Fall hunting awful, but it's got to get better

If you haven't noticed, daylight will extend about 15 seconds longer today than it did yesterday.

Hardy souls who have yet to fill an archery deer tag are well aware of this, as are late-season pheasant or ruffed grouse hunters seeking to bag a last-minute bird before sunset.

Even though the coldest winter weather is still ahead (typically the third week in January) we, starting a few days ago on Dec. 21, are gaining daylight.

At first, the difference is hardly noticeable; a matter of just seconds a day. But, slowly, like the hour hand movement on a clock, the amount of daylight increases.

With that in mind, let's recall the recent past by looking back, via photographs, at autumn 2014.

From a game-bird and game-animal standpoint, it was perhaps the worst season I can recall in my 40-plus years of being afield.

Ruffed grouse, for example, are at our near the low point of their 10-year population cycle. And pheasants? They need grasslands and trees to thrive, not corn and soybeans. And ducks require shallow water marshes filled with invertebrates, not carp.

Yet hope is on the horizon.

The Minnesota DNR has admitted the white-tailed deer population that has been overharvested, or at least conceded that deer numbers are lower than hunters and wildlife enthusiasts are willing to accept.

And our pheasant and duck populations, arguably at their lowest ebbs in decades, have nowhere to go but up.

There's comfort, too, in knowing that all wildlife, from the tiniest songbirds to the hardiest big game, can thrive if we allow them the habitat they need — the same habitat that in many instances cleans the water we need to survive, while providing us with a thrilling diversity of beautiful critters with which to share our great state.

Images with this story, taken this fall, are testament to the presence of some of the state's wildest cohabitants.

Marchel is an outdoors writer and photographer living near Brainerd.