being harvested
in August, some after a killing frost and
maybe some after the spring snow
melt.
Mitchell said USDA research so far
has found that delaying harvest results
in lower yields because dry matter is lost
in the field. But stored switchgrass also
loses dry matter. Further research will
try to measure the best approach to
maximize energy yields. “Harvesting at
different times during the year can
provide some diversity in habitat across
the landscape, and would be a real
benefit for wildlife,” Mitchell said.
Spring regrowth can serve as nesting
cover. Mitchell has flushed nesting
pheasants, prairie chickens and even
ducks from their switchgrass plots. “It
is being utilized a lot,” he said.
Glenn Knust of Lincoln approaches his birdy Brittany in a northeastern Nebraska CRP field. Diverse CRP plantings could be
managed to provide feedstock for cellulosic ethanol plants, with some benefits to wildlife.
USDA Conservation Reserve Program.
On-farm costs to raise switchgrass
were $60 per ton including land and
labor costs – higher than previous
Department of Energy estimates – but
from a feedstock standpoint, it costs
half as much for the material needed to
produce a gallon of ethanol than $6 per
bushel corn. Even with today’s lower
corn prices, switchgrass feedstock cost
is significantly less than corn.
This lower cost is based on findings
that switchgrass returns 540 percent
more energy than is required to raise it.
“Although corn-grain ethanol has a
very good energy return, switchgrassbased ethanol has a significantly
greater potential energy return,”
Mitchell said, pointing to estimates of
150 to 180 percent energy return realized
when converting corn to ethanol.
One ton of switchgrass will yield
about 80 gallons of ethanol, which
translates into 400 gallons of ethanol
per acre if switchgrass yield is five tons
per acre. Processors are currently
tapping 2.5 to 2.9 gallons of ethanol
per bushel of corn, or 375 to 435 gallons
of ethanol with yields of 150 bushels
per acre. But where switchgrass has
real potential is on marginal cropland:
a dryland corn field yielding 100
bushels per acre can produce only 240
to 290 gallons of ethanol.
Mitchell said switchgrass can be
grown wherever dryland corn is raised,
providing reliable, year-to-year
production east of Cozad. Although
specific research is lacking, switchgrass
may be viable for water-short areas
farther west, including the Republican
and North Platte river basins in
Nebraska, which are faced with the
need to reduce groundwater use. There,
Mitchell said, establishing the crop
would be the biggest hurdle, but limited
irrigation after seeding could reduce
this risk. “In those regions of Nebraska,
40 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
there may be opportunities to strategically
apply irrigation water in the switchgrass
establishment year, but in the majority
of the years it would never see a drop
of irrigation water.”
Switchgrass requires far fewer inputs
than corn or other row crops. Weed
control typically is only required during
the planting year, and once established
there is no annual seed cost and no fuel
required for spring field work. The
only input costs after establishment are
the application of fertilizer and harvest
costs.
Where switchgrass really shines is
the potential it holds in wildlife habitat
for some species. Naysayers will point
out that high-intensity monocultures
provide little wildlife benefit, but
“high-intensity is pretty relative if
you’re looking at switchgrass compared
to corn or soybean fields,” said
Mitchell, who has a background in
wildlife biology. “Any opportunity we
have to provide perennial grass cover
on the landscape is going to be good
for ground-nesting birds.”
While a 57-acre switchgrass field at
UN-L’s research farm is dominated by
that species, Mitchell said he can also
find a dozen or more other species of
plants there. He’s experimenting with
seeding nitrogen-fixing legumes into
switchgrass fields, hoping to see
increased yields without having to add
fertilizer, as well as providing additional
wildlife benefits.
Mitchell said many different harvest
practices have been tested, but what
shows the most promise for Nebraska
is a single harvest either around the
first of August or after a killing frost.
“Each harvest system has specific
advantages,” Mitchell said. For example,
harvesting in late-July or early August
typically will provide about two feet of
re-growth before the first killing frost.
