My Office – a Shrine to a Life of Conservation & Hunting

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Welcome to the PF editor's office......

What does the office of a nomadic hunter-gatherer journalist look like after 12 years of wandering the country hunting, hiking and exploring?

Well, it looks somewhat akin to a rat’s nest, but its home to me. I’m a packrat, and the guys here at PF egged me into regaling (boring?) you with some of my more interesting odds and ends picked up on the trail.

First, there’s the “Wall o’ Kill Shots” of me hanging onto various game bagged over the years – phez, sandhill crane, turkey, elk, whitetail, ducks, prairie chickens, sharpies, doves, snow and Canada geese and trout. One favorite is me jokingly ‘aiming’ at a 40’ high fiberglass sandhill crane in North Dakota; another, the first habitat project PF ever accomplished in Kandiyohi County, Minnesota.

I have a stuffed ‘flying’ snow goose hanging from the ceiling. Fellow PF staffer and hunting buddy Ben Streitz warned me it would end up in my office. He was over for lunch one day and noticed it suspended over the kitchen table. I was about to get married, and the house was about to lose its bachelor pad status of 10 years.

“Once she moves in,” Ben wryly noted, “that will be the first to go.” Oh, how right he was.

Then there’s my collection of 300 some conservation/hunting related lapel pins. I just couldn’t throw them away! I have a bowl of cotton from a quail hunt in Georgia. I had never seen the real thing before. Another prize is a triangle of clay drain tile. As an avid duck hunter and lover of wetlands, I once stood in a muddy hole in southwest Minnesota during a wetland restoration and hacked at the tile that had drained a wetland since 1916. Instead of corn, that land now holds countless forms of wildlife.

One of my favorite items is a poster from Federal ammo, a major PF sponsor. The poster has a picture of a statuesque bull elk with the wording “The next time you’re touched by the beauty of wildlife, thank a hunter.” Our conservation record is unparalleled!

I also have the wing feathers of the first scaled quail (Texas), sage grouse (Wyoming), chukar (Utah) and snipe (Florida) I ever bagged tacked to the wall. Macabre to some, but trophies to a wing-shooting nut.

Then there’s the 1896 Charlie Russell print “Indians Discover Lewis & Clark.” I picked it up at Russell’s museum in Great Falls, Montana. I love Russell’s message about who discovered whom during that famous 1804-06 Euro-American exploration. The place is rounded out with my wildlife wood carvings, plants and books from the conservation and hunting greats.

One of my latest, and favorite, additions is a photo of me and Wolf. Wolf-the-Springer has been my companion for 14 years. He has traveled the country with me, kept me company, found and fetched my birds and made me laugh many times. This may be his last autumn. He has been a hell of a hunting dog and loyal to a fault. Thanks old buddy. You won’t be forgotten.