Volume 88, Issue 9, 2010
November 2010
- Identifier:
- nela.2010_088_09
- Title:
- Volume 88, Issue 9, 2010
- Issue Name:
- November 2010
- Date Issued:
- 2010-11-01
- year:
- 2010
- month:
- November
- Season:
- Autumn
- PDF filename:
- NL_88.09_2010_Nov_Spreads_Entire.pdf
- Publisher:
- Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
- Format:
- Periodical
- volume:
- 088
- issue:
- 09
- number:
- 088.09
- Decade:
- 2010s
- Type:
- Rights Holder:
- Copyright Nebraskaland Magazine/Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, all rights reserved.
- Extracted Text:
-
Volume 88, Number 9, November 2010
14 Live Decoys – Before There Was Robo Duck
Until they were outlawed, nothing pulled wild ducks and
geese out of the air like live decoys on the water.
BY JON FARRAR
22 In the Corn
In her essay “In the Corn,” NEBRASKAland contributor Lisa
Knopp takes a look at how corn has influenced her life, as
well as the lives of others on the Great Plains. BY LISA KNOPP
24 From the Air – a Look at the Sandhills
When photographing from the air you lose depth but gain
scale. You also lose intimacy, but gain a much broader view.
PHOTOS AND TEXT BY MICHAEL FORSBERG
30 Barn Swallows
I imagine very few people come to Nebraska to observe and
photograph barn swallows. Too bad, for I recently found out
how fascinating they actually are. BY JEFF KURRUS
34 Winter Survival Strategies
Because Nebraska’s winters can be quite harsh, animals
need a good method to survive. Here are several examples of
what those methods entail. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY CHRIS HELZER
40 Not Just a Boy’s Club Anymore
Female hunters are on the rise both locally and nationally.
BY ELIZABETH MACK
14
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22
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42 The 38-point Buck
A Nebraska hunt by a native Texan results in one of the
largest bucks ever shot in the Cornhusker state. BY JEFF KURRUS
Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Mixed Bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Outdoor Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Parks & Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Outdoor Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
In the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Portraits from the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
24
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Cover: Wesley O’Brien, of Lexington, Texas, poses with his 38-point buck,
one of the largest ever killed in Nebraska. See story on page 42. Photo by
Jeff Kurrus. Opposite: Antique farm equipment brings to memory past days
in the greens and browns of autumn grass. Photo by Jeff Kurrus.
NEBRASKAland (VOL. 88 / NO. 9, 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.
34
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NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 3
What Happened to Those Wings?
I recently made one of my periodic
visits to Lakeside, our neighborhood
lake, with a bag of corn and my camera.
I settled in on the walking trail as a
small group of Canada geese made
their way toward me, looking for a
handout. Putting a handful of corn on
the ground, I was soon surrounded by
many resident “beggars.”
I noticed one goose sitting near a tree
and what I saw struck me by surprise.
The enclosed photos brings to mind the
questions how and why did this happen?
A walker passing by said the bird
had been at the lake all summer and
could not fly.
I am hoping that some of your readers
or associates with Game and Parks may
have a plausible explanation.
Jack Bosen
Omaha, Nebraska
Mark Vrtiska, waterfowl program
manager for the Nebraska Game and
Parks Commisssion, replies:
“My suspicions are that the goose in
the photo suffers from "Flip-" or
"Twisted-Wing," which is caused by a
nutritional imbalance of proteins.
Basically the primary feathers (the
long wing feathers) grow faster than
the supporting muscle, which causes
them to "flip over” due to too much
weight. Afflicted birds cannot fly (as in
this case) and longterm structural
damage is probably caused, with the
results that these birds will never be
able to fly.
Remnants of the primary feathers –
shattered and tattered from wear – are
what can be seen poking out from the
sides of the bird.”
4 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
Hidden Hummingbird?
While looking for the bug in the
November issue, my husband saw what
appears to be a hummingbird in Bill
Hager’s picture of birds foraging for
seeds on page 27. Do they actually eat
seeds when nectar isn’t available?
Stella Amberry
Ansley, Nebraska
According to Joel Jorgensen,
nongame bird program manager for the
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission,
hummingbirds will occasionally eat
small insects as a source of protein, but
they do not eat seeds. Also, while I can
see where he might have been mistaken
(see inset picture), there weren’t any
hummingbirds in this picture. – Editor
native state and for that reason, it is the
magazine that accompanies me on the
subway, in waiting rooms and even…
the beach. On a recent vacation to the
Outer Banks of North Carolina, my
July and August-September issues of
NEBRASKAland Magazine were a
beach necessity (second only to
sunscreen).
Brook Hanna
Hartsdale, New York
Thank You NEBRASKAland
I just wanted to say THANK YOU
for publishing NEBRASKAland
Magazine.
I am 81 years old, born and raised in
Nebraska, a retired Army Colonel with
a lifetime Nebraska hunting and fishing
permit.
Your magazine keeps me up to date
with the outdoors sports that I loved so
dearly, even when I was out of the
country.
I used to hunt and fish in this state
an average of 11/2 days per week when
the seasons were open and I was not
overseas. Keep doing the outstanding
job that is your hallmark.
Rolla Lush
Grand Island, Nebraska
NEBRASKAland Visitor Letters
We want to thank all 99 readers that
sent e-mails and letters for last issue’s
visitor, an earwig on page 47 (see page
13 for the winner, rules and this issue’s
hint). Here are just a few of the many
wonderful responses we received:
NEBRASKAland at the Beach
NEBRASKAland has been a staple of
my monthly magazine reading since
high school, where I often used the
information presented in the featured
articles for school reports and projects.
Throughout college I would receive my
parent’s read-worn editions in care
packages, which continued to arrive
even after graduation and my move to
New York. Now I am a subscriber.
NEBRASKAland keeps me current on
the events and issues affecting my
That's an earwig on page 47 of the
October 2010 NEBRASKAland
Magazine. My guides are conflicting
about whether it is the European or a
Ring-legged species. Both appear to be
present in the Midwest.
Though I now reside in New Jersey,
I've been an avid reader of the
magazine for many years. Raised in
Omaha, I've returned frequently,
sometimes to accompany my father on
his pheasant hunts. The magazine
keeps me in touch with Nebraska's
magnificent landscape.
The quality of NEBRASKAland
Magazine is superior to other states'
outdoor magazines that I've read.
Keith Johnson
Livingston, New Jersey
My daughter Abby (6) and son
Cameron (5) have begun to search for
each issue’s visitor in NEBRASKAland.
This month, they simultaneously found
the earwig on page 47 on his way to
the duck soup. Thank you for this
fantastic magazine, which has been a
good supplement to their education.
Andy Coen
Lincoln, Nebraska
Bug on page 47 of the October
Nebraskaland issue, just above the
bowls of duck soup. How could you?
Dale and Margaret Nielsen
Lexington, Nebraska
Page 47, upper right. Looks like
some kind of critter the bottom of my
boots would see!!
Dave Madigan
Boyton Beach, Florida
Earwigs are nocturnal insects,
scavenging for food at night and
becoming inactive during the day.
They primarily eat vegetation, but will
also consume other insects.
Their most noticeable
feature is the pair of
pincer-like
projections, called
forceps, attached to
their last abdominal segment. While
they prefer a moist habitat under
organic matter, such as leaves and
mulch, they are often noticed entering
houses in the fall, looking for shelter.
Special thanks to Julie Van Meter, State
Entomologist, Nebraska Department of
Agriculture.
Send your comments to:
Doug Carroll, Editor
NEBRASKAland Magazine
P.O. Box 30370
Lincoln, NE 68503
or e-mail doug.carroll@ngpc.ne.gov.
Please include your postal address and
telephone number. Letters may be condensed and edited for clarity. Photographs
are welcome and will be returned.
Story and photo submissions can be
sent to the same address. Include a selfaddressed stamped envelope for mailed
submissions. The publisher assumes no
responsibility for unsolicited material.
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
Dennis Thompson
Dan Zuehlke
Doug Pollard
Frank Miller
Dan Kling
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
For address changes and questions about
your subscription, e-mail
Donna.Robinson@Nebraska.gov
or call (800) 632-5263
Marketing/Advertising
For advertising information contact
Larson Enterprises
e-mail dave@larsonent.com
or call (515) 440-2810
NEBRASKAland Magazine Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.
NEBRASKAland is available on audio cassette from the Nebraska
Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service, Suite 120, 1200 N
St., Lincoln, NE 68508. (800) 742-7691. NEBRASKAland Magazine and
the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission reserve the right to reject any
advertising not in keeping with the agency mission.
Rates: $18 for one year; $33 for two years; $44 for three years. Nebraska
recipients must add appropriate sales tax. To subscribe call
1-800-NEBLAND (632-5263), or go online to:
NebraskalandMagazine.com.
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
521-0159
274-8063
443-6392
890-6465
890-6463
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
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 5
Book Review
Black Squirrel Update
Kelsea Nore
Daniel D. Fogell’s “A Field Guide to
the Amphibians and Reptiles of
Nebraska” is an extensive and
methodical guide to a vital group of
animals within the state. The guide is
also much needed, since the last
Nebraska field guide of amphibians and
reptiles was published almost seventy
years ago.
The guide includes
an identification key
with cross-listed page
numbers. Each and
every snake, turtle or
frog is matched with
a statewide graphic
that shows every
county where these
creatures can be
found. Two or more
color photographs
(taken by Fogell himself)
are also attached, ensuring proper
identification and up-close looks at
defining characteristics. The physical
descriptions, habitat, natural history
and distribution information is exact,
abundant and easy to understand.
The book also contains a glossary of
terms, a checklist of every species and
a section for notes.
For the expert, student or the merely
curious, this field guide is a great
resource to the reptiles and amphibians
of Nebraska.
Jeff Kurrus
It’s been awhile
since I’ve asked,
but we’re steadily
getting phone
calls and e-mails
regarding the latest
black squirrel sightings. The latest
came from an unidentified man in
Lincoln who had seen them on 33rd
and Holdrege, right down the street
from our NEBRASKAland offices.
“There’s coming for you Kurrus,”
regional editor Eric Fowler told me,
so email me at jeff.kurrus@
nebraska.gov to let me know
if he’s right.
What is That?
Jeff Kurrus
This month’s photo essay
“From the Air” by Michael Forsberg
contains a curious photo of a group of
trees in Cherry County that resemble,
well, something. That something could
be a little girl on a tricycle or a rocking
horse. To each their own regarding
what they see. However, what we want
to know is if there is anyone in the
region who knows the history of this
tree line, or thinks they know its
history. If so, email me at
jeff.kurrus@nebraska.gov so that I can
stop looking at this photograph
asking, “Was there a plan behind this
Here is a list of
upcoming outdoor
events across
Nebraska.
For more
information
about
these and
other events, click on
the calendar at
www.OutdoorNebraska.org.
October 30
• First Day of Pheasant and Quail
Hunting Season – Statewide
Call (402) 471-0641 or go online to
OutdoorNebraska.org for more
information
November 1
• Ticket Sale, 16th Annual Historical
Christmas Dinner – Fort Robinson
State Park
Tickets go on sale at the park office
at 8 a.m. Call (308) 665-2900 or e-mail
ngpc.fort.robinson@nebraska.gov
November 3
• Deer Hunting Workshop –
Lancaster County Extension Office,
Lincoln
Learn how to hunt deer: equipment,
strategies, biology, Nebraska hunting
laws and more. Register by visiting
www.huntsafenebraska.com
November 8
• Deer Hunting Workshop – Cabela's,
LaVista
Learn how to hunt deer: equipment,
strategies, biology, Nebraska hunting
laws and more. Register by visiting
www.huntsafenebraska.com
November 13-21
Sheep Feet
6 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
November 21
• Longhorn and Buffalo Sale – Fort
Robinson State Park
The annual longhorn and buffalo
sale is being held November 21, 2010.
The sale is held at the Crawford
Livestock Market. Anyone interested
can contact Fort Robinson State Park
prior to the sale for more information
or to request a catalog.
Call (308) 665-2900 or e-mail
ngpc.fort.robinson@nebraska.gov
November 25
• Thanksgiving Day Buffet – E. T.
Mahoney State Park
A breakfast buffet will be available
from 7:30 a.m. – 10 a.m.
Call (402) 944-2523 or e-mail
ngpc.mahoney@nebraska.gov
WWW.DIRTTIME.WS/NOTEBOOK/BIGHORN.HTM
Kelsea Nore
Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis
canadensis) are well known for two things:
their impressive curled horns and their
equally impressive climbing abilities – an
important survival skill that helps protect
them from predators such as coyotes or
mountain lions. Even their just-born lambs are able to easily navigate rocky
terrain. Bighorn sheep are even-toed ungulates (hoofed animals), and their
3- to 3½-inch long black hoofs are firm at the edges but become softer in
the middle. The two parts of each hoof separate as the sheep moves,
which helps them grip loose ground and steep hillside. The soles of their
feet are also cushioned, almost rubbery, which gives the sheep added
traction. These adaptations help the sheep move safely, but in the event of
a tumble the sheep has one other protective adaptation on its side – their
sturdy horns help protect the head.
• Firearm Deer Hunting – Statewide
Call (402) 471-0641 or go online to
OutdoorNebraska.org
Itching to Know
8 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
Become a NGPC Insider
PHOTO BY LUKE KATHOL
It’s hard not to bring my personal
desires into “A Look Back,” hoping
that you also find favor with my
choices for the month.
This particular issue in 1985
struck me because my first
question was “What was I doing in
1985?” I was in Mrs. Huber’s class,
learning my multiplication tables.
Jon Farrar, at that time however,
was waterfowl hunting. And he
had some things to say about
some other “shooters” who sky
bust while hunting in his essay
“The Trouble with Hunting”:
“Skybusting (those who shoot
waterfowl out of range) makes the
blood boil in anyone who loves
waterfowl and waterfowl hunting,”
Farrar wrote. “It brings curses to
the lips that would not be vented
on rabid skunks. These people
with shotguns and boats and
decoys sitting in the marsh are not
duck hunters, they are shooters.”
It is a rare occasion when Farrar
has written so frankly in
NEBRASKAland, and I think you
will enjoy it.
Also in this particular issue was
Farrar’s “Return to Horseshoe-Bar
Ranch,” a piece about Roe Black’s
life on the Dismal River; and
“One Time in a Marsh,” an essay
written by the late-Mark Landgren
about two boys waterfowl hunting
near Hastings.
To read Farrar’s essay, go to
NebraskalandMagazine.com and
click on “A Look Back.”
Dandelions
Kelsea Nore
When I was young, I was told that if
you put a dandelion beneath someone’s
chin and the flower left a yellow streak,
that person loved butter. Aside from the
usefulness of this determination, the
dandelion is a varied plant. Some
consider it a pretty reminder of spring
and summertime, while others classify
it as a pervasive weed.