“This makes great wildlife cover for
More than nine million acres of corn are grown in Nebraska, making it the state’s
biggest crop. While fertile bottomlands like these near the Platte River will likely
always be in row crop production, marginal land that had been in CRP but put back
into production in recent years may be better suited for growing switchgrass, providing
feedstock for ethanol plants as well as benefiting the environment and wildlife.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 41
encouraging new growth, especially in
forbs. Different bird species also prefer
different heights of grass, so if a
rotational schedule could be developed
to meet demand and leave a mosaic of
cover at different heights, wildlife
could benefit. “It may not be a direct
benefit, but it may be less of an
impact than we get if we convert a
cool-season pasture to a crop field,”
McCoy said. “Maybe we’ll see
conversion of those pastures into
warm-season grasslands.”
Maximizing Output
University of Nebraska-Lincoln doctoral student Nathan Palmer and postdoctoral research associate Aaron Saathoff load a vial of
switchgrass stems into a cryogenic grinder at the USDA-ARS Biomass Research Laboratory at the university. Working under a
U.S. Department of Energy grant, researchers at the lab are trying to identify genes and traits of switchgrass that can used to
develop varieties with better winter survival.
Growing Options
Diverse native prairie containing both
grasses and forbs also has the potential
to be harvested for biofuel production.
Studies indicate that while energy
yields from unmanaged native prairie
grass may only be half as much as
managed switchgrass, it would still be
comparable to corn grown on marginal
soils, while having a much greater
wildlife value than either crop.
“Native grasslands are hugely
productive and require virtually no
inputs, so using native hay as a source
for cellulosic ethanol, or perhaps even
for biomass and combusting that material,
could be a win-win for wildlife habitat
and the need for biofuel production,”
said Mace Hack, head of the Nature
Conservancy in Nebraska. “You’ve got
native plant species that have evolved
over hundreds of thousands of years
that are highly productive in the too
wet, too dry or any of the different
conditions we get on the Great Plains.
To not take advantage of those genes
and that adaptation and productivity
and try to recreate it with other crops
could be a mistake. It’s a missed
opportunity, really.”
One thing Hack doesn’t want to see
is the use of exotic plants for biofuel
production, not with so many other
introduced species, including smooth
brome grass and reed canarygrass,
already invading native wildlife habitat.
“I think we have a ton of experience
with those experiments going awry and
we end up with invasive species problems
and all sorts of other costs that, in
retrospect, don’t outweigh the benefits
of having made that introduction.”
Whichever perennial grasses are
used, they all have the potential to
sequester carbon, with the potential of
decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by
86 percent – more than the 51 percent
savings offered by corn ethanol.
Mitchell said previous studies estimated
that it would take 10 years for this
42 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
benefit to appear in switchgrass, but
their recent study found otherwise. “In
just five years we saw a significant
increase in soil organic carbon, with
four farms in Nebraska storing an
average of 2,590 pounds of carbon in
the soil per acre each year,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Energy
estimates that eventually about one
third of biofuels will come from
perennial crops, including grasses, one
third from crop residue and one third
from forest resources.
As is the case with grain ethanol,
finding land on which to grow enough
grass to meet those goals is “the million
dollar question,” said Tim McCoy, ag
program manager with the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission.
Some have their eyes on grasses
growing in fields enrolled in CRP or on
native prairie and pastures. McCoy said
haying entire fields each year would be
a detriment to wildlife, but periodic
haying can improve the habitat value of
grasslands by removing litter and
The next generation of the ethanol
industry is evolving so quickly that
McCoy said it is impossible to predict
what feedstocks will be used to meet
future ethanol production goals. Algae,
for example, wasn’t even considered a
few years ago, but now is showing
great promise in early research.
Developments also have been made
in the use of crop stover – stalks, cobs
and leaves, and other plant material –
to produce ethanol. The Abengoa
Bioenergy ethanol plant near York
launched a pilot plant in 2003 that uses
corn stover and distillers grains. An
Iogen plant in Canada is producing
ethanol from wheat straw.
