outdoors
Karl Seckinger
Karl "Trout Whisperer" Seckinger is an outdoor enthusiast and resides in northeastern Minnesota.
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When Doc, wanted his dock put out in the spring you showed up. The ice was gone but the water was so dang cold. He stood on shore in his hip boots and gave directions whilst I waddled about in insulated chest waders. Doc was not lead anywhere. I was told where to go plenty of times.
Doc always sat in the stern and I got the bow when we went down the Kettle River. I hate that position in a canoe. I paddled, he steered and supposedly I got the fresh water first but he was always saying to take a stroke and shove us out or dip your paddle to move us up. Before I could get my rod to cast a plug his lure would splash. For an old guy he could be pretty quick.
Doc had one wife. Doc only ran one dog. One paddle and you better not touch it. His glass, his chair, his way. Doc would not argue. He said it, that was it.
I tied flies under his tutelage. One for me, two for him. I had the young eyeballs; he had the endless supply of hackle and hooks. Last thing every fall night, I filled the wood box in his shop while he nursed his favorite cocktail. He’d go in the house, I’d go home.
Berry patches got groomed by my fingers that he guided me to. During a severely cold winter he thought maybe I should learn how to build a boat from scratch. Any guess on how many tiny brass nails I dropped on his garage floor? He made me carve a chine log five times then told me nothing was wrong with the first four. His wife loved him inside or out of doors. She adored him off on some adventure. I did too.
I got more junk fishing rods from him. Save this one, it’s got good cork. Keep that one, it’s got a good tip. Turn this into an ice rod for northern. Stuff he busted and couldn’t imagine throwing away. I haven’t.
Doc was one to yell first. I don’t think he ever apologized for anything. We were sitting in his office talking smart with a nice fire. Ice cubes melting and we were about to call it a night.
But When doc sat down, you was gonna be there for a while. This night he starts to get up and trying to be considerate I said” what do you need”, “I’ll get it”, and he barks, “sit still junior”. I sat still.
Over to his library he plucked a book. With a shaky hand he autographed a fly-tying book to me. What he wrote shouldn’t be read by the faint of heart. I watched him write it. Then he handed it to me, I read it then, so many years ago. I read it again last night.
Guys like Doc don’t grow on trees. More like the one lone oak tree in the middle of some two hundred acre field surrounded by countless pieces of grass. I know, I keep looking for a new Doc. He was a lucky man. Pick the trip in life and he was on it.
He’s on his last trip now.
The Trout Whisperer
About 80 miles south of my home is a country buyer. He owns a convenience store that sells all the usual stuff. The c-store holds sway over an intersection in downtown Wisconsin. Ah, but next door, just a football field length away is a building. The fur shed. Big mural painted on the double garage door of a beaver chewing on an aspen tree about to fall over. I think one of his kids did the drawing and painting.
To get in the building you open the man door. Its heavy and it always slams behind you. Once inside the shed it’s got white walls and dim overhead lights. When you come in to sell fur from a bright winter day it takes your eyes a couple seconds to adjust. But you know you’re in instantly with the pungent aroma. It’s like skunk, tallow, fat essence. Luckily it’s always cool in the fur shed.
Eye’s focusing and my nose on overdrive your next sense is sound. The great ear filling “hello”. The proprietor has a huge grin and very sincere greeting. He always stops whatever he’s scraping or skinning and wipes his hands on his apron and then comes over to shake my hand. It’s a little thing but he always takes my pelts and lays them across the grading table, like there as important to him as they are to me. After shaking his hand I want to borrow his apron.
The fur can wait. We lean against the two stools and catch up on family gossip and weather and maybe a bit of politics because we are on opposite sides of the fence but somehow he get’s around to grabbing some piece of fur that I have brought in and catches his eye. Nine times outta ten he picks my worst first. Some paw I nicked up or a tail I have pinned back on, so at least I did not lose it. The one time, less the nine, is if I have a completely black beaver pelt. Or a full ring of winter white weasel. Then he goes direct to the winter prime.
