North Shore Weekend

In the corner of my garage is a large bin overflowing with antlers. Dig through the bin and you’ll find some deer and even caribou antlers, as well as a moose skull or two. But the bone heap is mostly made up of moose antlers, from giant brown paddles to timeworn, gray relics. Moose grow their massive antlers annually, shedding them in early winter after the autumn breeding season. I like to roam the woods in April and May, looking for fallen moose antlers. It’s a great way to add a little adventure to a daily dog walk.

Not so many years ago, I’d find about a dozen moose antlers every year by making daily walks with my dogs. We covered a lot of country, because moose antlers are rarely found along the beaten track. I enjoyed free-ranging antler hunts as much as spring trout fishing—something my trout-fishing friends couldn’t understand. While I saved a few antlers for myself, most were sold to a local fur buyer. Fresh, high quality moose antlers can fetch upwards of $10 per pound. At the time there was even a market for moose skulls and heavy leg bones, which were much easier to find then antlers. I hauled home enough skulls and bones to easily cover the gasoline expense of my antler excursions.

My antler hunts rarely took me more than 20 miles from my North Shore home, because there were lots of moose and endless room to roam. During the heyday of modern timber harvest in the 1980s and ‘90s, clear-cut areas quickly became giant moose pastures filled with new saplings and brush—favorite winter browse. Moose were so abundant that the new twigs on aspen and birch saplings were pruned by browsing every winter. It took years for these heavily browsed trees to grow above the reach of a hungry moose. In deep snow years, the moose browsed on balsam firs, eliminating all of the lower boughs. Where you saw evidence of browsing was a good place to look for antlers.

Finding a moose antler was never easy. Often I walked for miles, following moose paths as wide as sidewalks through the brush, hoping to happen upon an antler. Moose antlers, like gold, are where you find them. It feels pretty good when you do. Occasionally, I’d find a pair of antlers dropped simultaneously. Usually, I’d find just one antler and then search, often fruitlessly, for the other. Once in a while I’d hit a bonanza and stagger out of the woods carrying three or four heavy antlers. Days like that keep you coming back for more.

Moose encounters were so frequent that I took them for granted, whither along the roadside or out in the woods. Often, I’d hear a moose crashing away unseen in heavy forest cover after being startled by me or my dogs. Quiet trout-fishing sessions at remote beaver ponds were frequently interrupted by visiting moose. While out for walks, my husky-shepherd Abby occasionally brought moose to bay, barking excitedly as if to say, “Come quick, I’ve got a moose!” Extracting her from such situations was always interesting. One time she treed a mother bear and three cubs, then led me to a nearby antler freshly chewed by said bears.

To my knowledge, Abby was never attacked by a moose even though she pressed her luck with these unpredictable animals. I’ve been charged on three occasions, twice by rut-crazed bulls and one time by an ornery cow. Once, a fat aspen was all that stood between me and a wild-eyed bull that smashed into the tree at full force. It wasn’t an experience I care to repeat.

Nearly everyone who visits our Hovland home wants to see a moose, a request that was once fairly easy to satisfy with a pick-up truck safari through the backcountry, especially at dawn or dusk. Moose sightings were so consistent along some well-traveled routes, such as State Highway 1 north of Finland and the famous Gunflint Trail, that they were a driving hazard.

As a volunteer firefighter, I responded to several moose-vehicle accidents along Highway 61. One time, a conservation officer gave the road-killed moose to our fire department. It was a warm June evening, so we wasted no time processing the animal, using my garage as a butcher shop. We hoisted it with a skid-steer loader, skinned and quartered it, then completed the butchering, finishing the whole task in about four hours. The next morning, my neighbor, Tim, came to retrieve his loader from my driveway. The bucket was still raised.
Beneath it, the moose head dangled from a chain. Tim and I paused to take in this grim scene.

“We had to let the neighbors know we scored,” he said.

