outdoors

Perhaps the Keller brothers -- Matt, Mike and Andy -- and various of their friends and kin are just what Minnesota duck and goose hunters need to remind them the Good Old Days can be now.

The Kellers, who are appearing at Game Fair today through Sunday at Armstrong Ranch Kennels in Anoka (www.gamefair.com), are the folks who run the website minnesotawaterfowler.com.

They recently have released another Minnesota-only waterfowl hunting video entitled "Shellburner.'' (The video is available at their website. All proceeds go to youth hunting activities.)

"Minnesota-only'' is the modifier that raises the Kellers' videography effort above others. These guys are serious about exclaiming that plenty of great waterfowling still exists in Minnesota, if one goes looking.

And if one is serious about developing the skills necessary to successfully hunt ducks and geese.

That the Kellers are from Bemidji, a city not typically associated with Minnesota's best waterfowling, makes their video all the more interesting. For many of their hunts, they not only don't travel out of state, they don't travel far from their homes. Canada geese provide much of the action. Ducks, too, and all species.

A critic could argue that the focus of "Shellburner'' is too harvest-oriented, that the DVD's long-running footage of birds being decoyed and called to their fates needs buffeting by equally riveting discussions about conservation.

Also, at least a nod to the values that still underpin -- however fragilely --the nation's waterfowling tradition as defined by Nash Buckingham and Ding Darling, among others, couldn't hurt.

But those are nits outweighed by broader, more positive points made by the Kellers, some perhaps not intentionally.

One is the energy and love they display for waterfowling, which for anyone even vaguely interested in the sport -- more appropriately, lifestyle -- is infectious.

Listen and watch in the video, for example, as Matt and crew embark on a Lake of the Woods hunt two years in the planning. No minor undertaking, the foray required a crossing of Traverse Bay to the Northwest Angle, where a tent camp was established and decoys set out.

"I had looked at this spot on a map and the area just looked 'ducky,'''Matt said. "None of us had ever been there, and we wanted to give it a try.''

Given the success the Kellers and others like them enjoy afield for ducks and geese in Minnesota, is it possible that underlying the generalized complaint nowadays that "all is lost'' for the state's waterfowlers is that they've had things too easy in the past?

And want them to remain so?

Ask yourself, for example:

What kind of pheasant "hunters'' have Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Montana nurtured in recent years, when birds have been so flush that in some instances limits have been taken in an hour or less?

Doubtless for some of these uplanders, the tough times that will accompany the coming loss of so many Conservation Reserve Program acres will mean a shift to more comfortable pursuits -- ones that don't require daylong hikes and lost boot leather in exchange for only a rooster or two.

Or only a shot or two.

Yes, Minnesota duck habitat is (and has been) under severe pressure. Industrial agriculture is a problem, as are the impervious surfaces and ceaseless sprawl of cities.

And too many people in too many places.

Amid this, optimism still reigns in certain corners. Hope is alive. Plans are in place. Matters might improve.

Proof enough are the Kellers and others like them; pockets of resistance against what for many Minnesota waterfowlers in recent years has been an insurgent tide of despair.

From opening day of early goose season 2007 to the first day of duck hunting that year, to the youth opener and beyond, the Kellers in "Shellburner'' rejoice in what the state still offers, particularly to those waterfowlers who possess energy and skill.

The Kellers mourn not so much the "then'' as they celebrate the now.

For them, optimists each, even better days lie ahead, with autumn now approaching.

Beginning a half-hour before dawn.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com