Dandelions are found in all 50 states,
are native to both Europe and Asia, and
get their common name from the French
phrase ‘dent de lions’ (tooth of lions), in
reference to their deeply serrated leaves.
The bright, pointed petals they wear at
first bloom also speak to a lion’s mane,
but the plants have been known as
Monk’s Heads and Puffballs as well.
Well-manicured lawns and gardens
detest the presence of dandelions due
to their deep, hard-to-kill root systems
and the numerous seeds even one
dandelion can release. On a single
flower, approximately 50-150 seeds or
cypselae are produced and the pappi
(the fluffy white part we often blow
off of the stem in a single breath) are
carried away to germinate. The plant,
proving that it’s not all bad, is also edible.
Dandelion wine is a popular concoction,
and the leaves or greens can be used in
salads. They have a slightly bitter taste.
The roots have a medicinal history and
are still used as a diuretic and a liver
tonic.
Pat Engelhard
If you are a fan of the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission or other
outdoor enthusiast, or just someone who
wants to know what’s going on in your
own backyard, you should subscribe to
the “NGPC Insider.”
Intended as a way to keep Commission
staff updated on what each division was
doing each month, the “Insider” is now
available to the public. Every month, we
compile reports from the activities,
events and projects that our agency is
involved with across the state.
We feature successful partnerships
and research endeavors, provide
updates on habitat and wildlife,
fisheries, hunting and conservation, and
links to interesting resources. We also
feature a photo gallery that provides our
readers with a quick visual summary of
our agency’s activities. The “Insider”
is a way for you to connect directly
with the Commission through your
comments and feedback, questions and
observations.
So check out the NGPC “Insider”
blog at http://ngpcnews.wordpress.com/,
leave a comment and suggestion or two
about what you find there and subscribe
to our news feed to receive monthly
updates, features, news and resources
from Game and Parks all condensed
into one monthly digest.
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
Jeff Kurrus
See You Out There ...
But Where?
PHOTO BY CHRIS HELZER
Kimberly Stuhr
It’s the carbon dioxide
we exhale. That’s how
those buzzing, biting,
blood-sucking mosquitoes
can always seem to find
us. A female can detect
carbon dioxide from 75 feet away. It’s
her signal that a potential blood meal,
necessary for her to produce eggs, is
near. And there you have it – an answer
to your most skin-piercing question.
Do you know where this
Nebraska photograph
was taken?
See answer at the bottom
of page 13.
Popular Winter Trout Stocking
Program Continues
Rainbow trout are once again being
stocked in waterbodies across the state
as part of the Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission’s popular winter
trout stocking program.
Designed to provide trout fishing in
areas that normally don’t offer it, the
program gives anglers a chance to catch
rainbow trout in a local body of water
that is only able to support this
coldwater species during the winter
months. The stocked trout are
approximately 10 inches in length
when released.
The following schedule indicates the
date and number of trout that were to
be stocked in these bodies of water as
of press time. For more information
about the winter trout stocking program,
got to OutdoorNebraska.org.
Sept. 29 – Crystal Cove Lake, South
Sioux City, 4,250; Birdwood Wildlife
Management Area at North Platte,
2,304; and Rock Creek Lake State
Recreation Area near Parks, 2,280.
Sept. 30 – Humphrey Pond in
Ogallala, 1,800 trout; Barnett Park
in McCook, 1,000; Curtis Golf
Course Pond, 450; Arnold City
Park Pond, 850; and Bessey Pond
near Halsey, 200.
Week of Oct. 4 – Niobrara State
Park, 1,000; Qwest Lake, Eugene T.
Mahoney State Park, 2,500; Fremont
Lake No. 2, 5,000; TaHaZouka Park,
Norfolk, 1,500.
Oct. 9 – Holmes Lake, Lincoln,
4,000; Bowling Lake, Lincoln, 400.
Week of Oct. 12 – Standing Bear
Lake, Omaha, 4,000; Auble Pond, Ord,
1,500; Weeping Water Pond, 1,500;
Lake Halleck, Papillion, 1,200; David
City Park West Pond, 600; Pawnee
Park West Pond, Columbus, 1,500.
Week of Oct. 18 – Towl Park Pond,
Omaha, 300; Hitchcock Park Pond,
Omaha, 450; Steinhart Park Pond,
Nebraska City, 1,200; Auburn Rotary
Club Lake, 1,400; Heartwell Park
Lake, Hastings, 900; Such’s Lake,
Grand Island, 1,300; Standing Bear
Lake, Omaha, 3,500.
Week of Oct. 25 – Benson Park
Pond, Omaha, 1,050; Grove Lake,
Royal, 1,500.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 9
Chris Helzer
Mud dauber
wasps are a
spider’s worst
nightmare. Female
daubers build mud
tubes and then go
hunting for spiders.
When they find
their prey, they
paralyze it with their stinger and carry it back to an empty tube. There they use
their head to jam the helpless spider into the tube – sometimes alongside another
spider or two – before laying an egg in the tube and sealing it up. When the eggs
hatch, the paralyzed spiders become food for hungry wasp larvae.
You can recognize mud daubers in Nebraska by their long and very skinny
“waists.” There are two species – one that is yellow and black and one that is a
dark, metallic blue. Interestingly, the blue species actually steals nests (tubes)
from the black and yellow wasps, and replaces the egg with one of its own.
Because mud daubers almost never sting people – unless you try to handle them,
which I advise against – you can feel good when you see one in your yard,
knowing that it’s just out looking for spiders to terrorize.
Eric Fowler
If you haven’t had the pleasure of getting smacked in the face by your
riflescope yet, congratulations. You are one of the few. If you have, and
aren’t sure why, it is a simple matter of a specification of scope design
known as eye relief.
Eye relief is the distance you must hold your shooting eye from the
rear (ocular) lens of a scope in order to see the entire image produced by
the scope. Hold it too close, and things get fuzzy around the edges. Too
far and the image becomes a dot in the center of the lens.
Eye relief can vary between brands and models of scopes. It also varies
between the short and long zoom ranges of variable scopes. On a 3x9
scope, for example, the range of eye relief is much greater at 3x than at 9x.
So how does eye relief translate into a cut above your eye? Simple.
The recoil of the rifle throws the scope backwards. If the eye relief of
your scope is not sufficient, the top of the scope will find your eyebrow.
Typically, the more magnification a scope provides, the shorter its eye
relief. Eye relief is of much greater consideration with hard-kicking
magnum rifles. Considering those two facts together, a 14x or 20x scope
would be a bad choice for a .300 Winchester Magnum.
When mounting a scope on a rifle, it is important to first determine
Good sport Matt Marx shows off his scope eye.
where the shooter’s cheek naturally meets the stock when they mount the
gun to their shoulder. When that is known, the scope can be slid forward
or backward in the rings to match the eye relief. Mounting the scope first and forcing a shooter to lean into the gun more
than they would otherwise can lead to poor marksmanship as well as scope eye.
If you often find your scope meeting your forehead, determine or measure its eye relief and then go buy a new scope with
more, and your problem will most likely be solved.
Hoarfrost
PHOTO BY ERIC FOWLER
Pasquale Mingarelli
Nebraska winters can be harsh,
with numbing sub-zero
temperatures, blinding blizzards
and menacing freezing rain. But
there is a gentler side to our
weather that transforms a cold
morning into a winter wonderland
by painting the landscape with
delicate crystals of white. This
Hoarfrost on a spent shotgun shell.
gentler side of winter is known as
hoarfrost.
When the air is saturated with moisture, water must be released. That often
happens in the form of fog or dew. Regular frost first forms as dew then freezes.
However, if the dewpoint (the temperature when dew forms) and the object the
frost forms on are below freezing, hoarfrost occurs. The water vapor changes
directly from a gas to a solid without first becoming a liquid. This allows air to be
captured in the ice, making a frosted area look very dreamlike.
Hoarfrost formations are very fragile and
sunshine, a rise in temperature or wind will make
them disappear.
Migrating Raptors
Patrick Mainelli
This November keep your
eyes out for some of
Nebraska’s late-season
migrating raptors. Many of
these aerial hunters, including bald and
golden eagles, rough-legged hawks and
prairie falcons, can be found along riverbanks
or in open fields riding the thermals.
10 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
Prairie falcon
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 11
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
Scope Clearance – and the importance of eye relief
PHOTO BY CHRIS HELZER
Mud Daubers
Turpin Time
Robert Miller of Beatrice says his
interest in deer hunting is more of an
obsession, especially archery deer
hunting. Being retired allows him to hunt
morning, midday and evening, and when the season closes he only slows
down, shifting his focus to scouting, stand placement and keeping in touch
with landowners.
Chris Reimann of Lincoln, formerly of
Ogallala, advertises the brand of shotgun
he carries while waterfowl hunting. Other
trim details on his truck show the passion
he has for the sport he’s persued for
more than 30 years.
If you have a unique outdoor message
plate you would like to share, or know
someone who does, e-mail a photo (highresolution, .jpg format only, please) of it
to Eric.Fowler@Nebraska.gov, along with your name, hometown, and a brief
description of the interests expressed on your license plate.
In January 2006, at the tail end of my field training, I was working the Bridgeport area along with fellow
Conservation Officer Heath Packett. Naturally, the weather wasn’t the nicest that winter day, especially while
learning how to kayak on the Platte River. During our excursion we were to be working waterfowl hunters to
ensure they were following state and federal laws. After a very brief lesson on how to get into and out of a
kayak in moving water, we were off.
Within a mile of the start of our trip we checked a group of nonresident hunters, one of which did not have
the required permit and stamps. After Heath issued a citation we were once again heading downstream.
Watching the sun rise and waterfowl fly low over our heads, I seemed to forget how cold the temperature
was and any worries I might have had about the day.
As we continued moving downriver, along with some ice chunks large enough to sink a boat, we heard a
few shots in the distance and soon came upon a pit blind with a small channel running between it and a
sandbar. Beaching the kayaks, we approached the blind and were welcomed by two very polite hunters
who invited us into the blind to check their permits, guns and share some hunting stories.
After making sure everything was in order and swapping stories, we wished both gentlemen good luck
and headed back to the kayaks. One of the hunters stuck his head out of the blind and said, "You guys'
have the best job in the world!" This is supposed to be your cue to gracefully get in the kayak and float off
into the sunrise, but if you know me at all, you know that isn't going to be the case. While getting in the
kayak, one of my feet became entangled in a root sticking out of the water, so with one foot in the kayak
and one still stuck in the root, I stood there and watched my kayak start to float away with one leg still in it.
At that point I knew I was doomed! I had only two options – do a belly flop in the water or drop to my knees
and grab the kayak. Because the water was only a couple of feet deep, I didn't see any point in doing a
belly flop, so I dropped to my knees. One would think a pair of chest waders would have been the clothing
of choice that day, but I was wearing hip waders. Kneeling in water up to my waist, I realized just how cold
the water actually was. One of the hunters asked if I wanted to sit next inside next the their heater – he
didn’t have to ask twice! Sitting in the blind in my long johns, drinking their thermos of coffee,
we laughed and shared a few more embarrassing stories.
Another officer eventually arrived to take me back for a change of dry clothes and chest
waders in order to finish the trip we had started. Thanking the hunters, I walked away in a
pair of very wet and cold waders, but to this day I still have to agree with them that I have
the best job in the world – where else can an officer spend the year meeting people who
enjoy all the outdoor resources our state has to offer?
– Cory Krause, Conservation Officer, West Point
The Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks, known as the local Elks Lodge
in most small towns, is again accepting
donated deer hides from the beginning
of the November firearm deer season
through the end of the January antlerless
deer season. Donated hides will be
shipped to a tannery to be turned into
soft leather and made into gloves for
wheel-chair bound veterans or used for
craft kits that are distributed to veterans
at VA Medical Centers across the world.
Before the hides can be shipped, they
have to have all excess fat, flesh and
tails removed, then fine table salt must
12 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
be rubbed into all fleshy surfaces.
Volunteers at the drop-off locations do
most of this work, but hunters are
welcome to do it themselves before
dropping off the hides. Care must be
taken in the skinning process, however,
as even small holes can result in the
hide being ruined during the tanning
process. Hunters should call their local
Elks lodge to find out about drop-off
points in their area.
Fishing Records Certified
Summer fishing has yielded more
state records certified by the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission.
Dustin Noble of Gothenburg set the
underwater spearfishing record by taking
a redear sunfish at a private sandpit in
Buffalo County. The fish, taken on
Sept. 4, weighed 1 pound, 4 ounces and
was 10¾ inches long. That fish broke
the record Noble had set on July 3 at
the same sandpit by two ounces.
Also on July 3, Noble set the
underwater spearfishing record by
taking a 13-ounce hybrid sunfish that
measured 9.7 inches in length.
Marlyn Wiebelhaus of Wynot set the
state archery record on Aug. 12 when
he took a 67-pound, 14-ounce grass
carp at Buckskin Hills Lake in Dixon
County. The fish was 52 inches long.
Tamara Walker of Plattsmouth was
the winner of the 2010 State Fair’s
“Wild and Scenic Nebraska” division.
Walker captured the winning photo on
a “very cold December morning” just
east of Plattsmouth near Randall W.
Schilling Wildlife Management Area.
PHOTO BY TAMARA WALKER
Deer Hides Needed
State Fair Winner
Said Walker, “I usually check the
weather right before sunrise and if it
looks like a good day, I grab my
camera and off I go. The trees were
covered with heavy frost that morning,
so I headed down to the river and the
morning sun was just coming up
through the trees as the fog was rising
off the Missouri River.”
Don’t forget to purchase
your deer permit online at
www.OutdoorNebraska.org
NEBRASKAland Visitor
Winner and Hint
Last issue’s winner of
the NEBRASKAland Visitor drawing
was Ron Macomber of South Sioux
City, Nebraska who found the earwig on page 47.
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, 8, 10, 13, 30, 32, 38 or 44.
Missouri River Basin Lewis & Clark Visitors Center, Nebraska City
The Best Job in the World
Dick Turpin
When you’re
pheasant hunting,
make sure you
carry some
markers with you. You fellas who have
been hunting birds in the field, you
know what I’m talking about.
Especially when multiple birds are shot.
You hit one over here and the dog is
200 yards away. Then you look over
and you’re distracted and you forget
where that bird is. Just take brightly
colored tape and wrap it around a
heavy object and use it as a marker.
I pitched baseball when I was a kid
and my elbow is bad so I can’t throw
very far, but if you grab that and swing
it, it’ll go a long way. Make sure you
carry a couple of them with you. ■
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 13
LIVE DECOYS
Before There Were Robo Ducks
By Jon Farrar
Until 1935, when they were prohibited by federal regulation, nothing
lured wild ducks and geese out of the sky like call birds on the water.