While using crop stover allows for
more energy to be extracted from
existing cropland rather than requiring
additional land conversion, removing
crop residue can also increase field
runoff and reduces soil carbon.
Studies on marginal dryland fields
have found that annual removal of half
of the corn stover cuts grain yields by
five percent. Mitchell said this practice
is essentially mining the soil of nutrients.
A long-term study on irrigated fields
has shown no effect. “It does vary by
region and management and needs to
be sorted out – can we remove stover
and be sustainable,” he said.
Much of the current research is
aimed at reaching commercial-scale
production levels and reducing the cost
of producing ethanol from things like
grass, wood and corn stalks. Currently,
the processes are much more expensive
than producing ethanol from corn. If
successful, it could help boost ethanol
production on the east and west coasts,
which currently use a fraction of the
corn ethanol produced in the Midwest
due to transportation issues but could
certainly take advantage of other
feedstocks, especially wood.
Developments in cellulosic ethanol
also include talk of small-scale
mobile plants that could be moved
to feedstock supplies that are not
perpetual. That could include anything
from a cedar-clearing project on
Nebraska’s prairies to the Rocky
Mountains, where pine beetles have
killed countless trees, leaving the
forests ripe for a catastrophic wildfire,
but stockpiled with a seemingly endless
fuel supply.
But as recent research has found,
there is much more to the story that
must be considered, including the
effect the industry could have on land
use, wildlife and the environment.
These things have already been affected
by increased corn production, and the
thought of increasing the current goal
of producing 15 billion gallons of
ethanol from corn, as some have
proposed, scares McCoy. “We’ll see
even bigger impacts on land use in
terms of the amount of corn being
grown,” he said. “[Land conversion]
has the potential to be a huge driver for
Pheasants are one of many grassland species that can benefit if
switchgrass is grown for bioenergy production.
Questions Remain
Finding alternative fuel sources
that can slow global warming and
reduce our nation’s dependence on
foreign oil is something we have to do,
and corn ethanol is certainly one step
in that direction. In Nebraska, ethanol
has created a demand for an additional
600 million bushels of corn and added
five to eight cents per bushel to the
price farmers receive for the crop,
according to the Nebraska Ethanol
Board. The 24 plants operating in the
state have created 1,000 jobs directly
and another 2,000 indirectly, resulting
in $3 billion in additional economic
activity.
what we end up with in terms of
wildlife habitat.”
These are all things that must be
considered by policy makers to ensure
that biofuel production is sustainable,
while meeting the goals of reducing
dependence on foreign oil and
greenhouse gas emissions. With the
advancements that have been made in
recent years, McCoy sees promise that
the next generation of biofuels can help
reach those goals.
“We need to be innovative,” he said.
“and I think there are some good ideas
that need to be looked into harder. If
we can develop renewable fuels and
provide wildlife habitat on the same
land, now that’s sustainable.” ■
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 43
Hearing Loss Prevention
Nebraska’s Family Reunion
Take steps now to avoid problems later.
A new start to an old tradition.
By Kelsea Nore
By Kristen Friesen
exposure to loud noises deteriorates
oise-induced hearing loss is a
hear
these cells to a point of permanent
very real problem for hunters,
damage. Hair cells cannot be re-grown, if you
but one that is easily
preventable. Some hunters may so hearing loss cannot be easily reversed stood
30 feet
argue that earmuffs or earplugs and may even require expensive
from a jet
prevent them from hearing small noises surgery. This damage can lead to
plane as it takes
difficulty hearing others in social
while hunting, but modern technology
off. A .44-caliber revolver emits a
settings, depression, vertigo or
has caught up with this argument –
noise/blast that could very
there is now a wide variety
easily rupture your eardrum
of earmuffs and inner ear
(the tiny bones in your
devices that amplify small
middle ear crack or break).