I was lucky enough to participate in Minnesota moose hunts. In 1989, I shot a nice bull southwest of Greenwood Lake in Cook County. At the time, that area offered the best moose hunting in the state and possibly in North America. On pre- and post-hunt scouting trips that fall, I saw four other trophy bulls within a mile of where I made the kill. A decade later, in 1999, I accompanied my father when he killed a bull north of Hovland, the crowning achievement of his hunting life. Moose were still abundant, because we saw four bulls and a cow during two days of hunting.

We didn’t know it then, but we were reaching the end of the good old days. When I go out looking for moose antlers now, it’s difficult, even in good habitat, to find the browsed brush and droppings left behind by wintering moose. I haven’t added any new antlers to the pile in my garage for at least three years. While I used to take moose sightings for granted, now I feel darned lucky to see them once or twice a year. In fact, most of the moose I’ve seen in recent years were being registered by successful hunters at the hardware store across from my Grand Marais office. I haven’t scared up a moose while grouse hunting or dog walking for several years.

For many years, moose were important to me, not only for my antler-hunting hobby, but as a constant in my life on the North Shore. While it seems like wistful nostalgia to write about the moose that used to be, it is sobering to realize the population crash occurred within the span of a dog’s life. Abby, my moose-chasing husky-shepherd, is now 15 years old. Sadly the collapse of northeastern Minnesota’s moose herd can be measured in dog years. Although her moose-chasing days are behind her, I hope Abby remembers the good old days, too.

Airdate: February 15, 2013

Logging has increased along the Sawbill Trail over the last couple of years.  Almost every month a new logging site or road appears, along with the commuting loggers, heavy equipment and - of course - logging trucks.
 
The industry has come a long way since the horse logging days.  It is now almost entirely done with big harvesting and processing machines.  Like many modern industries, this has drastically increased productivity, but reduced the number of workers.
 
Back when I first came to the West End, there were temporary logging camps where the lumberjacks lived in shacks that were dragged from one site to another. The lumberjacks used chainsaws to fell, limb and cut the trees to length.  Rubber-tired skidders pulled the trees out to a landing where they were typically cut to the 100” length required by the pulp mills. The lumberjacks were a colorful group of mostly older men who worked incredibly hard, played hard and often drank hard. Now, lumberjacks are skilled machine operators who live in town and are respected members of the community.
 
This week a new logging road appeared along the Sawbill Trail, cleared out by two cats in just a day or two. The road is actually a section of the old Sawbill Trail that was abandoned back in the mid-1990s when the Sawbill Trail was reconstructed from the end of the blacktop on the Tofte end, to the Grade Road, six miles south of Sawbill Lake.  When that project was in the planning stages, an alert engineer noticed that the Sawbill Trail and the Grade Road were parallel to each other for a little over two miles.  The county was planning to rebuild the Sawbill and the Feds were planning to rebuild the Grade, so they combined the two roads along the route of the Grade and abandoned a couple of miles of the old Sawbill Trail.
 
Not only did the scheme save everyone money, but it eliminated the most twisty and dangerous section of the Trail.  That stretch ran over a series of eskers, which are steep ridges of gravel that were deposited by the receding glaciers in the last ice age.  When the road was built, back in the ‘20s, the easiest thing was to put the road on top of the eskers, resulting in a narrow, twisting road with steep drop-offs on both sides.  You can still see this phenomenon in the West End along the Honeymoon Trail, among others.  On the Sawbill, the curvy section included one notorious bend that was widely known as “Dead Man’s Curve.”  I never heard if anyone actually died there, but many cars and trucks wound up in the woods at the bottom of the steep slope.
 
Right after the road was abandoned, it was a favorite for grouse hunters, but it only took a few short years before wind fallen trees and new growth made the old road impassable, even for hiking.  Sometime this week, I’m going to go in to see how far the logger has cleared the old road, and revisit that stretch of eskers. With a little luck, I may even get to visit my old friend, “Dead Man’s Curve.”
 
Back when the Sawbill Trail was rebuilt, the county planned to pave it. It was very controversial at the time. Eventually, a compromise was reached that resulted in a complete rebuild, but left the surface gravel and the road as narrow as possible.  Now, 20 years later, it seems that the paving is on its way, probably in 2014. 
 