Back in the late-1800s and early-1900s, when wildfowl
was still exceedingly abundant and laws regulating the
taking of ducks and geese, if they existed at all, were
unconscionably liberal – those who could hunt the most at
the best places and worked the hardest at it killed the bulk of
the birds. That was certainly true of market hunters. One of
the key tools of the trade for wildfowl hunters in those days
was live decoys, also known as call birds. Wild ducks and
geese found the sight of a live bird moving on the water and
calling skyward irresistible, just as Joseph W. Long wrote,
and dropped down to their death far more often than they did
to bobbing wooden decoys, sheet-iron profiles and the
mixed-bag of noises hunters sent skyward from their mouth
callers.
Because live decoys were so effective, it is not surprising
that in the mid-1930s, in the heart of the continent’s worst
historical drought and plunging waterfowl numbers, they
were declared illegal; and other restrictions were imposed to
reduce the killing – the prohibition of shotguns larger than
10 gauge or holding more than three shotshells, sink boxes
and baiting. There was a hue and cry from hunters not
wanting restrictions on the way they had always hunted, but
most sportsmen knew it was necessary and demanded, or at
least supported them. Of all the new regulations imposed on
waterfowl hunters, probably none had a greater impact
reducing the kill than the prohibition of live decoys.
Jodi McNeel of North Platte, who died in 2006, hunted
over call ducks and call geese when he was a young man.
14 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
“I know why they banned them,” McNeel said in a 2004
interview. “They was just too damned effective, that’s what
it was.”
Most sources trace the development of call ducks back to
Holland in the 1600s, where tamed “Coy ducks” were
confined in wire-covered pens over water, their name
coming from the Dutch word de kooi, translating as to trap
or cage. At one end of the pen was an opening that grew
increasingly small as it extended deeper into the pen. The
confined birds would call to wild ducks, they would alight
nearby, and eventually some would move down the funnel
into the trap. Once inside they found it difficult to find the
small opening through which they had entered, particularly
if panicked when the game keeper came to gather them.
Not surprisingly, as the British have a long history of sport
hunting, Dutch call birds had found their way to England by
the 1850s and were used to attract wild ducks close to
hunters’ guns. American hunters were quick to employ English
call ducks, but bred them to be as unBritish as possible;
although small, near-black English call ducks remained in
widespread use by hunters until they were banned in 1935.
Call birds used by American hunters from the late-1800s into
the mid-1930s ran the full gamut from essentially pure
English call ducks to tamed wild birds and everything
between – ducks and geese many generations removed from
their wild, free-flying ancestors; and duck crosses between
wild mallards, barnyard mallards and English call ducks.
Some hunters took wounded birds home and nursed them
back to health to employ in subsequent hunting seasons.
Other would-be breeders stole eggs from wild mallard nests
and incubated them under a farmyard hen. Eventually, a
thriving market developed for eggs, young and adult call
birds. The classified ad sections of newspapers and outdoor
magazines were awash with call birds for sale, particularly
in the early-1900s as wildfowl grew increasingly scarce
and competition between hunters to shoot what was left
intensified.
The November 1925 issue of Field and Stream quoted the
following prices: Black or gray English callers $6 per pair,
young black mallards $7 per pair, “old stock” black mallards
PHOTO COURTESY OF THOMAS G. WEYNARD
L
ive tame ducks make probably the best decoys to be
had for mallard and black-duck shooting, but they
are such a nuisance to take care of and transport
that they are seldom used in the West. It would
almost seem as though they took an especial delight
in seeing their kindred killed, from the continuous calling
and quacking they keep up whenever a flock of wild ones
come in sight; and they seldom call in vain, for on the wild
ones hearing them they immediately turn and come in.
– American Wild-Fowl Shooting by Joseph W. Long,
J.B. Ford And Company publishers, 1874.
Three unidentified hunters were proud enough of their goose shoot on the Platte River they brought not only
their shotguns and their kill but three of their call geese to the studio of G. Calkins in Kenesaw to preserve the day.
During the early-1900s, sporting catalogs and magazines
frequently ran advertisments for devises to hold live decoys.
The above ran in the November 1925 issue of Field and Stream.
$9 per pair, and Canada geese $15 per pair. Those prices,
give or take a dollar or two one way or the other, were
typical of the 1920s and early-1930s, varying slightly with
how proud the breeder was of his stock, how many he needed
to sell and how close it was to the opening of the waterfowl
hunting season. Bargain prices were found once the hunting
season was underway and breeders wanted to reduce their
stock before winter.
“The first step in the training of ducks is to cultivate their
confidence and overcome the natural fear that all have of
the presence of human beings or the sound of their voices,”
Dr. William Bruette wrote in his 1929 book, American
Duck, Goose, and Brant Shooting. “This is accomplished at
feeding time. In training live decoys it is customary to pen
them while young where they will be in constant contact
with those who are to handle them. The presence in the pen
of older, thoroughly broken birds will facilitate matters, as
ducks are very imitative and gain confidence from one
another. It does not take the young birds long to decide
that they have nothing to fear from those who feed them
regularly. The men who are training them signal their
approach by a feeding call or a sharp blow on the side of a
boat, feeding box or bucket. The older birds answer with
their quacking, the young birds imitate them, and it
becomes their habit. It is only a short time before all of
them, as soon as they hear the call or the signal, will begin
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 15
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM W. LEMBURG
A scene rarely captured in a photograph shows a typical layout for duck and goose hunting on the central Platte River during the
early years of the 1900s – a willow blind on a sandbar, canvas goose decoys stuffed with straw and three live mallards for decoys.
to quack and run towards the feeding place.
“The next step is to lay a trail of corn from the pen over to
a boat,” Bruette continued. “As soon as the birds hear the
call or signal to which they are accustomed and the attendant
begins talking to them, they answer back and if the pen door
is open they will follow the trail of the corn as surely as a
bird dog follows his nose and are soon busily engaged in
climbing over the deck and into the cock pit for the kernels
that have been scattered about to attract them.
Sound unbelievable? McNeel said that in the 1920s he and
The neck-hold tether above was advertised in the Wm. R.
Burkhard Co., St. Paul, Minnesota, 1913 hunting catalog.
16 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
his hunting partners used about 35 call ducks and transported
them to the river in a boat covered with chicken wire and
having a 24-by-24-inch door.
“When we fed the ducks, we always would shake a can of
corn,” he said, “and the birds came to know when they heard
that they were going to be fed. So when you would shake
that can of corn, they would hop in that duck boat, and then
we would close the door and go to the river. When we got
done hunting in the river, we would just pull the duck boat ...
up there on the sandbar, shake the corn, dump it in the duck
boat and wham, in they would go, close the door and go
home. They loved that damn hunting as much as we did.”
“When used as decoys on the shooting grounds, the birds
are placed according to the habits of the birds on such
grounds,” Bruette wrote. “Generally the ducks [hens] are
tethered by a ring around the neck or a cord attached by a
loop or preferably a rawhide device around the leg between
the hock and ankle. The drakes are left loose to swim about
freely. They will not leave the ducks [hens]. Sometimes they
circle or make short flights in the air, and attract passing
ducks.”
Devices to tether live decoys basically were of three types:
Those attached to the bird’s leg, those placed around the
bird’s neck and harnesses fitted over the bird’s body. Each
type had advocates. Harnesses were said to be least apt to
injure the live decoy, but some hunters believed they restrict-
Leg-hold devices were probably the most commonly used, particularly for Canada
geese. The advertisement above ran in the October 1927 issue of Field and Stream.
ed their movements,
making them less
effective at attracting passing wild
birds.
“We made a
[leather] harness for
‘em,” Rudy Fick,
who grew up
hunting the
Missouri River near
Blair and was a state game warden in the late-1930s and
early-1940s, recalled in a 1987 interview. “We had a little old
iron ring [on the harness] and made a trot line...with a lot of
little snaps on it, that’s the way I had mine, and iron stakes,
you could drag one end and the other end would hold. I used
to go up there all alone and set out 50 live decoys.”
“As has been said, the value of a stand of ordinary wooden
decoys is many times increased if there are added to them a
couple of live decoys,” wrote George Bird Grinnell in his
1901, classic wildfowling book, American Duck Shooting.
“These, when properly trained, are usually on the watch for
birds in the air, and will quack vociferously at black birds,
buzzards, herons, or wild geese.
“It is only the female that can quack,” Bruette continued.
“The drake makes only a little jabbering half whistling
noise. A most common ruse to increase activity of the
decoys, when the position permits, is to put a noisy duck
[hen] in a clump of rushes out of sight of the rest of the
flock. Her calls to them will keep them working.”
“We got our decoys all out, the wooden floats, head on, as
far out in the channel as we dared put them, the profile geese
on the windward sand bar, and our callers – a trio of live
half-breed mallards and one full blood a little nearer the
blind; three of them in front of us and one across the bar
behind, where she could not see her companions but could
keep in touch with them in a conversational way,” Sandy
Griswold, outdoor writer for the Omaha Bee from 1886
into1898, and for the Omaha World-Herald from 1898 into
1929, wrote in his description of a duck hunt on Platte River
in a December 7, 1919 column. “This isolated caller was a
beauty – a little full-blood, wild mallard hen, very dark in
plumage, and the very best caller I ever shot over. She was
wild as her native relatives while on the river, but as tame as
the rest of them when off duty. She is the keenest eyed bird I
ever saw, and her work is truly wonderful. Not a singe crow
could winnow his black shape across the river, for a mile or
more, up or down, but what she called our attention to it, and
so it was, even to the illusive little snowbirds and juncos,
which were always flitting in intermittent gusts athwart our
sand bar hide, or over our decoys.”
“It is often a great advantage, when shooting over wooden
decoys, to have a live duck to throw in the air when wild
ones are approaching,” Long wrote. “She should be secured
by a light, strong line, of from fifteen to twenty-five yards
in length, to the blind to prevent escape, and should be
blindfolded by a hood drawn over the eyes; then, not being
able to see how far she has to fall after being thrown up, she
will spread her wings and allow herself to drop gradually
with feet extended as is the usual manner of ducks when
alighting. The attention of the other ducks being attracted
toward the decoys by her motions, they come in without
hesitation.”
Fick said he trained his call ducks for use as flyers by
taking them to the depot in Blair and releasing them. “I’d
throw ‘em up and they’d fly back [home] and light right
back in the pen. I done that all fall.
“In those days, when the flight started,” Fick continued,
“generally just ahead of a storm, and you could look up all
day long, day in and day out, several days anyway, ducks by
the thousands, every 100 to 150 to 200 yards a bunch of
ducks going south, looked like sparrows, so damn high.
Well, I’d take and throw up a couple of these call ducks, I’d
have the decoys out there, and I’d take and throw ‘em up
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 17
PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM W. LEMBURG
chain. He recalled the Tekamah Gun Club used 40 to 50 live
call geese.
“You would hear them shoot,” Kohler said of hunting close
to the Tekamah Gun Club hunters. “In about two minutes
you would hear them shoot again. Then they would shoot
again. Pretty soon it was quiet, and you knew that they killed
every one of them in that flock. [Those wild geese] would
just keep going back to those live birds [in the pen]. They
just kept calling them back. [With] those call geese, if there
were 20 in a bunch, they shot them all. I didn’t like that.”
Kohler said it was “the best thing that ever happened” for
geese when call birds were prohibited.”
Unlike call ducks, geese were always penned, tethered or
someway constrained.
“I don’t know anybody that had any geese that they would
let loose,” McNeel recalled. “Most of the geese had this
harness that came up over the wings. You put it over the
wings, and then it crisscrossed in the back, and down right at
the belly you had your ring. You hooked that ring into the
chain, drove the stake into the sandbar. Some of the guys
used a leg strap.”
Sentiment against the use of live decoys was already
building nationwide in the 1920s in response to plummeting
waterfowl numbers, but it took the duck depression of the
1930s to advance legislation to prohibit it.
“You are what sportsmen term an old-timer; you can
remember, as I can also remember, when it was no trouble at
all to go get a mess of ducks in the spring or fall, on any
creek or stream; there were millions of ducks and I couldn’t
count the geese,” J.B. DeFort of David City wrote Griswold
in a letter appearing in the February 17, 1924 edition of the
Omaha World-Herald. “Now, why don’t we have at least a
good flight in the fall? You know why and I’ve wondered why
you never have written along these lines. Decoy shooting,
and especially call ducks, is the answer.”
Griswold responded sarcastically: “What you say about
the abolishing of the live decoy is all relevant enough and
would surely help in lessening the possible bag of the
hunters, but wouldn’t it be better to abolish all shooting and
Some game farms sold call ducks and geese to hunters. When prohibited, many were probably returned. William H. Lemburg’s
son, Earl, is shown hand feeding captive Canada geese. Lemburg’s game farm was located near Boelus and later near Cairo.
back of me and they’d fly around and all the [tethered live
call] ducks would cut loose calling. So, I’d give ‘em two
more. I had six that I’d trained that way. And so, we’d throw
two more. They’d just make a circle around like that. I’d just
take and toss mine over my head, back behind the blind, and
they’d fly over the river and come right in and light with
your ducks staked out. Oh, it was fun.”
As with call ducks, most hunters wanted two traits in their
call geese – small size and clamorous. Pound for pound,
more call geese could be transported if they were small, and
so a four- to six-pound bird was ideal. Larger geese were
used, though, particularly on the Platte River. Many of the
call goose flocks in places like North Platte were put together
from wing-tipped wild geese before 1900, back when the
large “giant” Canada geese were still pausing along the
Platte River during migration and nesting in the Sandhills
just to the north.
“One time I was putting decoys out on the point of this
towhead,” Earl “Goldie” Haworth of Sidney recalled in a
1987 interview. Haworth hunted ducks and geese on the
18 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
North Platte River from the late-1910s into the 1990s before
dying in 1994. “We’d usually put the gander on one end and
the hens down below so they’d call between them. And those
old ganders would get so damn mad they would just bawl.
[One time] I was out and a flock of geese showed up…and
Ed [Haworth’s brother-in-law] says, ‘Here comes a flock of
geese.’ And I just laid down flat and held this goose by the
leg. And you ought to have heard that old goose call – called
‘em in.” Haworth said: “We’d see one bunch of geese and
you was mad if you didn’t get into it.”
Long-time waterfowl hunter Ralph Kohler of Tekamah, in
a 1989 interview, recalled hunting with his uncles on the
Missouri River in the early-1930s. He said there would be
three or four spreads of live goose decoys in a three-mile
stretch of river. One hunter had more than 100 call geese,
including white-fronted geese. Hunters deploying large
numbers of geese often built pens on sandbars to confine the
call birds, as tethering each was too time consuming. Kohler
said his uncles only used six or seven birds and they rigged
them just like their call ducks, with leg bands and small
Patent Decoy Duck Collar Co.
leg and neck tethers as
shown in the advertisment.
Popular neck and leg tethers were made by an Arkansas
company. The above ad is from Sports Afield, November 1934
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 19
PHOTO COURTESY OF EARL “GOLDIE” HAWORTH
Earl Haworth, left, with hunting partner Al Zlomke, and Canada
goose call birds used on the North Platte River near Lisco.
make the thing sure?”