noises, cut down on wind
When choosing hearing
noise and, most importantly,
protection, look for the
muffle gun blasts. Basic
Noise Reduction Rating
earplugs cost as little as
(NRR) on the package. A
99 cents, are for people who
higher NRR number
aren’t exposed to loud noises
means more noise
very often, and should
reduction or lower
always be used by
decibels. The majority of
bystanders. If you’re shooting
earmuffs and inner-ear
a gun, newer model earmuffs
devices available have an
are one way to go. They are
NRR between 27-33 dB.
lightweight, and the majority
Shooting near water
have reasonable price tags –
amplifies sound, so
between $30 and $50. Innerwaterfowl hunters need to
ear devices, such as Walker’s
take special precaution. In
High-Definition Game Ear,
addition, the loads used in
amplify high-frequency
waterfowl hunting are
sounds but function to muffle
much more powerful than
noise over 85 decibels (dB).
standard shells. If you are
These models are more
already hard of
expensive, in the $200
hearing, using earplugs
range, but are a popular
and earmuffs is
option for hunters.
recommended. For those
Whichever method you
who wear hearing aids on
choose, remember that the
a daily basis, it would be
ability for an outdoorsman
best to consult your
to hear well is priceless.
audiologist before hunting
The ear is composed of
in order to receive the best
three parts: the external,
possible protection. ■
middle, and inner ear.
Hearing loss on account of
For more information on
Ear protection is a vital accessory for all hunters, and there
are many varieties available online and from outdoor retailers. hearing loss visit
noise trauma (sensorineural
hearing loss) commonly causes
www.hearingloss.org.
damage to the inner ear, which contains dizziness, and even acute deafness.
the cochlea, the hearing organ and the
Sudden hearing loss can occur when
Kelsea Nore is a
vestibular apparatus – a sense organ
the ear is exposed to a sound of 170dB
freelance writer living
or higher. A .22-caliber rifle registers at in Omaha. To see her
that affects gravity and motion. The
145 dB – louder than being in the front NEBRASKAland
cochlea is lined with thousands of tiny
row of a rock concert. A standard 12hair cells called cilia. Cilia signal the
blog, log on to
gauge shotgun emits a sound that is
auditory nerve to report to the brain
afieldandafloat.word
155 dB, or the level of noise you would press.com.
that it heard something. Repeated
grew up in Lincoln, a child of the
seventies and the middle of three
daughters. Summers were spent
sailing at nearby lakes, riding the
train at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo
and downing Goodrich ice cream
cones. Come late-August, we’d
frequent the Nebraska State Fair,
walking off hot days in the cool of the
evenings. It was the last hurrah before
the start of school.
For our family (and many others,
I’m told), the fair was tradition. Like
potato salad at a picnic. Set in stone.
Something we never missed and, more
importantly than I realized at the time,
JUST A SHORT DRIVE ACROSS
TOWN.
If walking hand in hand through the
stinky livestock building didn’t bring
our family together, then funnel cake
certainly did. And my annual plea for a
pet rabbit. And Mom’s predictable
proclamation that any child of hers was
not about to board a ride that took less
than 20 minutes to assemble – followed
by Dad’s quick save which, with a wad
of cash and precision, produced three
giant stuffed critters, one for each of
us girls.
“Well now, you wouldn’t want to risk
losing that while you wait in line for a
ride. Besides, if you don’t fall out,
you’ll definitely lose your funnel cake,”
he’d say.
It was difficult to argue with such
logic. But then my parents have always
had the last words in our family …
until lately.
Not long ago, when they downsized
into a pristine condo situated along one
of Lincoln’s hike and bike paths, it was
decided that family gatherings would
be moved to my Grand Island home.
Not only is it much bigger (the house,
not Grand Island), but it’s difficult to
ruin something that was built more than
100 years ago. At least that’s what my
mom says. And with 18 mouths at the
table, she’s willing to excuse my sorry
potato salad.
During a recent family shindig, my
N
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
my mind.