Paving the Sawbill Trail somehow just feels wrong, but the engineers make very convincing arguments for the safety, maintenance, and environmental benefits of paving.  There is less gravel mining needed, no dust to kill roadside vegetation, less sediment washed into trout streams and far better braking distances and vehicle control. In addition to all those benefits, the traffic on the Sawbill Trail is busy enough in July, August and September, that the gravel forms terrible washboard that literally shakes vehicles apart.  Paving has become unavoidable, but the county plans to keep the road to its current width with no new construction.
 
There is good news and bad news considering the current amount of snow back here in the woods.  The good news is that right now there is 28” of snow on the ground.  The plowed-up snow banks here at Sawbill are over 6 feet high and impressively deep.  The trees are also loaded with snow, so it really is a good old-fashioned winter scene at the moment and ideal for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. The bad news is that if it snows again, I’ll have to shovel the roofs of several large buildings here on the property. Shoveling roofs used to be a routine chore, often needing to be done twice a winter and even three times in a snowy year.  In the last 10 years, I’ve only had to shovel twice.  Shoveling roofs is the kind of job that is only fun for about 15 minutes.  After that it is just hard, boring work.  The invention of the iPod has made it slightly more interesting, but does nothing to prevent aching arms and a sore back.
 
As I’ve said many times before, though, it’s the price we pay to live in paradise.

Airdate: February 14, 2013

Deane Morrison is a science writer at the University of Minnesota, where she authors the Minnesota Starwatch column.

In mid-February, you can catch Mercury (the "messenger") near a waxing moon. It's also a great time to catch Saturn and the Andromeda galaxy. Learn more in this edition of Northern Sky.

Read this month's Starwatch column.

Presiding over my office is a set of antlers from a whitetail buck my father killed north of Two Harbors in 1963. Exceptionally wide and symmetrical, the 10-point rack has set a high bar for me. I’ve killed a few nice bucks over the years, but none have carried a better set of antlers than Dad’s. Maybe the bucks were bigger 50 years ago.
 
Newly published research in the Wildlife Society’s Wildlife Monographs shows the size of trophy big game animals throughout North America has decreased during the 100-plus years the Boone and Crockett Club has kept records. A detailed analysis of over 22,000 record book entries found declines in most species. The researchers believe trophies are somewhat smaller than they used to be due to decades of hunting pressure focused on male animals.

Kevin Monteith, a postdoctoral research scientist for the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit at the University of Wyoming, conducted the research, along with colleagues from Idaho State University, the University of Montana and the state wildlife agencies in California and Arizona. The researchers—all hunters—analyzed Boone and Crockett entries for North American horned and antlered game species from 1900 to 2008. They found most species popular with hunters, including white-tailed and mule deer, showed long-term declines in horn and antler sizes ranging from about one percent to over three percent.

Some exceptions were lightly-hunted species such as bison and bighorn sheep. Pronghorn, though heavily hunted, often grow their largest horns at relatively young ages and did not show a decline. Rocky Mountain goats, which have horns that are difficult to judge in the field, remained steady. Muskoxen, which greatly expanded their Arctic range, had increased horn sizes.

Further careful analysis ruled out other possible causes for the declines in trophy sizes, including habitat loss and climate change. Although substantially more hunters began entering trophies for record book recognition beginning in the 1950s and 60s, the sizes of the top one-third of entries still showed declines. The researchers found only limited support for a hypothesis that killing the largest trophy animals over time has depleted the gene pool.

Big game animals must live to an old age in order to grow their largest horns or antlers. The researchers believe today’s hunters are killing younger trophy animals, which may have grown bigger headgear had they lived another year or two. Across North America, the demand from hunters for trophy animals somewhat exceeds the available supply.

Whether the declining size of trophy animals predicates a change in management strategies is uncertain, say the researchers. They suggest the declines may be inconsequential compared to the hunting opportunities big game species provide. The dramatic increase in entries occurring since the 1950s also attests to the success of modern wildlife management.