In a column published September 27, 1925, while not
calling for the banning of live decoys, Griswold wrote that
without them most wildfowlers would be disappointed with
their times on marsh and river: “The days of what seem an
inexhaustible supply of birds have flown now these several
years, and more and more with the recurring of each season
they will become scarcer and the necessity of greater
knowledge of the sport and greater care and cleverness in
its pursuit is more and more apparent.
“For one thing in recent years, they have failed to decoy in
the fall – now our only open season – anything like they
used to in the days of their enormous plentitude, and in fact,
hardly decoy at all, especially to our old-fashioned wooden
decoys which are almost nil, insofar as any help they may be
to the gunner. Of course, I am speaking in general terms,
because the birds will still occasionally decoy to these wooden
counterfeits just like they used to but you will find that
where one flock responds, there will be twenty that gives
your stool the go-by.
Restrictive regulations for sport hunting was inevitable,
and it would be federal legislation as the federal government
had the authority to regulate sport hunting of migratory birds
under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty. In 1931, the season
length and bag limits set in the spring were both reduced by
presidential proclamations in late-August and earlySeptember. Knowing there would be fierce opposition, it seems
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to incrementally
prohibit the use of live decoys, as 1931 federal regulations
allowed no more than 10 call geese be used at a blind but did
not prohibit the use of call ducks.
Regulations related to the use of live decoys was a terrible
20 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
Swivels were used to prevent tethers from becoming tangled.
Above advertisment from Field and Stream, November 1928.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DORA WENNERSTEN
tangle for hunters to sort out in 1932, 1933 and 1934, as
promulgation of state regulations often lagged far behind
changes being made at the federal level; and changes made
at the federal level were sometimes made only weeks before
the waterfowl hunting seasons opened. As a consequence,
much of what appeared in print, including information
published by state game departments, for those years is
inaccurate.
What appears to have happened in 1932 was that federal
regulations issued early in the year restricted the use of live
decoys to 25 ducks and 10 geese per blind. Apparently,
protests from hunters were powerful enough that by the time
hunting season rolled around the use of live decoys was only
restricted in California, where at the state’s request, live
goose decoys were prohibited. Regulations apparently were
essentially the same in 1933 and 1934. References can be
found stating there was a 25 bird limit on the use of call
ducks, but no mention of the use of call geese. Regardless of
what might be found in print, the 1934 hunting season was
the last year that the use of live decoys of any type in any
state was legal. Before the 1935 hunting season, sportsmen
and conservation organizations had gathered enough clout
to push the federal government to act to protect the still
declining waterfowl numbers. What likely moved sportsmen
who objected to a prohibition on live decoys was the very
real possibility there would be no waterfowl hunting seasons
at all in 1935. “Close the duck season for 1935, and as much
longer as may be necessary to save the breeding stock,” was
the vote of the Izaak Walton League convention in Chicago
in April 1935, stated Seth Gordon in his July 1935 Field and
Stream column.
“The new drastic restrictions limit the season to thirty
consecutive days in each of the two major zones,” the Field
and Stream editorial continued, “cut the daily bag and
possession limits to ten ducks, eliminate live decoys entirely,
prohibit shooting over baited land or water, and outlaw floating
devices [blinds] of all kinds, except for scoters. Shooting
hours are fixed from 7:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., instead of from
one-half hour before sunrise to sunset as heretofore, and the
new restriction on magazine guns, limiting them to three
shells at one loading, will go into effect this year for the first
time.”
Almost immediately sportsmen began nostalgically
Carl Wennersten, right, and an unknown hunting companion with a cage of call mallards after a hunt. Wennersten lived in Shickley
in Fillmore County and hunted Rainwater Basin wetlands, at one time for the market, later as a guide for wealthy sportsmen.
looking back at the “good old days” when live decoys were
allowed.
“Above all, duck shooting should not be reduced to a
sordid sport reckoned by meat in the bag,” an editorial in
the November 1935 issue of Field and Stream stated before
expressing the loss many wildfowlers were surely feeling
“There are men who would rather not hunt ducks or geese
than to do so without live decoys. To them an old gander or
a ‘Susie,’ tied out in front of the blind, adds the thrill and
glamour felt by the bird hunter when following his favorite
pointer or setter.”
Waterfowl numbers recovered significantly during the
World War II years, and there was a push to again legalize
live decoys, even in Nebraska. At their May 11, 1944 meeting,
the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission board of
commissioners passed a resolution that the head of the
agency should “…instruct the Fish and Wildlife Service of
the Commission’s suggestions in the following instances:
That the 1944 Migratory Waterfowl Season be established
along the same lines as the 1943 season, with the exception
that the use of live duck decoys be permitted.” And at the
June 1945 meeting the commissioners passed a resolution to
be presented to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: “That a
limited number of live decoys per blind be permitted when the
duck population reaches a point which will provide adequate
hunting by such methods for the returning servicemen and
other sportsmen without seriously affecting the future
production figures of such migratory waterfowl.”
“Now, no duck hunter in his right mind will deny that it is
a lot more fun and a lot more effective to shoot ducks over
live birds than over wooden blocks,” wrote Field and Stream
publisher Eltinge F. Warner in the magazine’s October 1945
issue, in opposition to a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress
by an Illinois senator and an Illinois representative to again
allow the use of live decoys. “Even one wise old Susie can
make a lot of difference, particularly on one of those glassy
days when the blocks sit out there without a ripple. All this,
however, is beside the point. The point is that these
bills…represent very definitely a step back toward the past,
when our fish and game were at the mercy of politicians.”
The congressional bill and the lobbying of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service to legalize live decoys died for want of
sufficient support.
In the blink an eye, live decoys could no longer be legally
used. What to do with all of them? Some probably continued
to live on the farm, perhaps crossing with domestic varieties
until the wildness in their blood was hardly detectable. Some
no doubt ended up on the dinner table at Thanksgiving or
Christmas.
Many live decoys were given to game farms, city parks,
zoos and other places that kept birds for public display.
Many of the Canada geese used by North Platte hunters were
given to Cody Park in that city, for example. And herein lays
the afterword to the story of live decoys.
By the early-1900s, the mid-continent race of Canada
geese, geese that weighed nine to 14 pounds, was believed to
be extinct. In the 1960s, when biologists began looking for
individual “giant” Canadas, where did they find them? Cody
Park and places like it in other Great Plains states. From
these survivors, state and federal restoration programs raised
and released goslings for more than 20 years, until today
they are a self-sustaining population. They are, no doubt, the
descendants of some old hunter’s prize “Judas goose.” ■
Editor’s Note: A longer version of this article containing
addition information on the history of live decoys is available
at NebraskalandMagazine.com. While there, check out the
magazine’s blog, “Afield and Afloat.”
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 21
In The Corn
By Lisa Knopp
In her essay “In the Corn,” NEBRASKAland regular contributor Lisa Knopp takes a
look at how corn has influenced her life, as well as the lives of others, on the
Great Plains. The following excerpts represent some of Knopp’s
most poignant passages from her essay.
What is most curious about these ears is that
if one of them dropped to the ground and the
seeds germinated, they would have died from
overcrowding. Unless humans gathered and
planted the seeds, corn would have become
extinct in just a few generations. Corn was
and continues to be dependent on people.
PHOTO BY JOEL SARTORE
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
I’m always surprised to find that the furrows
between the rows permit easy passage, since from a
distance, they seem closely set. Since the first hard
frost has drained the green from the leaves, stalks,
and husks, everything seems blond and gray. When
I pull back the loose husks, the gold kernels are the
brightest thing in the field.
22 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
Though during a typical year the total
number of acres of corn in the pre-Civil War
Deep South surpassed the total number of
acres of cotton by about three to one, and
though the value of the corn crop was more
than twice that of the cotton crop, this area
was known as the “cotton belt,” the place
where cotton was king.
Every war fought in the United States or
what would become the United States from
the beginning of the French and Indian War
in 1756 through the Civil War, as well as
most Indian treaties, concerned control of
corn lands.
PHOTO BY CHRIS HELZER
PHOTO BY JOEL SARTORE
I remember orange pyramids, heaps of sunlight, each at least as tall and as wide as my house, rising
near the train tracks and panpipe-like grain elevators and train tracks in every little town along twolane highways in southern Nebraska. For most of my life, corn was the constant, the background, the
seemingly unremarkable always-there. I have known corn and cornfields for so long that I don’t have a
first memory of either.
About three-quarters of the dried corn kernel is starch; the
remainder is protein, oil, sugar, fiber, and ash. Seventy-five
percent of the starch locked in corn kernels becomes cattle and
poultry feed, which in turn becomes meat, milk, eggs, cheese.
The remaining cornstarch is used to produce syrup, textiles,
leather, adhesives, detergents, beer, paint, ink, candy, tortillas,
toothpaste, crayons, batteries, mouthwash, baking powder, salad
dressings, yarn, soda pop, paper, soap, gravy, peanut butter,
shoe polish, plastics, embalming fluids, pharmaceuticals,
ethanol, and so on. We
could go decades without
Lisa Knopp’s “In the
eating anything that looks
Corn” is one of 16 essays
like a corn kernel, but we
featured in her collection
probably couldn’t go more
Interior Places, published
than a few minutes without
by University of Nebraska
Press and available at
relying on something made
nebraskapress.unl.edu.
from cornstarch. It is our
Read the complete essay at
staff of life.
afieldandafloat.wordpress.com.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 23
26 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 27
28 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 29
n the Sibley Guide to Birds, David
Allen Sibley writes about the barn
swallow: “Very elegant with long,
slender, pointed wings and long, deeply
forked tail.” This “elegant” bird, however,
will probably never draw birders to
Nebraska. Actually, this passerine known
for living in close proximity to humans
is often viewed as more pest than benefit.
I, however, knew no better when I first
saw multiple swallows flying beneath
my overhanging deck last spring, which
sported the beginnings of a nest.
Barn swallows, the most widespread
bird of the swallow family, are found in
Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas,
and those that breed throughout North
America typically winter in South
America. They are first observed in the
southern U.S. between March and April
after a predominantly daytime, drifting
round-trip migration that may cover
14,000 miles. Barn swallows will fly,
forage for multiple days, and then fly
again many times during their
migration, mainly staying near land
where they can forage most effectively.
They will return to the same nest site
if successful there the previous year, or
start a new nesting site as they did near
my newly built home last spring. In firstyear birds and those whose mates did
not return from the year before, males
will call to nearby females, attracting
them with his tail streamers and plumage.
Specifically, tail-streamer symmetry is
very important because it provides an
aerodynamic advantage, stating to
possible mates that a male is both a
better forager and healthier than his
competitors. In addition, plumage color
brightness also reflects a healthy mate.
In addition, past researchers have
revealed that female barn swallows are
more likely to remain monogamous if
their mate is brightly colored. Recently,
researchers at the University of
Colorado-Boulder darkened the feathers
of male barn swallows in the study to
a deep red known to attract females,
which increased the amount of
testosterone in the males, either
because of additional interactions with
females or more negative interactions
with jealous males. "A male barn swallow
can't look in a mirror and assess his
social status," said researcher Rebecca
Safran. "But if he flies into a group of
other swallows, the birds will quickly
assess it for him and give him a sense
I
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 31
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
PHOTO BY DAVID HEMMINGS
water sources to drink.
of where he fits in.”
During one of these departures, I
Besides the male having an accentuated
approached the nest and peered inside
plumage color and longer, more
pronounced tail streamers, visual gender to see four white and brown spotted
eggs, each not much larger than a
differences are minimal. Both sexes
marble. This was about midway between
have steel-blue plumage on the crown,
the typical clutch size of two to seven
wings, back and tail, and rust-colored
eggs, which hatch in 12 to 17 days
feathers on the forehead, throat, breast
following incubation by both the male
and abdomen.
In my backyard,
fitting in was easy for
this male, as he had the
entire area to himself.
Or so I thought. He
and his mate worked
diligently for nearly
two weeks to form a
cup-shaped nest made
of mud pellets and
plant fibers beneath
my deck. The spot was
ideal for a species
coveting open country
that will readily nest
on man-made structures,
including bridges,
culverts and open barns.
Over the next few
days, I watched the
swallows beneath my
deck. Most active in
the early morning and
late afternoon, both
birds periodically
returned to their new
nest when not foraging
in nearby fields.
Swallows feed and drink
while in the air, catching
and eating mostly
flying insects such as
The typical clutch size of barn swallows is two to
flies and dragonflies,
seven eggs, which hatch in 12 to 17 days following
and skimming nearby
incubation by both the male and female.
After leaving the nest, barn swallows often gather in communal
roosts sometimes hundreds, or even thousands, strong.
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
offspring and four mouths would shoot
into the sky. So the question became:
who gets fed first?
It depends on what chick’s mouth is
the reddest. Typically, the inside of a
barn swallow chick’s mouth is yellow.
Yet during digestion when blood is
needed for digestion, less blood flow to
the mouth results in a redder mouth,
revealing to the parents who isn’t
currently digesting and needs to be fed.
For the first-time observer, these
feedings were the tiniest of miracles to
witness, yet researchers have noted that
barn swallows may feed their nestlings
up to 400 times per day.
Each day for the next two weeks, the
birds in the nest grew significantly.
Their movements were less awkward
and soon they were teetering on the
edge of the nest. Within a few days,
they would be flying, starting their short
lives where sexual maturity will occur
in one year and death, on average, will
and female, with the female doing the
majority of the incubation at night
while both sexes incubate during the
day, never leaving the nest unattended.
It was at this moment that I found
out how close the foraging swallows
actually were – both parents suddenly
appeared, flying mere inches from my
face and calling incessantly. This call
was just a sample of the sounds a barn
swallow can make – with this alarm
call they also have courtship calls and
calls to their offspring.
Nearly two weeks later, I heard the
latter. And while I was unable to tell the
difference between calls, the four new
mouths emerging from the nest could.
One parent would remain close to the
nest while the other went hunting. Mere
minutes later, the forager would return
to feed the offspring and its mate would
go off in search of food. This pattern
happened repeatedly while I watched
from afar.
Barn swallows feed their chicks
insects compressed into tiny pellets, the
size of green grapes, which are
transported in the parents’ throats. Each
time one swallow returned to the nest,
the feeding parent would call to its
32 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
adults, often males, will aid other
swallows in nest defense and building,
incubation and brooding. Second,
offspring from the first brood will often
assist adults with the second brood.
As I observed these swallows for the
next two weeks, their mannerisms were
nearly identical to their earlier nesting.
Yet just like the sky had cleared earlier
that spring, it soon did so again – no
more swallows.
It will be several months before I see
them again, yet because the adults have
a tendency to return to the same place
year after year, I hope to view them
next year at my home, where they, and
the warm weather they bring, will most
certainly be welcome. ■
Thanks to Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission biologist Joel Jorgensen
and Mary Brown from the Tern and
Plover Conservation Partnership for
their assistance with this article.