At the risk of biting my tongue in
two, I resisted the urge to brag on our
“Can Do Committee” which, through
the efforts of 70-some volunteers,
has turned a big idea into a tangible
reality, with parking, landscaping and
community-wide beautification. I neither
drove her by the new hotels and eating
establishments nor the five enormous
red barns boasting 500,000 square feet
reserved for Nebraska’s four-legged
guests … and chickens.
Like a lot of folks in Grand Island –
blessed with a little space and a great
deal of hospitality – I’ve decided
there’s no use arguing. Nebraska is a
family, and a family will have its
reunion. Sure, the Nebraska State Fair’s
a big deal, but it’s 141 years in the
making. Ninety miles of interstate will
hardly put a dent in it.
And I’m confident that, once Mom
pulls up the drive, sees a few familiar
faces and takes a bite of funnel cake,
she’ll feel right at home. ■
Kristen Friesen is a
freelance writer living in
Grand Island with her
husband and three
children. She is also an
English major at UNK.
PHOTO BY DOUG CARROLL
44 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
I
mom, sisters and I all slipped away
from the family chaos at my house to
enjoy our favorite Grand Island antique
store. There, in a center booth, tucked
almost out of sight, was an old rusty
sign that read: “Nebraska State Fair,
Lincoln.” I couldn’t stop myself: “Well,
this is a timely bit of antiquity.”
I knew I’d said too much when, like
oppressive humidity through a screen
door, a stifling silence enveloped us.
My sisters shot me deserved glares, and
we trudged along in misery unfit for
any shopping trip. After a long while,
Mom finally spoke up. “The state fair
belongs in Lincoln where it’s always
been.” That’s all she said, and I knew
better than to argue. But I could have.
For example, the fair actually got its
start in Nebraska City, set up camp in
Brownville for a couple of years and
danced between Lincoln and Omaha
for nearly 20 years until, in 1901, it
settled down in the Capital City. And
I didn’t remind her that in 2008
the state fair was on the verge of
homelessness, nor did I mention the
$8.5 million dollars Grand Island
coughed up in hopes of even being
considered seriously. I would’ve
been crazy to bring up Grand Island’s
location and accessibility for farm
and ranch families, though it crossed
The Nebraska State Fair, no matter where it’s located, will still have its midway.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 45
Aquatic Habitat Stamp – Phase Two
Goldenrod Cure-all
In its second phase, the aquatic habitat program will improve fishing access.
The power of Nebraska’s state flower.
By Jon Farrar
By Elizabeth Mack
PHOTO BY ERIC FOWLER
W
Construction of off-shore breakwaters and jetties, as shown
above at Sherman Reservoir, are typically part of aquatic habitat
improvements. In addition to providing improved fishing acess,
they create spawning shoals and feeding areas for game fish.
46 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
all fish, fish barriers installed where feasible to prevent
unwanted species from re-entering the lake, and then
restocking with game fish; excavation or dredging to remove
silt; construction of jetties and off-shore breakwaters to
decrease shoreline erosion and create spawning shoals; creation of sediment trap structures in the watershed, grassed
waterways and buffer strips to slow runoff of soil and pesticides; and installation of aeration systems.
Funds generated by stamp sales have been leveraged
against more than 87 other funding sources such as the Sport
Fish Restoration Fund, Nebraska Environmental Trust, and
the Environmental Protection Agency, to more than double
the money available for aquatic habitat work. To this point,
nearly $40 million have been spent to improve habitat for
fish and anglers in the state.
The Aquatic Habitat Program is now in its second phase:
In March 2008, the Commission’s governing board approved
an additional 72 projects, with a projected budget of $3.5
million each of the next 15 years. Projects were selected
after a thorough review and ranking of needed habitat
restoration by fisheries biologists across the state. While
aquatic habitat improvement will remain the emphasis of the
second round of the program, improvement of angler access
to lakes and streams, particularly bank fishing, will be an
important component. When the 2009 Nebraska Legislature
approved expanding the aquatic habitat program by raising
the Aquatic Habitat Stamp from $7.50 to $10, it obligated
that up to 30 percent of the funds be used to improved access
to public waters.