In 1900, the starting point for this research analysis, Congress passed the Lacey Act, which brought an end to commercial market hunting. Big game population levels were at a low point, decimated by market hunting, habitat loss and the transformation of the landscape brought about by settlement and industrialization. Within that context, it is a wonder we have any hunting today, much less trophy hunting. The 20th Century was truly the century of wildlife in North America, as scientific management, coupled with land and water conservation, restored big game populations and allowed them to thrive. Regulated, public hunting was the cornerstone of this process, providing management funding through license fees and a core constituency to support wildlife programs.

The restoration of horned and antlered big game was often accomplished by protecting the females of the species so they could produce more offspring and increase the population. Harvesting males has less overall effect on the population, because they may mate with more than one female. For decades, bucks-only harvest regulations were common. Even today, when regulations often encourage the harvest of non-antlered females, many hunters prefer to kill bucks.

Across North America, big game populations are thriving and big game hunters are more numerous than they’ve ever been. Arguably, the last 20 years have been the best of times for big game hunters, which has led to a surging interest—some would call it obsession—in trophy hunting. Many hunters now demand wildlife managers manipulate big game harvests to produce more trophy-sized males.

A Minnesota example of trophy management is the antler point restriction enacted in the Southeast, which is up for evaluation and possible reauthorization by the State Legislature this year. During the past three hunting seasons, hunters could only harvest bucks with at least four points on one antler. The restriction is intended to allow bucks to reach maturity before being legal to harvest and thus create a population with more large-antlered bucks. Although it hasn’t been universally popular with hunters in the Southeast, many believe it has been effective at increasing the number of bigger bucks in a heavily-hunted population.

Monteith’s research indicates that while an antler point restriction may create more nice bucks, it won’t necessarily result in more truly trophy deer. Heavy hunting pressure remains a reality. Most hunters who see a legal buck are likely to shoot it, even though the buck might grow even larger antlers if it was allowed to live longer. If that is so, hunting regulations alone aren’t likely to produce true trophies in public hunting areas.

If hunters want to see and perhaps harvest outstanding record book trophies, they’ll have to show restraint far beyond what is required in hunting regulations. For instance, Minnesota muskie have a high minimum size—now 48 inches on most lakes—and a limit of one to ensure more fish reach trophy sizes. Many anglers choose to catch, photograph and release legal muskies, including fish so large they may challenge the state record, because they believe the continuation of high-quality fishing is more important than hanging trophy fish on the wall.
 
Maybe it’s time for hunters to adopt a similar ethic of restraint.

You can’t shoot a trophy animal and then let it go. But you can make the decision not to squeeze the trigger in the first place. While I’m not suggesting the average Joe pass up the opportunity of a lifetime to shoot a nice buck, Monteith’s research seems to suggest that obsessive trophy hunters may be their own worst enemies. Perhaps if they killed fewer trophies, all hunters would have a little better chance to kill a truly outstanding animal.
 
After all, as Dad used to say, “You can’t eat antlers.”

Airdate: February 8, 2013

If a reintroduction effort in the 1990s hadn’t been scuttled, northern Minnesota would now be home to many sleighs’ worth of reindeer.
 
So says Dr. John Pastor, professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth. “This would have been a model study on how to reintroduce a native species to an area where it had been extirpated.“
 
In the 1990s, Pastor was part of a committee pursuing the possibility of returning caribou—also called reindeer—to the state. The committee comprised a grab bag of government agencies and one nongovernmental organization.
 
After 18 months of research, the committee had a plan.
 
Tastes like regional extinction
Let’s back up for a minute. Where did all of our caribou go?
 
It’s the too-familiar conservation story of not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone. Woodland caribou once abounded in the bogs and boreal forests of northern Minnesota.
 
Then, in the 1800s, likely due to a combination of overhunting, habitat loss, and Parelaphostrongylus tenuis (brainworm) spread by white-tailed deer, the caribou population nosedived.
 
“The last native herd, near Isabella, was actually shot to provide meat for a logging camp,” said Pastor.
 
Since the 1930s, there have been only sporadic caribou sightings, the most recent confirmed of which was in 1981. The closest most Minnesotans have ever come to a caribou is a coffee shop.
 
Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are cervids, smaller than moose but bigger than whitetails. Various subspecies of caribou inhabit the world’s northerly regions.
 