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
Seven swallow species, including the barn swallow, can be found in Nebraska.
occur in five to seven years. However,
if they can survive their first migration,
barn swallows can live 10 to 12 years.
Before they left the nest, however,
their parents continued to protect their
every move. One couldn’t walk within
30 feet of the deck without being
accosted by protectors. Yet days later,
the nest and surrounding sky were
completely void of swallows. The
nestlings had fledged and my morning
and afternoon viewings were empty.
It wasn’t until late August that more
barn swallows returned. This time they
made their nest on top of a light
fixture. As the swallows finished their
nest a little more than a week later, I
approached it for the first time to see if
any eggs had been laid. A large number
of swallows, at least 12, dove at me
from all directions, alarm calls
sounding.
These defenders could have come
from multiple sources. First, unmated
With annual upkeep, the survival of a barn swallow nest is typically 10 to 15 years. It is unlawful to destroy
these birds or their nests, as they as they are protected by the International Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 33
Text and photos by Chris Helzer
Because Nebraska’s winters can be quite harsh, animals need a good plan to survive.
Here are several examples of what those plans entail.
W
inters in Nebraska can be brutal, so the fact
that so many animals survive the long, cold
winter each year is extraordinary. It’s no
less extraordinary that many other species
leave Nebraska each fall to travel many
miles south and then return to the same woodlot or prairie the
next season. Whether they stay and try to scrape out a living
in the harsh cold or strike out for warmer climates, winter
survival is one of the most difficult challenges animals face.
Generally speaking, there are four strategies animals use
to survive the winter. First, they can simply tough it out,
gathering what food is available and finding shelter where
they can from the coldest storms. Second, some animals
hibernate, or go into some kind of dormant stage in which they
slow down (or even stop) their body’s processes enough to
survive several months without feeding. Third, many animals
enter a kind of semi-dormancy, where they essentially sleep
through the toughest periods of the winter and emerge from
their burrows or other shelters to wander and feed whenever
the weather warms up enough to be comfortable. Finally,
many animals simply leave before winter arrives and return
when it warms back up in the spring.
Toughing it Out
Although winter is a difficult time to find food, many
animals usually manage to scrape by. Examples of species
that simply tough it out include white-tailed deer, bison,
coyotes, cottontails, voles and many birds, including northern
cardinals, chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers and other
species common to backyard bird feeders. Even these species
will seek shelter in the most inclement weather, but because
they have to eat to survive, they venture out whenever possible
to look for food.
Most animals that are active in the winter have very different
diets than they do during the growing season – birds and
mammals that primarily eat insects during the summer usually
switch to eating seeds in the winter. Some of these seeds are
gleaned from the ground or off of plants, but some animals
(such as squirrels and other small mammals) also live off
supplies gathered during the fall. Cottontails and deer switch
from green leaves and stems to whatever tender twigs and
buds they can find. Grass feeders, such as bison, depend
heavily upon cured grasses during the winter, particularly
species such as blue grama that maintain relatively high
nutrition when they’re dormant. In addition, many sedges
stay green much of the winter and thus are important food
items for bison and other animals.
Proper preparation is one of the keys to winter survival for
animals who stay active throughout the cold months. Mammals
tend to grow a thicker coat of fur prior to the winter which
helps them keep warm, but while the cold is a big challenge,
most animals lose body condition in the winter months
because they’re eating lower quality food and less of it. To
survive, those animals have to come into winter in very good
condition, including a healthy layer of fat that helps insulate
Left: Juncos are something of an aberration among Nebraska
animals. They breed to the west and north of the state but spend
their winters here.
Opposite: Coyote tracks in the snow are a reminder that many
animals stay active all winter.
34 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 35
Deer mice have cozy nests to help keep them warm, but still have to venture out in search of food in order to survive.
them from the cold, but more importantly is fuel for their
bodies to stay warm. They’ll burn that fat as the winter
progresses, both for regular activities and to provide energy
for shivering – their body’s natural way of creating heat.
Hibernation
Some animals spend part or all of their winter in some
kind of dormant state. There is a lot of discussion among
scientists about what is or is not true hibernation, but in
general, hibernation involves deep sleep, a dramatic slowing
(or stopping) of breathing and heart rates, and a significant
drop in body temperature. A few examples of Nebraska
animal species that fit that definition are little brown bats,
woodchucks, garter snakes, snapping turtles and
Woodhouse’s toads. They build up fat reserves in the late
summer and fall by feeding heavily. Most hibernating animals
have what’s called “brown fat” in addition to the more
common “white fat” of most animals. The advantage of
brown fat is that it allows animals to transform it directly
into energy without having to shiver.
One of the most amazing aspects of hibernation is that
animals have the ability to survive extremely slow breathing
and heart rates as well as very low body temperatures. Heart
rates can drop to as much as two to three percent of normal
in some animals, and breathing rates can drop by 50 to 100
percent. While there is great variation, the body temperatures
of many animals can drop to very near freezing, particularly
in reptile and amphibian species. Most hibernating mammals
have a kind of thermostat that kicks their metabolism into
36 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
gear when their body temperature drops to a particular point
– the animal continues to sleep while their body burns just
enough fat to keep their temperature above that set point.
The majority of hibernating mammals spend the winter
underground. Woodchucks, for example, burrow down below
the frost line and build a sleeping chamber lined with an
insulating layer of dried grass. When it’s time to hibernate,
woodchucks seal up the entrance to their sleeping chamber
with dirt, both for insulation and to avoid having interlopers
barge in. They then curl up to sleep and their breathing rates
drop from an average of 2,100 breaths per hour to about 10,
while their body temperatures drop from about 100 degrees
Fahrenheit to between 40 and 55 degrees. Despite the
decreased metabolic activity, woodchucks still lose between
one-third and one-half of their body weight over the winter.
One hibernating mammal that doesn’t burrow is the little
brown bat – this tiny animal doubles its weight prior to winter
and then finds a hollow tree, small cave or some nook or
cranny of a house to crawl into. Houses are particularly
attractive to the bat because it’s looking for a spot that stays
between 30 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. If it gets warmer than
that while its hibernating, its metabolism will run fast
enough that it risks starving to death. However, temperatures
below 30 degrees are bad too, and if the temperature drops
too much, the bat will wake up and fly off to find a new
roost site. Once it finds an appropriate location and falls
asleep, its body temperature drops to very near the outside
temperature and its breathing slows to about once every
five minutes.
Like mammals, most reptiles and
amphibians spend their winter
underground. Most snake species find
underground burrows to spend the
winter in and many hibernate in large
groups. Prairie rattlesnakes and garter
snakes are two species that can be
found huddled in large masses in
burrows borrowed from other animals
or other underground caverns. Box
turtles and most toads also overwinter
underground by burrowing down
beneath the frost line, but don’t
group together like snakes. During
hibernation, box turtles slow not only
their own metabolism, but also the
development of the eggs already
inside pregnant females.
Aquatic reptiles such as frogs and
During winter, leopard frogs hibernate underwater on the bottom of streams and ponds.
many turtles tend to hibernate
Leopard frogs also tend to hibernate at the bottom of
underwater, which obviously presents a number of
ponds or streams. They may cover themselves with a thin
challenges. One advantage of being at the bottom of a deep
layer of sediment or lay exposed, but they always leave
pond, however, is that the temperature tends to stay well
open space around their sides because, like turtles, they
above freezing. A quirk in the physics of water means that
can extract oxygen through their skin and this happens most
the deepest water in a pond tends to be about 39 degrees, so
as long as the pond doesn’t freeze completely, bottom dwellers effectively along the sides of their body. In contrast to leopard
frogs, some frog species, such as chorus frogs, simply bury
don’t either. Aquatic species such as snapping turtles and
painted turtles often bury themselves in the mud at the bottom themselves in leaf litter, beneath logs or underground and
wait out the cold months. Because they’re not underwater
of a pond or other body of water where breathing isn’t
like leopard frogs, chorus frogs are exposed to temperatures
possible, but the turtles have an adaptation that allows them
well below freezing, but they don’t usually freeze solid – the
to survive anyway – around both the throat and anus of
aquatic turtles are high concentrations of small blood vessels outer layers of their bodies may ice up, but their vital organs
have high levels of glucose that prevents them from freezing.
that can extract oxygen from water through the skin. Since
their metabolism is slowed almost to a stop during hibernation, Often their hearts will stop beating completely, but the frogs
revive when warmer temperatures return.
that little bit of oxygen exchange is typically enough to get
Winter anglers know that most fish species feed through
them through the winter.
the winter, although it can take a patient fisherman to catch
them. Those fish tend to slow down dramatically during
winter and go to deep water to keep from freezing, but they
generally maintain their metabolic rates while minimizing
their movements. However, some carp can actually bury
themselves in the mud and become dormant for up to a
month, ceasing their breathing and allowing their body
temperatures to fall as low as 34 degrees.
Semi-Dormancy
Garter snakes hibernate underground, often in large groups.
Most animals don’t truly hibernate during the winter, but
many sleep for long periods of time (days or weeks) during
times of particularly harsh weather. Common animals that
employ this strategy include badgers, raccoons, skunks,
prairie dogs and oppossums. While sleeping, their heart and
breathing rates don’t slow significantly, so they emerge on
warmer days to look for food and rebuild lost fat reserves.
Some animals store food in their sleeping chamber so they
can wake up and eat without having to go outside.
Badgers are a good example of an animal that becomes
less active during the winter without actually hibernating.
Because they are superior diggers, burrowing is no great
challenge and winter burrows have been found that are up to
30 feet long and 6 feet deep, with the entrance plugged with
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 37
Insects in Winter
Like vertebrates, insects and other invertebrates also have
a wide variety of strategies for surviving the winter. They can
survive as adults, eggs, larvae/nymphs or pupae. In most of
those cases, growth and development, as well as metabolism,
is greatly slowed or stopped during the winter, but in
invertebrates the process is called “diapause” instead of
hibernation.
Those invertebrates that overwinter as adults, such as the
mourning cloak butterfly, mosquitoes, lacewings and chinch
bugs, try to find hiding places underneath the bark of a tree,
beneath layers of leaf litter, or in underground tunnels where
they can escape cold temperatures and hungry predators.
Spiders often find cracks or crevices where they make a
cocoon or other similar shelter out of insulating layers of silk.
Many aquatic insects also pass the winter as adults – some
hibernate in sediment
at the bottom of water
bodies but others, such
as water boatmen,
remain active as
long as the water
isn’t frozen. Many
terrestrial and aquatic
invertebrates that
overwinter as adults
can survive being
frozen solid - they
simply thaw out and
resume their lives in
the spring.
An interesting
contrast exists
between two bee
species that live
through the winter as
adults. Honeybees
stay inside their hive
during the winter,
Galls like these are common on
surviving on stores of
goldenrod plants and allow the fly
honey collected during
larva inside to spend the winter in
an insulated and edible chamber.
the growing season.
This honey fuels a
curious behavior that helps them stay warm – when
temperatures drop, the bees cluster together in a large ball
and those in the center “dance,” warming the cluster (and
hive) with their increased body heat. The bees constantly
change position within the cluster so that they take turns
being on the outside and inside of the ball. The heat generated
by the activity thus allows the entire hive to survive the winter.
Bumblebee colonies, on the other hand, survive only by virtue
of their female queens – as fall changes to winter, the majority
of bumblebees in a colony die, leaving only the queens to
search out underground tunnels for hibernation. In the spring,
the surviving queens lay eggs and begin to build new colonies.
Insects that survive the winter in the egg stage usually
either lay those eggs underground – as seen in grasshoppers
and crickets – or surround them with some kind of silky or
foamy insulation to help prevent desiccation and survive
intense cold. Ping-pong ball-sized praying mantis egg cases,
or oothecae, can often be found in grasslands and shrublands
in the late fall. Inside these oothecae are hundreds of eggs
waiting to hatch and emerge when temperatures warm again
in the spring.
38 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
overnight, and while it is only a few degrees,
that reduction can save a significant number of
calories from being burned. At least a few species
of mice and other small mammals can employ
this tactic, especially during times of food stress.
Some birds, such as the black-capped chickadee,
also use daily torpor to save energy during cold
nights.
Migration
Water boatmen stay active until the water freezes. This one will
likely thaw out and continue its life in the spring.
Many insects and other invertebrates pass the winter as
larvae or nymphs. One of the most recognizable of these is
the woolly bear caterpillar – an immature tiger moth – which
spends its winter curled up in layers of leaf litter or prairie
thatch. Several butterflies employ the same strategy, including
viceroys and regal fritillaries. Other butterflies and moths
overwinter as pupae. Tiger swallowtails, luna moths and
cecropia moths are examples of species that spend the
winter hanging from vegetation in a cocoon or chrysalis.
Some insect larvae pass the winter inside plant galls
(swollen lumps on leaves or stems). The most well-known of
these in Nebraska are goldenrod galls – quarter-sized lumps
on the stems of large goldenrod plants. The galls are formed
when a fly lays its egg on the stem
of the plant, the larva hatches
and bores a hole into the stem.
Once the larva is inside, the
plant responds to the irritation by
making extra thick layers of plant
tissue around the site. The resulting
gall provides the larva food,
insulation and protection from
predators.
Insects that have aquatic
larvae, such as dragonflies,
damselflies and mayflies, can
survive the winter months
underwater. Those larvae can
maintain at least some feeding
Monarchs migrate long
and other activity until or unless
distances and do not
the water freezes.
overwinter in Nebraska.
Insect Migration
Most people are familiar with the migration of birds,
wildebeest and even whales, but fewer people are aware
of insect migrations. The best known insect migrant is the
monarch butterfly, which can migrate from Nebraska to
Mexico and back – though it takes four generations to
complete the journey. Other butterfly species, such as the
buckeye, make their way up to Nebraska during the summer,
but can’t survive our winters. Ongoing research will probably
identify many more examples of insect migration than we’re
currently aware of. One of the more interesting recent
projects put tiny radio transmitters on dragonflies and is
finding that some of the larger species appear to migrate
from north to south late in the year.
An opossum searches for food in the snow near Wood River.
dirt to help keep the cold out. When they are out and about,
badgers will scavenge on dead deer or other animals, but also
eat live prey, including rabbits, skunks and just about anything
else it can find. Badgers will often bring food back to the
burrow so they can eat and sleep in turns while the food lasts.
Oppossums are similar to badgers in that they are active
most of the winter but den up during the coldest parts.
However, oppossums don’t dig their own winter dens and
often try to share those of other animals, including rabbits,
skunks, raccoons and woodchucks. Although they don’t
hibernate, oppossums are known to put on brown fat in the
late fall to help get them through cold periods. While the
brown fat helps keep their body core warm, oppossums are
prone to frostbite on their hairless ears, nose and tail.
Oppossums are normally nocturnal animals, but in the winter
they are active much more during the day. Because they’re
ominivores, oppossums will eat just about anything they can
find during the winter, including carrion.
