Tolkkinen: For Minnesota hunters, a run to get butter for breakfast lasted 36 hours, and over a decade

One morning, about a generation ago (or possibly only a dozen years; memories vary) a group of hunters left deer camp in northwestern Minnesota to buy butter for breakfast.

A group of them crowded into an old Suburban while another half-dozen remained at camp, which was a decommissioned refrigerated semitrailer fitted with bunk beds.

The mission was simple. Go get butter. Come back, finish making eggs or pancakes or whatever.

They came back, all right — more than a day later, with the butter. What should have been a half-hour run to the grocery store ended up in a 36-hour (more or less) meandering hopscotch across hunting country, visiting deer camps throughout the region until they found themselves near the Canadian border.

“It was like, ‘Oh, let’s go over to so-and-so’s deer camp and say hi,’ and then when we were that far, we’re like, ‘Well, we should run over to this other one and say hi,’” recalled Jeff Kroll, a graphic designer from Argyle. “And, well, you know, one thing led to another, and before you know it, we were by the Canadian border, and it was a day later before we came home.”

It was to go down in deer camp annals as the inaugural Butter Run World Tour, one of those cherished hunting traditions as important, or even more so, than the hunt itself.

This was before cellphones were as ubiquitous or as reliable as they are now in Minnesota’s northwest corner. But as time passed without word, hunters remaining at camp didn’t worry, said Mike Dufault, who was there. In fact, come evening, they did a little disappearing of their own, off to enjoy what local taverns had to offer.

Kroll printed up T-shirts with the Butter Run World Tour logo on the front and a list of places the tour has gone, or wishes to go, or just thought would be cool to have on the shirt. Along with Kittson and Hubbard counties, the list includes Mesopotamia; Greasy Corner, Ark.; Buttzville, N.J.; and Zigzag, Ore. St. Clair Shores, Mich., a thousand miles away, made the list because it is home to the Butter Run Saloon. It’s too lengthy a trip for deer camp, but they hope to go in the offseason.

Their camp isn’t far from the Red River, and it attracts a passel of guys who went to school together in Argyle or met at college, their kids and grandkids, and sometimes wives and daughters. Most of them farm sugar beets or small grains, and Minnesota’s rifle season for deer hunting often comes right after harvest, giving them a chance to let off a little steam.

And while the older generation enjoys coaching the kids on getting a deer, the camp is as much about having fun as it is about hunting.

“We’re basically a bunch of 12-year-old boys,” Dufault said. He might have missed out on the inaugural run, but he has gone on his own over the years.

Every deer camp has its own culture, and the Butter Runs have become part of theirs. Other cultural activities may or may not have included swiping a rug from a local establishment to decorate the semitrailer. (It was returned after the bar called the mom of one of the guys.)

“There may be a couple of — what do we call them — souvenirs in the hunting shack that we got over the years,” Dufault said.

Twenty years later — or 10, or 12, depending on whose memory we’re consulting — the Butter Run tour finally made a stop worthy of its name, at a real creamery that makes butter.

They were hunting near Dalton, not far from where we live, and made a side trip to the Millerville Creamery, a little operation that still regularly churns out hand-wrapped butter. A draw for politicians and journalists, the creamery is one of the last in Minnesota to make small batches of butter. It’s a big deal in Millerville, population about 100, which has Millerville Butter Day in August, complete with a butter-carving contest.

Jody Dahlseid, the creamery’s general manager of retail, butter and branding, met the four Butter Runners who stopped by to purchase butter and butter merch. They regaled her with their love for all things butter and posed for a photo for the creamery’s Facebook page.

To Dahlseid, the butter quest might as well end right in Millerville.

But the Argyle Butter Runners are already planning ahead. One of their reasons for speaking to me is that they have expansion plans.