Emphasis in selecting sites for access enhancement will
largely be based on four criteria – proximity to population
centers or high-use waters, such as Fremont Lakes State
Recreation Area; if the benefits of habitat enhancement can
be sustained long enough to justify the project; geographic
distribution of the projects with an emphasis on regions
where there are few public fishing waters, such as Wellfleet
State Lake in Lincoln County; and ownership of the property,
with emphasis on those managed by the Commission, making
management more efficient. Angler access projects will also
be planned for newly constructed, purchased or leased public
waters. Angler access improvements will include construction
of jetties extending out into the body of water, ensuring a
safe walking surface to the water’s edge from public parking
areas, floating or permanent fishing piers, and adding fish
attractors such as submerged cedar trees near access points.
“Improving habitat for fish should not be viewed as an
added cost to the angler, but as an investment in fish habitat
and improved angling experiences in the future,” Winter
said. “Convenient access to these quality fish communities is
the key to recruiting and keeping anglers. The Aquatic
Habitat Rehabilitation and Angler Access programs jointly
address these needs.” ■
ebraska’s state flower, the goldenrod (Soldiago gigantea), is
not only a showy bloomer in late summer and early fall, but
is also known to have medicinal properties as well.
Goldenrod leaves were used in teas by Native American
medicine men to cure a variety of ailments, including
intestinal disorders, colic, urinary disorders and edema or dropsy.
Some tribes also used the leaves topically to heal bruises and to
relieve arthritis pain.
Europeans have long believed in goldenrod’s medicinal qualities:
The German Commission E, a government regulatory agency that
oversees herbs and supplements, has approved goldenrod for treatment
of bladder and kidney stones and to aid in the treatment of urinary
infections. Many Europeans also use the leaves in a gargle for colds,
sore throats and laryngitis. Herbalists in the Appalachians continue to
make Blue Mountain Tea from the leaves of goldenrod, which they
believe to alleviate exhaustion and fatigue.
Although no quality studies of its effects have been done on
humans, some research suggests that goldenrod does in fact increase
urine flow. Whether a proven remedy or not, many people are
convinced of its healing benefits – though no one needs convinced of
its beauty. ■
N
PHOTO BY CHRIS HELZER
ith the exception of lakes in the Sandhills region
and a handful of cut-off lakes on the Missouri
River floodplain, Nebraska was not naturally
blessed with standing water for fish and anglers.
That started changing in the late-1940s as rivers
and streams were impounded to create irrigation and floodcontrol reservoirs, with the added benefit of great fishing. By
the 1980s, however, many reservoirs constructed in the 1950s
and 1960s were showing their age and the quality of fishing
was declining.
“We were well past midlife on a lot of these waters,” said
Randy Winter, the recently retired fisheries biologist who
administered the Commission’s Aquatic Habitat Program for
most of its existence. “Some of the older lakes had lost half
of their volume to sediment, had grown shallow enough that
winter fish kills were common, and many were dominated
by undesirable fish species, such as carp, that destroy aquatic
vegetation important to most game fish.”
In 1994, public information meetings were held statewide;
and late that same year 76 anglers representing all regions of
the state met with Commission biologists at a conclave in
Grand Island. Out of that process came a proposal for the
nation’s first fund specifically earmarked for aquatic habitat
rehabilitation. Additional public meetings were held to gather
suggestions for aquatic habitat improvement projects after
the bill was passed by the 1996 Nebraska Legislature. Fortynine high-priority habitat improvement projects were selected for the program’s first eight years, with statewide distribution of projects considered as much possible. Forty-six of
those projects have been completed.