Now I know full well, and he does too I’m never going to be even close to top of the lot. My skinning abilities are why” how to manuals” are so successful. I can get the carpet off and protect the all important pelt area. It’s good to be careful skinning around the eyes and legs and paws. But according to the buyer, the garment makers drop a lot of fur on the cutting room floor.
Buying, must be some sort of science I will never understand. But the guy is so darn friendly I never really care too much about the price. It could be his technique. If it is, it’s a good one.
I can lay what I think are three triplet beaver pelts and they get three separate grades. They get tilted to the light and little comment about guard hairs or I must have tried a sharp knife with this one. How fifteen weasels that are cookie cutter identical get rubbed into and back out of 25 cents is amazing. I am no buyer, I am a seller.
After we agree on his prices he cuts me a check and throws in a coupon for a free pan sized pizza at the c-store where he knows I’m going in less than two minutes to cash my fur check. I scan the building’s interior, because it’s going to be awhile before I get back here again.
Walls have fur. Ceilings have fur. Unbelievable quantities of raccoon. Beaver pelts are standing flat on the boards. A drum of fat is in definite need of being emptied. Elderly gray otter and tender new of the year fresh black otter pelts hang from the strongest color to the softest. It’s hard to believe there is a whitetail deer still alive with the pile after pile of deer hides in plywood crates. Inside out hanging muskrat pelts look like bats on steroids. Large rings with the “sent outs” wait for trappers. Sent outs are pieces of fur that go for a metal tag and then tanned out east and returned to the trapper. The red foxes are gorgeous. New traps and used, axes and hatchets and bottles of potions you do not want to spill.
It’s time. I shake his hand, and the door slams. It does not smell outside.
The trout whisperer
Once upon a time in a not so distant land a young man who donned his leather apron at the cocks crowing took it off during the church bells noon tolling. Sitting in the sunshine with a lunch pail wiping his sweaty brow one of his mental wires over worked and frayed, finally snapped.
Walking back into the little shop of horrors he settled accounts with his employer. He drew his eight and half days pay, hung the apron up for good and never looked back. On his way out of town he paid a visit to the local mercantile where he bartered a long bit axe, purchased four long spring traps and small box of shells for his carbine.
Walking out of town following two deep wagon wheeled ruts dodging the occasional horse pies he moved farther inland than he was accustomed too. When the ruts crossed a stream he took the left bank and followed it north into the forest for the better part of three days.
The water taking the path of least resistance dropping in elevation was crooked and bent at every turn. A young man with one lone cow walked straight away from its roughest stream bank corner.
Axe blows created firewood and a small log cabin. Days became weeks that passed with lots of hard work. One post after another created a fence line that meandered about his property where it dipped down to cross a stream flow that had lead him to this little parcel of land.
Water flowed, seasons came and went. The wood fence rails were replaced by barbed wire and it kept his cattle in with less effort. During a spring of high ice out, part of that fence was torn loose and washed downstream to eventually rest in a deeply gouged corner.
Flowing Water year after year rolled and coiled that stray wire into one gnarly grasping mess at the bottom of a pool of water now locally named for the long ago dead farmer. That rusty strand, pink streaked trout and silvery sided salmon spawned under with the least little bit of effort.
So many years ago a man walked the watered edge into the woods to make his way. So it was that I snowshoe’d up that frozen river this past weekend and the ice had heaved a massive crack over the mid section of the pool.
Barely a trickle of water flowed and small vapors rose up from the fissure. How many springs and falls had I stood here chest wader deep with fly rod in hand? I peered into the frozen slit and there exposed was the wire I foul hooked so many times.
It was covered with disheveled flies, hooks and yarns of three glowing colors. Some of the fishing line still held small spilt shot. More than just me left fishing souvenirs here over the years. I removed my glove, reached my arm into that crack, felt frigid water and worked that spire of junk wire around until it finally snapped off.