Some animals have the ability to go into a state called
“daily torpor,” during which their body temperature drops a
few degrees lower than normal. Typically that drop happens
Many bird species, of course, migrate south in
the late summer or fall. In fact, while Nebraskans
tend to feel that “our birds” return home every
spring to breed, most of those birds spend more
time down south than they do up north. Migration
northward to breed allows those southern birds to
spread out during the breeding season and find
plentiful food and space for nesting territories –
something that would be impossible if they all
stayed in warmer climates.
Researchers know much less than you might
think about migration, although recent technological
advances including advanced radar and tiny radio
transmitters have helped. What we do know is that
some bird species migrate long distances, but others
only move as far south as they need to go to
escape the worst winter conditions. Dickcissels are
an example of a long-distance migrant, wintering
in Venezuela and nearby South American countries
before coming north to breed in North American
grasslands. In contrast, western meadowlarks can
often be seen during much or all of the winter in
Nebraska, and appear to go just far enough south
to find the weather and food sources they need to
survive. Many waterfowl and their predators (such
as bald eagles) also move north and south according
to varying winter weather conditions. While
eagles tend to follow concentrations of waterfowl,
they will also congregate where the water stays
open enough to allow them to fish and hunt. For example,
Nebraskans can see large numbers of eagles below Kingsley
dam at Lake Ogallala and at Central Nebraska Public Power’s
J-2 Return south of Lexington during many winters.
Whether they stay active, sleep for part or all of the winter,
or leave for warmer climates, every animal species in
Nebraska has to have a strategy for getting through the winter.
Not surprisingly, the diversity of strategies matches the
diversity of species we have in the state. As more research is
done here and elsewhere on winter survival tactics, we’ll
surely find even more fantastic stories. In the meantime,
bundle up out there – it’s cold! ■
Chris Helzer has been a contributor to
NEBRASKAland since 1995 and is
author of the book The Ecology and
Management of Prairies, published by
University of Iowa Press. Next month Chris
will discuss how Nebraska’s plant species
survive the winter.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 39
Female Hunters on the Rise
PHOTO BY DOUG CARROLL
W
alk any given field during the
hunting season and that
hunter you see in full camo
gear and toting a rifle might very well
be female. And that shotgun blast you
hear? That’s the sound of another
crumbling stereotype, the one
of the delicate woman who
would rather do her
nails than gut a deer.
While the number
of male hunters
has declined
nationally
in recent
years, the
percentage
of female
hunters has
seen a
steady
increase.
According
to the most
recent
National
Survey of
Hunting,
Fishing and
WildlifeAssociated
Recreation
published by
the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife
Service, there was
an 11 percent decline
in hunters nationwide
from 1991 to 2006, but
female numbers grew and now
make up an estimated 10 percent of the
nation's 12.5 million hunters and more
than 11 percent of the hunters in
Nebraska. One of the largest increases
is found in the numbers of female
bowhunters, which one National
Sporting Goods Association survey
indicated had risen 176 percent from
40 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
2001 to 2005.
Janice Spicha of Nebraska is one of
those bowhunters, and she isn’t surprised
by the statistics: “I attribute the
increases to stereotypes being broken,
women being accepted as hunters
nowadays.”
Spicha, who recently
became the first female
chairperson in the
history of the
Nebraska
Bowhunters
Association,
believes
mentoring
programs
such as
Becoming
an
Outdoors
Woman,
put on by
groups
such as
the
Nebraska
Game and
Parks
Commission
and the
National
Wild Turkey
Federation’s
Women in the
Outdoors, have
also helped attract
female hunters.
“Women come into these
camps and they have their makeup
cases and all the trappings we women
are supposed to have,” said Spicha.
“When they get there, I tell them this is
probably the first time in their lives
most of them are going to be allowed
to discover themselves and not be a
mother, sister, wife, girlfriend. I tell
them they can chuck all the trappings
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
By Elizabeth Mack
Above: Angela McDermott and her husband, Dave, teal hunt at Ducks Unlimited’s
Verona Complex in Clay County earlier this year. Previous page: Leslie Hershberger
with a white-tailed doe she shot in Otoe County.
of the world – chuck it all out if they
want. By the third day, the trappings
are gone and the women discover
themselves. It can be life changing.”
Jeff Rawlinson, assistant administrator
in the Commission's information and
education division, says they have seen
a steady rise in female participation in
NGPC’s various outreach programs.
Although some states have had to cut
funding due to budget constraints,
Rawlinson says funding remains in
place, at least for now, for the
Becoming an Outdoors Woman program:
“We have discussed the overall efficacy
of the BOW program and will continue
to review its impacts each year. The
involvement by women in hunting,
shooting sports and fishing has increased
nationally over the last 10 years and the
demand for outreach programs like this
one has increased with it.”
And it’s not just adult women who
are coming to hunting in large numbers
– from 2001 to 2006, young girls ages
6 to 15 taking to the field increased a
whopping 50 percent from just a
decade earlier. Many fathers, such as
Tom Ronsick of Omaha, are finding
out that hunting is a great way to spend
quality time with their daughters: “My
11-year-old daughter Elizabeth has
been deer hunting with me for two
years in a double stand. At first I think
she just wanted to spend some quality
time with her dad, but eventually she
got caught up in the actual hunting.”
Spicha, who also hunted with her
father, believes that even though men
of earlier generations might hold onto
old female stereotypes, once men find
out that their daughters have an interest
in hunting, most jump at the chance to
introduce their daughters to the sport.
However, Spicha, who retired last
year and has hunted or fished virtually
every day since, believes that in order
for daughters to have an interest in
hunting, it’s important to get the moms
involved: “There is a saying that if you
teach a man to hunt, he goes hunting.
But if you teach a woman to hunt, the
whole family goes hunting together.”
Retailers are finding this out as well –
Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and others
are even targeting women with some
lines of hunting clothing.
Females still constitute a relatively
small percentage of total hunters
nationwide, but Spicha believes the
numbers of females going hunting for
the first time will continue to grow.
“It’s a sport women can be good at
one-on-one – it doesn’t matter if you’re
fat or skinny, rich or poor,” said Spicha.
“You can excel at hunting no matter
what you are in life. It’s for anyone who
loves and respects nature and the
outdoors. I think we are learning hunting
is not a gender-specific sport.” ■
Elizabeth Mack is a freelance writer
living in Omaha. Her
last feature story in
NEBRASKAland
Magazine was April
2010: “Sublime
Beauty – The
American White
Pelican.”
Becoming an OutdoorsWoman (BOW) is a program
offered by the Outdoor
Education Division of the
Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission and is designed
to encourage women to
become active participants
in the great outdoors. This
includes activities related to
hunting, camping, boating,
backpacking, hiking and
fishing, just to name a few.
BOW offers a unique
opportunity for women to
learn skills associated with a
variety of outdoor
recreation activities.
The workshops are geared
toward adult women, but
anyone 18 years of age or
older who wants to learn
outdoor skills in a nonintimidating and friendly
environment is welcome to
register.
BOW workshops are offered
at Ponca State Park and the
State 4-H Camp at Halsey
each year, and Advanced
BOW programs are often
offered throughout the year
in various locations across
the state. BOW participants
gain camaraderie with new
friends, discover and
enhance diverse strengths
and experiences, and
develop an appreciation for
the wild and what it takes to
develop hunting and outdoor
skills in a mentored setting.
For more information, call
(402) 471-5482 or go to
www.NebraskaBOW.com.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 41
The 38-point Buck
In a Rut?
By Jon Farrar
B
42 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
PHOTO BY JEFF KURRUS
ecause Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium is
between where I hunt and where I
live, I frequently stop during the
November firearm season to see what
big Nebraska bucks have been checked
in. If any are really big, I snap a couple
of photos for the Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission and possible
NEBRASKAland use. When I stopped
by on opening day last year, two men
stood beside their pickup, nice 4-by-4’s
in the back.
“You guys mind if I get a couple of
photos of your deer?” I asked.
“You can,” one of them said, “but
the one you really want to see is in that
truck over there.”
I walked to the camper-covered
truck, shielded light out from both
sides of my face with my hands, the
way a six-year old might look through
a candy shop window, and turned back
to the two men. “Yeah, I think I’ll pass
on your deer,” I said. We all laughed.
Inside the truck was a deer unlike
any animal I had seen before. All you
could see was points.
A few moments later, the shooter of
the deer, Wesley O’Brien of Lexington,
Texas, emerged from the aquarium
with a throng of people at his sides as
even more people waited in the parking
lot. “You guys waiting on me?” he said
with a smile, then opened the tailgate.
A barrage of camera phones came from
nowhere, taking as many photos as
they could of what was quickly named
the “O’Brien buck.”
This massive and gnarly whitetail,
taken in the southeastern part of the
state on private land in Richardson
County, became one of the most talked
about whitetails across the country last
year. Rack, Great Plains Game & Fish,
Deer & Deer Hunting, Texas Fish &
Game, as well as both the Omaha
World Herald and the Lincoln Journal
Star either have either already run
PHOTO BY ERIC FOWLER
By Jeff Kurrus
How important is it to hunt deer during their
rutting season? Certainly it is to a hunter’s
advantage to have bucks on the move and
more reckless than they behave the rest of
the year. Back in the old days, when there
was one firearm deer hunting season, it was
traditionally set for about the second week of
November, when biologists calculated the rut
Probably the best time of year to harvest a nice buck is during the
would peak. In those days a rifle hunter had
rut, when deer are on the move a lot more and are less cautious.
two concerns – will the bucks be in rut and
called melatonin. Testosterone levels in bucks rise,
will most of the corn be harvested. Even now the
leading to the shedding of velvet on antlers,
rifle season still falls in mid-November, yet with so
increased aggression and sperm production, and
many season options today, over such a long
an increased interest in does. The necks of the
period of time, hunting the rut probably assumes
bucks swell to strengthen them for sparring with
less importance than it once did for many deer
other bucks, and they seem to be constantly on
hunters. That said, deer hunters are like every
the move, scanning for competition for does,
other variety of hunters in formulating theories to
noses sampling the wind for the scent of receptive
improve their chances of bringing home freezer
does (often called the “seeking” phase). When
meat.
If you are a hunter with a mathematical bent, you does are entering estrus the bucks begin following
and chasing them. Bucks are most vulnerable to
can count backwards from when most deer are
hunters during the seeking and chasing phases of
born in Nebraska, the peak usually being in earlyJune. Both white-tailed deer and mule deer have a the rut. A similar transformation is occurring in
does as a result of increasing levels of estrogen
gestation period of about 61/2 months (200 days
and progesterone that will dictate estrus and ovulation.
plus or minus 12 days), so back counting gets you
So, the pineal gland can be thought of as a deer’s
to the peak of mating in mid-November. There is,
chemical clock, a clock that runs on solar energy.
of course, a range in when does mate and how
While the bulk of deer breeding occurs in a
long they carry fawns. Deer in southern states
relatively short period, perhaps two weeks, bucks
typically have a broader breeding-season window,
are occupied with mating for as long as two months
but in our latitude it is to the species’ advantage to
or more, during which they exhibit pre-rutting
have fawns self-sufficient before the onset of their
behavior (rubbing small trees with their antlers,
first winter, but not born before the last of spring
pawing scrapes with their feet and marking them
snow storms.
with scent, sparring with other bucks and following
What triggers the rut in deer has been attributed
does) and post-rutting behavior as they
to many factors – moon phase, weather, herd
age-structure and sex ratio, to name a few. Believe incrementally back off from all the behaviors
leading to and exhibited through the rutting period.
what you will of the various theories to narrow the
While photoperiod triggers the timing of the peak
time of rut to a certain hour of a certain day if you
of the rut, weather can play a role in when the
want, but there is no doubt photoperiod – the ratio
peak actually occurs; and the physiological state of
of daylight hours to nighttime hours – triggers the
individual bucks and does determines the level of
timing, and that is consistent from year to year. As
the days shorten in late-summer and early fall, the mating activity within that time frame. All variables
considered, though, look for the deer rut in
pineal gland in the brain (often called the master
Nebraska to be in November and peak about the
gland, as it regulates the release of hormones by
middle of the month.
other glands in the body) secretes a hormone
O’Brien’s massive buck was shot in Richardson County on private land. It is easy to
see why photos of this rack have been viewed from coast to coast.
articles or will do so in the near future
about this buck. “It’s a remarkable deer,”
said Tony Korth, Ak-Sar-Ben aquarium
director and certified antler scorer.
A March 19 posting on Boone &
Crockett’s web site stated, “We have
received the entry materials for Wes
O’Brien’s buck. It has an official entry
score of 284 and has 1343/8 inches of
abnormal points. This still has to be
verified before it becomes official.” If
this measurement stands, it will eclipse
not only Nebraska’s current state record
for a nontypical firearm of 2425/8, taken
by Robert Snyder in 1961, but also
Nebraska’s state record for any weapon
(as well as the former non-typical
world record archery buck), Del Austin’s
1962 buck nicknamed “Old Mossy
Horns,” which scored 2797/8.
O’Brien’s buck was shot with a .270
Weatherby Magnum a few minutes
before the end of legal shooting time
on the opening Saturday of last year’s
November firearm season. He and two
hunting partners, Brandon Rhodus of
Lexington, Texas, and Dave Haveman
of Louisville, Nebraska, were scouting
for Sunday’s hunt when they saw the
buck about 250 yards away.
O’Brien worked his way through a
patch of timber to get a shot within
100 yards. The deer ran 30 yards and
dropped. “I’m just lucky,” he said. “A
good hunter doesn’t kill that deer. A
lucky one does.” ■
To purchase a deer permit, go
to www.OutdoorNebraska.org and
click on Buy a Permit. Permits
for November’s firearm season
are still available for most units
and statewide buck permits are
unlimited.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 43
Parasites Affecting Mule Deer
In the Beginning
Chewing lice and meningeal worms not helping mule deer population.
The Nebraska State Legislature created Chadron State Park in 1919.
By Eric Fowler
By Jon Farrar
lready on the decline in some
parts of their Nebraska range,
mule deer have two new
threats that have biologists
worried.
Chewing lice, which cause hair loss
and in severe cases death, have been
confirmed in 10 mule deer in eight
Nebraska counties since 2009.
Meningeal worm (aka brain worm)
which is common in but has no ill
effects on white-tailed deer, has also
been confirmed in mule deer following
an unusual increase in reports of sick
deer in Nebraska in 2008 and 2009.
The louse (Bovicola tibialis) problem
first appeared in Washington in 2003
when the state began receiving reports
of hair loss among black-tailed deer,
but wasn’t identified until 2005. It is
believed to have come to North
America game farms on fallow deer
imported from Europe.
The louse soon spread to mule deer
and can now be found in several western
states. Bruce Trindle, wildlife research
and disease specialist with the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission, said while
only 10 cases have been confirmed in
eight counties, it is likely present
throughout mule deer range in Nebraska.
Trindle said lice and other parasites
are generally species specific and
typically don’t cause harm to their host.
