Wading Through The Curse of Stacks Slough
Almost anyone who ever hunted
Stack's Slough west of Hankinson, N,D. frequently, can come up with some
kind of crazy misadventure that happened to him there. That's because
that slough can throw some real challenges at you, especially if you
hunt it by wading out into it with hip boots or waders. (That is now
impossible due to high water.)
Then, thankfully I heard a shout.
“Hay Gene, Where the hell are you?” “Over here!” And out of the
darkness, bent low and trudging, emerged the two trail blazers. They had
been lost, and had slogged at least an extra, mile trying to find their
way out. At one point Neal got Marty to climb up on his shoulders to see
if they could see anything at all, but the reeds were too tall, and they
almost fell down together, which would have made for an amusing
“funniest home video,” but luckily no one was there to film the
kaploosh!
Gene Pinkney- 3/27/20 - For the
Daily News
edited html update 08-15-2021
Back in the mid 70's, Neal
Johnson, Marty Heath and myself did a lot of that challenging kind of
hunting, and on this particular afternoon in late September, the two
well-known SSS (Wahpeton Science School) biologists invited me to go
along with them so they could scout out exactly where they wanted to
hunt on this 2 mile long, heavily cat-tailed, man-killer of a duck
slough.
I agreed to go along not so
much because I wanted to help them “break trail” through those seven
foot high reeds, but that I wanted to hunt doves on a stock tank that
was in the pasture bordering the slough on the south-east side. I had
been through the ordeal of breaking trail through the reeds on previous
hunts, and didn't exactly relish the idea of sweating and machete
hacking through a sixty yard wide band of cattails to get to the open
water where one could set out his decoys on opening morning.
When we got out there, things
got interesting: the wind picked up to over 30 mph. Neal dropped me off
at the stock tank, and then he and Marty drove on down about another
block or so from which point they both disappeared into the jungle of
cat tails, heading pretty much in an easterly direction. In the slough
that angled northwest to southeast.
Well I had fairly challenging
dove shooting with that wind and I remember burning up more than a box
of low-base 8 shot shells. By quitting time I think I was still three
birds short of a limit, but I decided I'd better get over to the car so
I would be able to greet the trail blazers when they came out.
As darkness came on, I began
to worry a little. They seemed to be really taking their time getting
back to the car and then it dawned on me that they just might be lost.
The clouds made it impossible to tell one's direction by the sunset or
any stars. I had another box of shells so I began firing shots in the
air, hoping they might be able to home in on the sound, but a half hour
slid by and still no Neal and Marty.
As to whether they could hear
my shooting, they flat-out never heard anything but the howling of the
wind and the swishing of the cat tails. Thankfully the adventure ended
happily, and supplied Neal with material for many a tall retelling with
all the trimmings. If you know Neal, you know how detailed he can tell a
tale. He lives on Deer Lake Mn. Now, but when he visits Wahpeton he's
always ready with a story or two. He is “the brief chronicler of our
times.” (Hamlet, about the players of his day.)
As for me, I felt a little
smug for having opted out of the Stack's slough safari, but I didn't
miss realizing how close to a tragedy that trail blazing could have
come. Luckily we were all young and strong. For an older guy, that
slough might have been heart-attack city.
As always, we stopped at the
great little cafe just off Highway 11 on Hankinson's south side. Hot
Beef sandwiches, $1.75 and their blueberry pie ala mode, 35 cents, never
tasted so good. And we all did have good shooting opening morning. The
trail they blazed going in was beautiful. Too bad they didn't take it
back to the car that windy night. But Marty thought he knew a short cut,
and thereby hangs the tale.