The trout whisperer
Let’s say about a year ago I split a nice big old pile of firewood and as I’m walking past it on my way to the pole shed today, where I’m going to start splitting some more firewood, well I go walking past thinking I did that, I got something accomplished. I also think about her.
The gray ended wood is about as seasoned as it’s gonna get so I think when I start hauling, I’ll start hauling and burning from that pile. Each log end I think log butt. Just log butt makes me laugh to myself.
I’m standing here at about four above zero , wind chill close to twenty below making what I think are hilarious log butt jokes. Hey there’s a pile of log butts, a pile of lazy log butts, a pile of aged log butts. What a bunch of log butts. The wind catches me and I leave my log butts to gray a day or two more.
Before I get to the shed a shadow floats cross the yard. I look up and it’s a big voluminous fluffy cloud, and I think hey, that cloud looks like an elephant with an umbrella hovering over his head. I think it’s a male elephant because he has two elongated tusks.
The cloud being pushed by the wind in no time morphs into a bowl of popcorn with popcorn falling out of the bowl. Then it’s disappearing at the tree line so I stop looking up.
In no time at all, the entire yard is a query. Snow banks piled, they’re going to melt someday. Snow draped eves, that stuff will fall off the roof eventually.
The pole shed floor is a menagerie of wood chips and splinters and piles of potential kindling and I need to rake or shovel to clean up. Will it bio degrade or will I get around to burning it?
In any case, it’s all going go past about like that cloud a few minutes ago and I for one am going to miss all of it.
I think this life of fishin and firewood, woods and a child, her and how I miss her, the friends, the times of fun, and the ones that kicked me right out from under myself has been a pretty good deal. This life business, aint been so bad. Yes I’ll take so more. The trout whisperer
After I fixed the bear damaged bird feeder, I filled it with a mixed bird seed. My intent is to feed the birds. The feeder sits empty all summer. I typically don’t reload until I think yogi is in for his long winter nap. The bears, when they wander through my yard with their super sniffers probe, then with more power than I can imagine, snap off the feeder or break the post, hosting my feeder. I’m just trying to feed some birds.
Once the snow covers the yard I get a concentrated group of customers. Blue jays, chickadees, nuthatches, pine gross beaks to name a few. My suet feeders get three varieties of woodpeckers. These are the birds I was trying to feed.
Now the suet feeder during daylight hours gets pecked and gleaned in a most remarkable fashion. Then, the sun goes down and the pine martens and fishers try to take the entire feeder and I lose two to three of them per winter to the hungry little buggers, but once again, the chow hall was for the birds.
These suet feeders are nothing more than an onion sack I saved and stuffed with deer tallow. I suspend them in various places about the yard and at different heights. Suet, bird, bird eat suet, simple concept. Everything’s fine until the four footed critters take notice.
My seed dispensers get all the birds I want in the daylight and two or twelve hundred red squirrels depending. To get around the squirrels I have multiple feeders and at different heights all with cant fail squirrel repellants or barricades the patent issuer assures me will not let bushy tails pass. Just trying to feed the birds here.
Seed gets kicked out of the feeders from scratching jays and chickadees. The deer or mice glean this in the night. Many times I hit the feeders with a flashlight beam and a mouse scurries or if I’m lucky I get the black eye of the flying squirrel. Its abit hypocritical to like the night squirrel, and hate the day squirrel I know, but I can tell you no barricade is working on the day or night shift squirrel situation anyway.
Now this morning in the twilight with one degree above zero blinking on my digital thermometer I draw back the drapes slowly and let my eyes adjust. All of nature is still, gray, white. My forest is absent any color. Below my window is one lone mouse with paws full of yesterdays shelved seeds now earthen and down to his level.
The swoop is ghostly and quick. My mouse is gone. The owl is wings, floating away in flaps, snow falls again from his feet and wing tips. My intent in all this was to feed the birds.
The trout whisperer
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