“These lice make a living by chewing
on their host and sucking their blood,”
Trindle said. “When you’re a parasite
like that, it doesn’t do you any good to
kill your host, but these foreign lice
haven’t evolved with mule deer. Not
only do they overproduce and get
heavily infested, they also cause an
allergic reaction and quite a bit of
itching and scratching.”
The constant scratching can cause
hair loss, which can lead to death by
hypothermia, said Trindle. It can also
result in a decline in body condition
that makes the deer vulnerable to other
ailments, including infections. The
malady is most visible in the fall and
winter, and should not be confused
A
44 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
A chewing louse infestation was readily
apparent on this mule deer collected by
Commission biologists in 2009.
with the normal seasonal hair loss or
molting that deer go through.
While it is not known for certain if
chewing lice are the sole cause, mule
deer populations have fallen 30 to
50 percent in some parts of Washington.
The implications for Nebraska’s mule
deer aren’t yet known. “Maybe we’ll
get by,” said Trindle. “Maybe the thing
won’t do as well in this stone cold
climate we’ve got. We’ll have to see.”
The louse is not a threat to humans
or livestock, and does not appear to be
a threat to white-tailed deer or elk.
The confirmation of meningeal worm
in free-ranging mule deer in Nebraska
is rather unusual. Biologists became
concerned when reports of sick mule
deer in 2008 rose well above the 30
taken for all deer statewide in a typical
year. In 2009, 133 reports of sick mule
deer were received, mostly from central
Nebraska, where mule and white-tailed
deer ranges overlap, including many
from Custer County.
“We received reports of deer walking
in circles or showing other neurological
problems such as lying on the ground
and spinning in circles. Others were
just unafraid of humans,” said Trindle.
Biologists were able to cull and test
44 sick deer, 18 of which were found to
be infected with brain worm. Many of
the deer that did not test positive, however, showed symptoms identical to
those that did.
“We need to refine our diagnosis of
this thing,” Trindle said.
The meningeal worm lives a
complicated life-cycle that begins in
the brain of a white-tailed deer. There
the worms lay eggs that move through
the bloodstream to the lungs, where
they hatch and grow. When deer cough,
the larvae can be sprayed onto grass, or
swallowed by the deer and passed in
the mucous covering its feces. Once on
the ground, larvae attach to the foot of
a passing snail and continue to develop
in this intermediate host. When these
snails are inadvertently eaten by
browsing deer, the larvae penetrate the
deer’s stomach, migrate through its
nervous system to the brain, develop
into worms and restart the cycle.
“In low numbers, they’re easily
tolerated by whitetail deer,” said
Trindle. “Evidently mule deer just don’t
like worms crawling around in their
system and it’s causing them problems.”
Trindle said that until recently, sick
or dead mule deer could readily be tied
to epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD),
which is spread by biting midges and
causes fever, hemorrhaging of internal
organs and, in most cases, death. These
two latest threats to mule deer come on
top of the 2000 discovery of chronic
wasting disease, which also causes
neurological problems and death.
Biologists are currently modifying
the protocol they use when responding
to reports of deer that look sick, are
behaving unusually or are dead, in order
to better pinpoint the cause. “Some of
these deer can look pretty rough and
some can look healthy,” he said. “We’ve
got to determine what’s killing them.”
Trindle said reports of sick mule deer
have declined this year, for whatever
reason, but asks that people continue to
make reports to their nearest
Commission office so the prevalence
and spread of these maladies can be
accurately tracked. ■
case can be made that
Nebraska’s state park system
had its beginning in 1919 when
the Nebraska Legislature set
aside one section – 640 acres –
of school land in the Pine Ridge south
of Chadron for public outdoor recreation.
For two years the land sat idle as no state
agency or department was designated
to manage it. In 1921, a State Park
Board within the Department of Public
Works was created to develop and
manage Nebraska parklands. Two years
later, Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City
and Victoria Springs near Anselmo
were added.
“Nebraska has been slow in getting
such work underway yet progress has
been made, foundations have been laid
and, if present development continues
in future years, Nebraska will have
ample facilities for entertaining its own
people and visitors from other states as
well,” a October 1926 Outdoor
Nebraska article noted.
On April 22, 1929, the State Park
Board was dissolved and merged with
the Bureau of Game and Fish to create
the Game, Forestation and Parks
Commission. Later that year, five new
cabins were built at Chadron State Park
and five older cabins repaired and
updated. The Commission’s report to
the governor noted: “All of these cabins
were of rustic design, in keeping with
the scenic effect of the country and
were fitted with cots, stoves and other
accommodations for tourists and
visitors.” The park had always been a
popular destination for picnics but that
same year other outdoor recreation
opportunities were added – horseback
riding, walks “through the rugged
country thereabouts,” and a cafe and
store where campers could buy supplies
sprouted up.
In 1932, a water carnival was staged
at the park and attended by about
6,000 people. Three large piers were
constructed at the park entrance using
rocks from the Black Hills, and roads
through the park improved. Attendance
A
Trail rides are popular at Chadron State Park, which also has dozens
of scenic trails open to hikers and bikers.
was down in 1933 because of the
Depression, and because 200 men of
the Civilian Conservation Corps were
building cabins from some 200,000 feet
of lumber “salvaged from the aged
trees.” Federal public works programs
continued to develop the park through
the 1930s, and it remained the largest
park in the state system.
In a conspicuous attempt to keep
Nebraskans enjoying outdoor recreation,
even during the hard days of the
Depression, an advertisement in the
summer 1937 issue of Outdoor Nebraska
proclaimed there was “health, rest and
fun” to be found at Chadron State Park.
Visitors were tempted with the promise
of “Cabins in the Woods, Swimming,
Horseback Riding, Skyline Hiking,
Picnic Shelters” in “acres of pine
forests where the nights are cool and
exhilarating.” By that year, the park’s
size had grown to 800 acres and there
were 30 cabins in “varied sizes and
locations” and all were “fully equipped
for light housekeeping with the exception of dishes and cooking utensils.
Today, the 972-acre park offers
22 two-bedroom cabins from mid-April
to mid-November and a conference
building. There are 70 modern RV
camping pads with 30-amp electrical
hookups and 18 non-pad sites without
electricity. Visitors can still do all that
visitors did decades ago – hike, ride
horses, boat on small lakes or just kick
back, relax, and enjoy the solitude. For
more details about Chadron State Park,
visit the Commission’s website at
OutdoorNebraska.org and click on
“Parks” at the top of the homepage.
Many changes have been made at
Chadron State Park since its early
years, most of them making it more
accessible and comfortable for visitors,
but the reason the park was established
remains unchanged – to provide public
access to the rugged Pine Ridge country.
“Man has done little here,” the
April 1931 issue of Outdoor Nebraska
reported. “Nature is shown in her
untouched mood.” ■
★
Chadron State Park is located nine
miles south of Chadron on U.S. 385. The
972-acre park lies in the heart of the
Nebraska National Forest and is dominated
by ponderosa pines. There are 22 twobedroom housekeeping cabins available
from mid-April to mid-November.
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 45
DeSoto Buck Study
Habitat Share
Deer movement study produces information useful to hunters.
Conservation groups kick in to help improve habitat on public land.
By Eric Fowler
By Eric Fowler
than slight shifts that usually are related bucks. One buck was killed by a vehicle
f you scouted a trophy buck all
75 miles away near Quimby, Iowa,
to crop rotations.
summer and aren’t seeing him now
east of Sioux City. Most young bucks
The core area of a buck’s annual
that deer season has opened, don’t
followed the riverbottom north or south
home range, typically centered around
despair – he’s probably not far
and set up new home ranges in
away, according to a
or within three miles of the
University of Nebraska –
riverbottom.
Lincoln study conducted at
“Because the yearlings travel
DeSoto National Wildlife
the most and have the greatest
Refuge near Blair in recent
potential to spread disease, that’s
years.
one of the age classes you’d
“People watch these big
want to focus on,” Clements
velvet bucks all summer,” said
said. “So then being able to know
Greg Clements, who conducted
that the vast majority stay in the
the buck study as part of his
river valley, you could focus
graduate studies at UN-L.
your culling efforts in that area.”
“They think, ‘Yeah, I want to
The study also reinforced
hunt that deer and he’s been
what others have suggested and
coming out on that bean field all
should give hunters another
summer long.’ Then once you
reason to harvest does: During
get to fall, you really don’t see
the study, the refuge increased
them any more and you wonder
antlerless deer hunting
where they are and if somebody
opportunities in an effort to cut
else shot them, or are they just
the deer population. As more
completely nocturnal.”
adult does were harvested, fewer
Clements’ study found a mature
yearling bucks dispersed.
buck’s summer home range –
“They’ll stay put, hopefully on
the area in which it spends the
your property,” Clements said of
majority of its time – sometimes
those young bucks.
has very little, if any, overlap
As had been found in previous
with its fall home range.
studies on the refuge, most adult
“If you don’t have much land Greg Clements poses with a white-tailed buck after
to hunt, it doesn’t take much of immobilizing it with a dart gun and attaching a radio collar. bucks “rode it out in thick
cover” within their core range
a shift and you may not see
during hunts on the refuge, which
bedding areas, averaged 240 acres. As
them during the fall,” said Clements.
primarly target antlerless deer,
could be expected, seasonal home
UN-L students have tracked more
Clements said.
range size was highest during the
than 500 deer at DeSoto since 1991,
While mature bucks typically stayed
breeding season – twice the summer
making it one of the largest and
close to home, they were prone to
longest-running deer studies in the U.S. range – when bucks are seeking does
making short excursions of an average
While some of the information
Between 2004 and 2008, Clements put
of 1.6 miles outside their home range.
Clements gathered is useful to hunters,
radio collars on 85 white-tailed bucks
However, two adult bucks took
the study was designed to find out how
(40 fawns, 20 yearlings and 25 adults)
weeklong walks of 12 and 22 miles.
deer movement could spread diseases
– some caught in walk-in traps, others
Clements said mature bucks typically
among free-ranging deer and how
immobilized with a dart gun – and
move into thicker cover in the core of
tracked their movements. He found that wildlife managers might be able to
their home range during the fall.
control the spread through culling
the average annual home range of
Identify that core area, and you can still
efforts. It found that 71 percent of the
bucks in the study was 1,100 acres –
yearling males that were tracked moved be successful. Clements also said to
1.7 square miles – nearly three times
remember that if a seasonal shift in
the annual home range of does that had a mean distance of 11 miles to new
home range means a deer is no longer
habitat either in the spring, when does
been previously tracked on the refuge.
using your property, a similar shift may
chase them from their home range as
Clements found mature bucks, like
fawning season approaches, or in the fall, bring other bucks onto your property
does, typically remain in the same
from neighboring land. ■
when they are chased out by dominant
home range from year to year, other
hanks to an increase in federal
funding and contributions from
Nebraska Pheasants Forever and
the National Wild Turkey
Federation(NWTF), 1,500 acres
of habitat improvement projects have
been completed on 40 wildlife
management areas in Nebraska that
may not have otherwise been possible.
Each year, Nebraska Game and Park
Commission biologists use a variety of
techniques to improve wildlife habitat
on these areas, including clearing eastern
red cedar and other invasive trees from
grasslands and hardwood forests, disking
and interseeding aged grasslands to
create early successional habitat to
benefit ring-necked pheasants and
other grassland birds, restoring native
grasslands, prescribed burning, and
managing food plots. But the work is
expensive, and the amount of funding
available doesn’t go as far as biologists
would like.
When one of those funding sources,
the federal Wildlife Restoration Program,
unexpectedly increased by $2.3 million
to $7.7 million in 2010, the Commission
was in a quandary – the program, created
by the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937,
returns the federal excise taxes that
I
46 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
T
The National Wild Turkey
Federation has 34 chapters
and 3,000 members in
Nebraska working to improve
wildlife habitat on public and
private land. For more, go to
NWTF.org.
Pheasants Forever and
Quail Forever have 64
chapters and 15,000
members in Nebraska, where
the organizations have
helped improve three million
acres of wildlife habitat since
1987. For more information,
go to NebraskaPF.com.
Contractor FDC Enterprises of Ohio used a fleet of skid steers equipped with chipper
heads to remove hundreds of acres of invading cedars and planted tree rows.
Chipping cedars is often more efficient than shearing, piling and burning.
hunters and shooters pay on guns,
ammunition and other gear to the states,
which use this funding to pay all but
25 percent of the cost of qualifying
projects. The Commission typically
uses proceeds from hunting permit
sales to match federal dollars, but this
year it didn’t have enough budget
authority to utilize the unexpected
windfall, and staff feared it would have
to return unused funds at year’s end,
something that rarely, if ever, happens.
Luckily the Commission can also
pass Wildlife Restoration grant funding
on to conservation partners willing to
come up with the state match. When
the Commission approached Pheasants
Forever, hoping it could rally its
members to do some of the work as an
in-kind match, the organization did one
better and provided $150,000 of what
became a $600,000 project that hired a
contractor to come in and do the work
on more than 30 areas. The NWTF
followed suit with a $9,300 contribution
toward $37,000 of work done on four
additional areas. Most of the work was
done on WMAs in central and
southeastern Nebraska, and involved
invasive tree removal.
“We spend quite a bit of money on our
own areas, but this partnership really
intensified what we would’ve done on
a normal basis,” said Alicia Hardin,
assistant administrator in the
Commission’s Wildlife Division. “We
really wanted to make a big impact on
the WMAs, so when we did tree
clearing, we didn’t want to just do a
couple of acres here and there, but do
200 acres or more on one area and really
make a difference. It was almost like
you waved a magic wand over some of
the needs that biologists had on these
areas and it was taken care of.”
The Habitat Share program was
the first time Pheasants Forever had
partnered with a state agency anywhere
in the country to do work on public
land with Wildlife Restoration funds.
Habitat Share will help Pheasants
Forever accomplish one of the goals laid
out in its Reload Nebraska initiative,
which was launched in 2009 and aims
to establish and improve 1.1 million
acres of wildlife habitat on public and
private land across the state.
The NWTF has contributed $270,000
toward 72 projects on public land in
Nebraska since 2000. With matching
funds, the total cost of the projects
was more than $800,000. It plans on
spending another $175,000 on public
land projects in 2011. ■
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 47
ART/POSTERS/PRINTS
VACATIONS/RESORTS
WANTED
STUNNING, LARGE-SCALE reproductions of classic
Federal Duck Stamps from 1934 through every decade.
Printed on ultra-thick, museum-grade paper with custom
framing available. www.DogandDrake.com.
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.
LUGERS, MILITARY SIDEARMS, swords/edged
weapons wanted. Contact: Dave (402) 677-2323, davidjayuden@msn.com
ATTRACTIONS/EVENTS
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.
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.
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.
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.
NEBRASKAland
For Visa or MasterCard orders call
1-800-NEB-LAND
(632-5263)
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
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.
