Anderson: In the marsh, rails provide hunters a challenge

ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER – Wednesday when I pulled into Bill Marchel's driveway not far south of Brainerd, I hardly recognized the property surrounding his home.

I hadn't been there for a couple of years, and the trees, shrubs and other plantings he has made every year for two decades to attract wildlife had really taken off. Cardinals and other songbirds visit his crabapple trees. Deer munch on his food plots. Ducks inhabit his ponds.

"It's a wildlife mecca," I said to Bill, an outdoor photographer and writer, and frequent contributor to the Star Tribune and other state and national publications.

We had planned the day around rail hunting, and soon were headed to the Mississippi River about an hour farther north. Rails are only lightly hunted in Minnesota, in part because the tradition of chasing these small birds is lacking here, and in part because a significant amount of effort is usually required to garner enough meat for a meal. Nonetheless, rail hunting is not that much different from duck hunting or wild rice gathering and in that respect is an adventure worth having.

"We've always had rails in our wild rice beds near Brainerd," Bill said. "But when there were a lot of ducks, and even in the years since, when there haven't been many ducks, we rarely hunted rails because we didn't want to disturb teal and wood ducks, sending them south before the opener.

"But some years ago, when they started the youth waterfowl hunt two weeks before the regular duck opener, we figured we couldn't disturb ducks any more than that, and started hunting rails a bit more."

A canoe is worth considering for rail hunting. The rail hunter, after all, must be able to push-pole his or her boat through what can be thick stands of wild rice or other vegetation, in the process flushing rails from their redoubts. Being light and scimitar-like, canoes are fairly easy to propel in this way.

Thus the advantage of a somewhat larger, motorized craft for rail hunting, in part because of the stability offered, and in part because traveling across a lake, or up and down a river, to find birds is often required — a chore more quickly accomplished by motor than paddle.

Which is why, the other day we took Bill's boat, a 15-foot Penoe — which is half canoe and half boat — powered by a mud motor.

"If you don't have a motor to get around," Bill said, "rail hunting can be a lot of work."

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Minnesota is home to two types of rails, Virginia and sora, the latter being more abundant. Each can be difficult to find and bring to hand. Yet rails are plentiful here, and hunters' limits are generous: 25 daily, with 75 allowed in possession.

Wednesday, as Bill and I dropped his boat into the Mississippi, the sky was nearly cloudless and the wind slight, with temperatures in the low 70s.

"Let's see what happens," Bill said.

Essentially adding a four-wheel-drive component to our travels, the mud motor powered us into a large wild rice stand. Then Bill killed the engine, and together we listened for the familiar multi-syllabic peep, or call, of sora rails.

Hearing none, Bill threw a rock deep into the rice, and when it splashed, a sora called out, signaling its presence.

Unfortunately for hunters, rails don't hold their ground when startled. Instead, they run, and their extremely long toes, anchoring spindly legs beneath light bodies, grant them nearly supernatural powers to scamper atop lily pads and the slightest strands of vegetation. Also they can swim and dive.

In response to the rock splashing down, we heard only the one sora.

"A lot of them probably migrated," Bill said, starting his motor and angling us toward open water and another rice stand upriver.

In some respects, we were scouting ducks as much as we were hunting rails. Opening day of waterfowl season is Saturday, and the sight of ducks on the wing in September is thrilling. Blue-winged teal, we found, were in reasonable abundance. But wood ducks and mallards were scarce.

Reaching another rice stand, Bill killed the engine and I uncased a scattergun. Millie, a black Labrador, was with me in the bow, braced between my legs.

Then Bill, wearing waders, crawled overboard and alternately pushed the Penoe through the rice and stood still, hoping a bird would flush.

A short distance ahead, another rail made the same escape attempt but wasn't so lucky.

Rails are tasty, dark-meated birds, best seasoned and marinated.

But our sora harvest was meager on Wednesday, and Bill and I would have had to purchase a couple of big steaks had we planned to fire up a grill that night.

Perhaps the duck opener Saturday will yield a bigger bag.

So it goes.