Habitat projects were tailored to the need of the lake and
biologists employed every tool and technique they had –
renovation, meaning a short-lived toxicant is used to eliminate
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 47
ATTRACTIONS/EVENTS
WILDERNESS SURVIVAL CLASS - Start a fire with
the bow-drill method, build a survival shelter,
be introduced to primitive traps, cordage, flint
knapping, edible and medicinal plants, water
location and purification, and much more! Go to
www.greatplainstracker.com.
BOOKS/PUBLICATIONS/VIDEOS
EXPLORE NEBRASKA art, history, culture and the
great outdoors with a subscription to Nebraska Life
Magazine. One year (six issues) for $21 or two years
(12 issues) just $38. Phone (800) 777-6159, write us at
206 W Norfolk Ave, Norfolk NE 68702-0819 or visit
www.NebraskaLife.com. Makes a great gift.
SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITY about Nebraska’s rich
past with Nebraska History. Learn about Nebraska’s
fascinating people, places and events that shaped our
state. To subscribe or to give a gift of Nebraska History,
call 1-800-833-6747 or (402) 471-3272. To learn more,
visit www.nebraskahistory.org.
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.
DUCKDAWG RETRIEVERS - Raising exceptional
hunting yellow and black Labradors. Puppies raised in
our home. 30-month, written health guarantee. Stud
service: GRHRCH UN DuckDawg’s Eba Roll the Dice
and GRHRCH UH McMac Magic Eyes A’Smilin MH.
The first Grand Hunting Retriever Champions in
Nebraska. www.duckdawg.com Ron Green, DVM and
Libby Milroy, North Platte, NE (308) 534-3659
AT STUD: GRHRCH UH Platte's TNT Duckdawg Dozer
MH. First yellow Labrador in the state of Kansas to earn
his Grand, Upland and Master titles. Seventy pounds of
muscle, exceptional marker and blind runner Dozer
is available for breeding to approved females. Natural
breeding requires a brucellosis test on females. Chilled
semen available. Stud Fee $600. Contact owner Tom
Phillips at (785) 635-5776 or trainer/handler - Chris
Jobman at (308) 249-0707, www.flatlanderkennels.com.
PREMIER GUNDOGS TRAINING KENNEL: State
licensed kennel specializing in Hunting Dog and Hunt
Test training for all waterfowl and upland flushing
retrievers, spaniels and pointing Labradors. Dale and
Kris Taylor (402) 787-2048 www.premiergundogs.com.
FLATLANDER KENNELS INC. Bayard, NE
Full-time retriever training facility for the serious hunter
or AKC and HRC hunt tester. Trainer of Nebraska's first
and only GRHRCH's! Super Retriever Series competitor
and a member of Avery's Team Waterdog. Training
available for all levels of hunt tests and gundogs. Chris
Jobman: (308) 249-0707, www.flatlanderkennels.com.
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.
48 NEBRASKALAND • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
NEBRASKA LAKE MANAGEMENT. Biological lake
surveys, fish stocking, rough fish control, lake aeration,
algae control, aquatic weed control. Rob Hofpar, Aquatic
Biologist, licensed, insured and qualified. (402) 784-6005
Valparaiso - (888) 850-2460 www.nelakes.net.
GET YOUR FISHING PERMIT online today! Don’t
wait until tomorrow to enjoy Nebraska’s great outdoors
by going fishing with the family. To purchase a permit
from the comfort of your own home, go online to
www.OutdoorNebraska.org and click on Purchase a
Permit under Licenses and Fees.
FOOD/GIFTS/HOME
EXPERIENCE. (402) 668-7488. www.milliron-vlodging.com, jpeinrem@gpcom.net.
UNCLE BUCK'S LODGE: Treat yourself to a lodge
vacation at the scenic Rhoades family ranch on the North
Loup river near Brewster in central Nebraska. Cattle
drives, brandings, hunting, birdwatching, stargazing,
family reunions, spa weekends, tanking and river fun.
14,000 sq. ft lodge, full service restaurant/bar (800) 2399190, www.unclebuckslodge.com.