SASQUATCH ORION SPINONIS: Spinonis puppies
from champion bloodlines bred for versatile hunting,
show and family. John Nelson, Hastings NE (402) 4696001, www.sasquatchorionspinonis.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.
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, HUNTING or Nebraska state
park permit online today! Don’t wait until tomorrow to
enjoy Nebraska’s great outdoors by hunting, fishing or
camping and hiking 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. Permits can also be
purchased from permit vendors and Nebraska Game and
Parks Commission offices across the state.
MILL IRON V LODGING has modern cabins for your
vacation pleasure. We are located near Verdigre, NE
in turkey country. Each cabin offers privacy, view and a
birdwatcher’s paradise. Stay with us for a COUNTRY
EXPERIENCE. (402) 668-7488. www.milliron-vlodging.com, jpeinrem@gpcom.net.
HUNTERS RETREAT! 160 beautiful acres, mostly CRP
land-rolling hills, trees and natural grasses. The house has
vinyl siding, newer roof, wrap-around deck on two sides,
newer furnace, HWH, appliances, electrical, plumbing,
windows, refinished hdwd flrs., remodeled kit & 2 baths.
Outbuildings include 2 machine sheds (30 x 60 and 30 x
40), 2 storage trailers w/electricity, 3 grain bins (2 rented
approx. $2000/yr). Hunt deer, turkey, and pheasant just a
short 2 hr drive from Omaha to your piece of paradise.
$700,000 - 58190 868 Rd. Allen, NE 68710. Contact NP
Dodge Real Estate (402)951-5008 or Nita Jones (402)
690-0822: njones@npdodge.com for more information.
http://www.realestateshows.com/528512.
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.
WANTED – VOLUNTEER INSTRUCTORS. Interested
in making a difference? Get involved in teaching the next
generation of hunters. Contact Mike Streeter at
mike. streeter@nebraska.gov or call (402) 471-6134.
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.
It’s EASY to make RESERVATIONS
for your favorite
NEBRASKA STATE PARKS
Online at
www.OutdoorNebraska.org
or by calling (402) 471-1414
HELP STOP POACHING!
To report a gaviolation, call the
toll-free hotline at
1-800-742-7627
FOOD/GIFTS/HOME
HOMEBREWING/BEER AND WINEMAKING.
Fermenter’s Supply, 8410 K Plaza, Suite #10, Omaha, NE
68127. Phone orders only, (888) 655-2739. Advice line
(402) 593-9171. www.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.
GUIDED DEER HUNT on the Niobrara River, Keya
Paha area in Boyd County. For more information, please
call (402) 657-9717 or e-mail poleson8@aol.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.
REAL ESTATE
RECREATIONAL LEASES - Hunting and recreational
land. Includes rivers, lakes, creeks and timbered cover.
Leases for five or more years. www.belf.state.ne.us. Call
(402) 471-2014.
TAXIDERMY
B&B SKULL CLEANING and European mounts:
professional service at affordable prices. Contact
Rubin Fields in Omaha at (402) 598-1873 or go to
www.bbskullcleaning.com.
48 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2010
NOVEMBER 2010 • NEBRASKALAND 49
▲
This is a photo of my first deer, harvested December 7, 1953, in the Crawford
area. After drawing unsuccessfully for two prior years, I finally received a permit
the third year and was able to take this nice mule deer that field-dressed at about
200 pounds. I was 17 years old at the time and now, at age 73, I continue to
return to Nebraska to hunt almost every year. The other photo shows a trophy
mule deer harvested in November 1954 by my brother, Roger Plooster, Sr. (now
deceased), also in the
Crawford/Pine Ridge area.
It scored 1885/8 by Boone
& Crockett. The other deer
was taken by Dick
Shepard, who was a
coach at Crawford High
School at the time.
– Donald G. Plooster,
Forest Lake, Minnesota
▲
This photo was taken in front of the August Widhalm farm home north of
Humphrey in 1928 or 1929. The house burned to the ground during a dense
fog in the mid ‘60s. My father, Al Widhalm, is on the right, and his cousin, Bill
Widhelm, is on the left (Bill spelled his name with an “e” rather than the “a”
of Widhalm). Handsome men, nice birds, neat Chevy – and if you look
closely you will find the dog!
– Helen Fuchs, Columbus, Nebraska
W
NE
NEBRASKALAND DISTRESSED BALL CAP
With its distressed, enzyme-washed finish and soft feel, this
cap already looks like a well-loved favorite. 100% cotton twill,
low profile, metal D-ring slider buckle with hide-away strap.
Brown with rust-colored NEBRASKAland logo on front and
“See You Out There” logo on back.
Ball Cap – $12 CLO-1429
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NE
NEBRASKALAND
MUG
▲
These photos were taken in the late
‘40s and show my father, Martin
Konopik Jr. (left), with his friend Ross,
and Ross with some of his friends on
our farm six miles north of Richland.
Ross came out from Omaha every fall
to hunt and it was quite a treat for us.
They brought fancy guns, chokes –
everything that they thought a hunter
needed. They were our window into the
outside world and the event broke the
humdrum of daily life. Our father let
anyone who asked hunt our land and liked
this group in particular because they
appreciated the opportunity and brought
hunting courtesy to a high level.
– Martin Konopik
Las Vegas, Nevada
This attractive, 12-ounce,
black ceramic mug
features the
NEBRASKAland logo on
one side.
Ceramic Mug – $5 MUG-2011
Set of 4 – $18 MUG-2012
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 • NOVEMBER 2010
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2011 NEBRASKALAND CALENDAR
The NEBRASKAland Calendar is a lasting
reminder to friends and relatives – whether near
or far away – of you and home. Spectacular,
full-color, all-Nebraska photos highlight every
month. A tremendous value.
$9.95 CAL-2011
call toll-free
1-800-742-0056
NebraskalandGifts.com
NEBRASKA LIFETIME PERMITS
A great gift for grandchildren or graduates!
Treat someone special to the gift that lasts a lifetime . . . a Nebraska
Lifetime Permit. Available to Nebraska residents and nonresidents,
it is the ultimate gift for any hunter or angler and an investment in the
future. All funds go into escrow, with the interest used to help support wildlife
and fisheries management programs.
W
Get a three-year subscription to save the most!
Now you can save 70% off the cover price
of NEBRASKAland when you subscribe
for three years! Don’t miss out on this award-winning
magazine about Nebraska!
NE
Lifetime Hunt Lifetime Fish
Get it for yourself and send it to the special people on
your gift list. Every issue is filled with breathtaking
photographs and informative, entertaining articles
about Nebraska’s outdoor activities, history,
parklands, people and wildlife.
$18 for one year SUB-2901
Lifetime Hunt/Fish Lifetime Fur Harvest
Residents
Residents
Residents
Residents
(0-5 years old) $148.50
(6-15 years old) $219
(16-45 years old) $300
(46+ years old) $219
(0-5 years old) $307.50
(6-15 years old) $366.50
(16-45 years old) $446
(46+ years old) $366.50
(0-5 years old) $425.50
(6-15 years old) $573
(16-45 years old) $699
(46+ years old) $573
(0-5 years old) $148.50
(6-15 years old) $219
(16-45 years old) $300
(46+ years old) $219
Nonresidents
Nonresidents
Nonresidents
(0-16 years old) $738.50
(17+ years old) $1,181
(0-16 years old) $632
(17+ years old) $951
(0-16 years old) $1,251.50
(17+ years old) $1,871
Lifetime Habitat Stamp
$400
Lifetime Waterfowl Stamp
(Great value – 64% off the cover price – 10 issues)
$100
$33 for two years SUB-2902
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NE
(Better value – 66% off the cover price – 20 issues)
$44 for three years SUB-2903
Hunting for just the right gift for your
special hunter? Fishing for the perfect
present for your favorite angler?
Hunting and fishing permits are
passports to outdoor fun, and the
ideal gifts for that hard-to-buy-for
outdoor enthusiast on your list.
(Best value – 70% off the cover price – 30 issues)
The Award-Winning Outdoor Magazine
Just For Kids
Eight colorful, 16-page issues of
Trail Tales, four each year, feature
puzzles, games, drawings, photos
and interesting articles about nature,
Nebraska and the outdoors. Send Trail
Tales to a youngster, just $15 for two
school years.
PERMIT
Resident Hunt and Fish Permit ..................$40
Resident Hunt Permit ..................................$14
Resident Fish Permit ..............................$28.50
Nonresident Hunt Permit ............................$81
Nonresident Fish Permit ........................$60.50
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NE
2011 WILDLIFE HABITAT STAMP
Required of resident hunters and trappers
ages 16 and older and all nonresidents. Not
required for hunters age 69 and over or
veterans age 64 and older who are holders of
a valid fee-exempt permit.
W
NE
Note: Printed with your annual permit - see
image above.
2011 NEBRASKA
PARK PERMIT
(4 issues each year)
Reading material for the whole family to enjoy! Get both publications shipped to one address and save!
$40 for two years SUB-2926 (you save $8.00!)
(20 issues of NEBRASKAland Magazine and 8 issues of Trail Tales Magazine - two years worth)
NEBRASKALAND LOCKING KNIFE
Genuine Schrade Old Timer® knife features a stainless
steel locking blade etched with the NEBRASKAland logo
and a Derlin handle. A unique gift for
the outdoor enthusiast on your
list and priced below
suggested retail.
$17
MIS-1922
Knife shown actual size
Prices include agent issuing fee.
Permits will be mailed after November 1, 2010.
$8 for one year SUB-2920
$15 for two years SUB-2921
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NE
2011 ANNUAL HUNT AND FISH PERMITS
call toll-free
DEER PROCESSING
DVD
From field dressing to
home processing,
make the most of
your deer with this
instructional DVD.
The first part
features field
dressing and
proper care,
the second part covers
how to safely process venison. The
DVD’s total run time is approximately 39 minutes.
$9.95 VID-3206
1-800-742-0056
Visit more than 80
beautiful state park and
recreation areas across
the state.
Annual Park Permit – $20
Duplicate Park Permit – $10
Habitat Stamp – $20
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NE
2011 NEBRASKA MIGRATORY
WATERFOWL STAMP
This stamp is required for all waterfowl hunters who
are nonresidents and all Nebraska waterfowlers who
are 16 years old and older. Money raised from the sale
of these stamps will be used to improve waterfowl
habitat and increase duck and goose populations in
the state.
Note: Printed with your annual permit - see image
above.
Waterfowl Stamp – $5
NEBRASKA GAME AND PARKS BUCKS COUPONS
The perfect gift for all outdoor enthusiasts, these “bucks” may
be used to purchase any Nebraska Game and Parks
Commission merchandise, including subscriptions and
permits. Available only in booklets with five $5 certificates.
$25 MIS-1919
These certificates will be accepted by all Nebraska Game and Parks offices where Nebraska Game and Parks
goods and services are sold. These certificates cannot be exchanged for cash.
Order online at NebraskalandGifts.com
(more items available online - some 90% off!)
NebraskalandGifts.com
2011 Gift Collection Order Form
To order: mail this form to the address below, fax it to (402) 471-1984, call toll-free 1-800-742-0056 using your VISA or MasterCard, or go to NebraskalandGifts.com.
Charges for hunting and fishing permits will appear on credit card statements as separate transactions from other purchases.
For delivery by Christmas, orders must be received by December 15, 2010.
Your Name
Address
City/State/ZIP
Phone (8 a.m. – 5 p.m.)
Permits
Permits good for their calendar year. For example, a 2010 permit expires December 31, 2010
Please provide the following information about the people for whom any fishing and/or hunting permits
are ordered on this form or on another sheet of paper. The last four digits of a permit holder’s Social
Security Number (SSN) are required for all hunting and fishing permits.
NEBRASKA PARK PERMITS
QTY
Name
Last 4 digits SSN
Address
PARK PERMIT TYPE
FEE
Annual Park Permit`
$20
Duplicate Park Permit
$10
TOTAL AMOUNT
City/State/ZIP
Date of Birth: Month
Weight
Day
Year
Sex
Hair Color
Height
QTY
TYPE OF PERMIT(S)
Name
Last 4 digits SSN
Address
City/State/ZIP
Date of Birth: Month
Weight
HUNTING AND FISHING PERMITS
Eye Color
Day
Year
Sex
Hair Color
Height
Eye Color
PERMITS & STAMPS
2010
2011
Resident Hunt and Fish Permit ......................$40.00 ❏
$40.00 ❏
Resident Hunt Permit ....................................$14.00 ❏
$14.00 ❏
Resident Fish Permit ......................................$28.50 ❏
$28.50 ❏
Resident Fur Harvest Permit ........................$16.00 ❏
$16.00 ❏
Nonresident Fish Permit ................................$60.50 ❏
$60.50 ❏
Nonresident Hunt Permit ..............................$81.00 ❏
$81.00 ❏
Migratory Waterfowl Stamp ............................$5.00 ❏
$5.00 ❏
Habitat Stamp (required with all hunting permits) ......$20.00 ❏
$20.00 ❏
TOTALS
Lifetime Hunt Permit ............................................see previous page
TYPE OF PERMIT(S)
Lifetime Fish Permit ..............................................see previous page
Lifetime Hunt and Fish Permit ............................see previous page
Lifetime Fur Harvest Permit ................................see previous page
NEBRASKAland Magazine Subscriptions
For subscriptions to NEBRASKAland Magazine,
please call toll-free 1-800-632-5263
or go online to
NebraskalandMagazine.com
Gift Items
Lifetime Habitat Stamp .................................................. $400.00 ❏
Lifetime Nebraska Waterfowl Stamp ............................ $100.00 ❏
Prices include agent issuing fee where applicable. No sales tax on permits and stamps.
TOTAL PERMIT ORDER $
Enter this total on the PERMITS and STAMPS line below.
Enter totals for gift items below on line A
Nebraska residents please add state and local sales tax on the following items.
QUANTITY
ITEM NUMBER
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Mail order form with your payment to:
NEBRASKAland Gifts
P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370
PAYMENT METHOD
❏ Check
❏ Money Order
❏ VISA
Credit Card Number
Security code (3 digits on back of card)
Expiration Date
Daytime Phone
❏ MasterCard
Shipping and Handling Charges
for Mail and Fax Orders
$0.01 – 10.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$3.95
10.01 – 25.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.95
25.01 – 50.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7.95
50.01 – 75.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10.15
75.01 – 100.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10.95
100.01 and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .FREE
Shipping and handling not required for
subscriptions.
For overseas shipping please call about
extra mailing fees that may apply.
COLOR
UNIT PRICE
TOTAL AMOUNT
(A) GIFT ITEMS $
SHIPPING & HANDLING CHARGES $
See accompanying text box
SUBSCRIPTIONS $
SALES TAX $
PERMITS & STAMPS $
TOTAL ALL ITEMS $
For additional orders provide information on another sheet of paper. Please provide complete mailing information for items to be sent to additional addresses.
Order online at NebraskalandGifts.com (more items available online - some 90% off!)
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