PLANNING A VACATION? Why not make it at a
Nebraska State Park? With more than 80 state park and
recreation areas across Nebraska to choose from, you can
enjoy a campground or cabin and enjoy activities such as
fishing, swimming, camping and hiking. Call
(402) 471-1414 for reservations or go online at
www.OutdoorNebraska.org and follow the Parks link.
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: ngpc.classifieds
@nebraska.gov. Ads are posted online at
NebraskalandMagazine.com at no additional charge.
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.fermenterssupply.com.
GUIDES/OUTFITTERS
CANOE - KAYAK - TUBE RENTALS on the
beautiful Niobrara River with Dryland Aquatics at
Sparks, Nebraska. Your Niobrara River Specialist.
(800) 337-3119. www.drylandaquatics.com, info@
drylandaquatics.com.
NIOBRARA SUPERTUBES in Valentine. We rent only
high-quality Mad River Canoes. For all your Niobrara
River canoe & tube rentals call (402) 376-2656 or go to
www.niobrarasupertubes.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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
NEBRASKA WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS.
Matted. Go to inplainssight.homestead.com. "The more
you buy, the quicker my wife can retire!"
VACATIONS/RESORTS
THE OLDE MAIN STREET INN. A historic bed and
breakfast listed in the National Register of Historic
Places. Beautiful dining room with fireplace.
Headquarters for General Nelson Miles, Wounded Knee
Incident, 1890-91. 115 Main Street, Chadron NE 69337
(308) 432-3380. www.chadron.com/oldemain.
DIAMOND B TROUT RESORT, Orchard, Nebraska.
Lodge, cabins, spring-fed lakes, playground equipment,
paddleboats. Great for families, groups, hunters. Book
your cabin now! Call for brochure (800) 974-3002.
www.diamondbtroutresort.com.
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.
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
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 49
▲ This is a picture of myself,
Dwain Luhr, taking “the weekly
bath” five miles southwest of
Pender around 1934.
Notice the warm weather,
strong winds and lack of
vegetation.
– Dwain Luhr,
Hot Springs, South Dakota
▲ This picture was taken around 1974 following our first fall wild turkey hunt in Holt County. We followed
all the protocol; scouted out some possible roosting trees, in the field before dawn and hunted all of the
likely places. We hunted several spots that day and finally, in late afternoon, we encountered a flock of
hens and toms in a wheat field north of O’Neill where we filled our limit. That was a day to remember.
Since then our group has hunted wild turkey along the Niobrara River for several years. We never failed
to get our toms.
Our hosts from O’Neill were, from left, Virgil Larsen and Howard Larson. The group from Kearney
were, left center, myself (Bobb Hobbs), Doug State, John (Shot) Lowe and Merle Herring.
– Bobb Hobbs, Kearney, Nebraska
▲ Pictured at left is my brother, Gene Schwenke ,and my future brother-in-law,
Alrae Olson, in 1954. Notice the BB guns and the fruit of a sucessful hunt –
two mice. Taken at my parents, farm near Minden.
Gene became an M.D., and is now retired and living in Lincoln. Alrae is now
a teacher in Eustis.
Both still like to hunt in Nebraska, but thankfully bigger game!
P.S. – I really enjoy reading NEBRASKAland.
– Jack Schwenke, Fort Morgan, Colorado
▲ In Columbus around 1941, my uncle Roy Bernt (left),
and my dad, Virgil Stone, with a stringer of sandpit bass.
Roy owned Bernt’s Sporting Goods store there.
Inset above is me with a 63/4-lb bass I caught from the
same sandpit in 1961. It is still mounted in my den.
– Gary Stone, Waverly, Nebraska
Send contributions to: Portraits from the Past, NEBRASKAland Magazine, P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370. Or e-mail to
tim.reigert@nebraska.gov. Photos should show people enjoying Nebraska outdoor activities, such as camping, boating, hunting or fishing,
and must have been taken before 1980. 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 • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
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