Adults can weigh 600 lbs and stand five feet at the shoulder. Their distinctive antlers swoop skyward like giant, velvet apostrophes.
 
These hooves are made for walkin’
Caribou are known for their wanderlust. Many caribou herds migrate from winter to summer feeding grounds, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles. 
 
Scientists’ misunderstanding of caribou migration actually doomed an earlier attempt at reintroducing them—caribou, not scientists—in Minnesota.
 
In the 1970s, the DNR studied the possibility and found that the northeastern corner of the state had the right habitat.
 
Unfortunately, people at the time labored under the misapprehension that caribou caught as adults and released elsewhere would always migrate “home.” (This theory has since been proven false.) So it was thought that, to establish a new native herd, the DNR would first need to rear caribou from infancy at the reintroduction site.
 
Lacking the funds to launch a caribou nursery, the DNR abandoned the effort.
 
Enter the Duluth Safari Club. In 1988, the Duluth Safari Club—a group of big-game enthusiasts—proposed another reintroduction effort. 
 
The Safari Club enlisted partners, provided a substantial amount of funding, disbanded, and re-formed as the North Central Caribou Corporation, or NCCC.
 
While the NCCC’s board of directors was staffed largely by representatives of government agencies, the project included input from the Izaak Walton League, the Sportsman’s League, Friends of the Boundary Waters, and the University of Minnesota. The DNR and the Forest Service played substantial roles.
 
“The big question was, ‘Could we successfully reintroduce caribou?’” said Pastor.
 
Ask the neighbours
To find the answer, the group began an extensive scoping study. Research was carried out by the Forest Service, the University of Minnesota, and the Natural Resources Research Institute.
 
Researchers examined possible reintroduction sites for topography and deer and wolf concentration. Too many predators or whitetail-carried brainworm could wipe out a nascent caribou herd.
 
A 1,300-square-kilometer area near Little Saganaga Lake in the eastern sector of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and southeastern Quetico Provincial Park was identified as the most suitable site for reintroduction. The runner-up site was near Isabella, home of the last native herd.
 
The scoping study addressed other logistical questions as well—such as how to get some caribou to reintroduce.
 
The answer: Ask the neighbors. Er, neighbours.
 
Specifically, the plan called for the agency overseeing the actual reintroduction to ask the Ontario government for surplus caribou from the Slate Islands. Those caribou would be airlifted to the Little Sag site and released.
 
White paper, red tape
In 1998, the NCCC published a paper detailing its research, progress and plan. But when it came time to take the next steps, the DNR and Superior National Forest balked. Political pressure may have been a factor.
 
Whatever the explanation, the reintroduction effort stalled. Then the committee chair died unexpectedly. Then one of the staunchest reintroduction proponents retired.
 
Other committee members moved on. The NCCC has been defunct for years.
 
Pastor put it colloquially: “The DNR got cold feet… and it all fell apart.”
 
Dr. Peter Jordan, associate professor  emeritus in the department of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at the University of Minnesota, was first author on the NCCC paper.
 
Reached by email, Jordan confirmed that no movement on reintroduction has happened in over a decade. “It’s a dead issue.”
 
Which Pastor thinks is too bad. “I think if we had gone through with it we would have a viable caribou herd in Minnesota right now.”
 
It’s hard to say for sure whether transplanted woodland caribou would take root. We will probably never know.
 
Sorry, Rudolph.

Airdate: February 5, 2013

Dr. Seth Moore is Director of Biology and Environment with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. 

The Grand Portage Reservation is located in the extreme northeast corner of Minnesota, on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Cook County. Bordered on the north by Canada, on the south and east by Lake Superior and on the west by Grand Portage State Forest, the reservation encompasses an historic fur trade site on beautiful Grand Portage Bay.

The band engages in fisheries and wildlife research projects throughout the year, working with moose, wolves, fish, deer, grouse, and environmental issues. Dr. Moore appears regularly on WTIP North Shore Community Radio, talking about the band's current and ongoing natural resource projects, as well as other environmental and health related issues of concern to the Grand Portage Band.

In this segment, Dr. Moore talks about the Grand Portage band's participation in an upcoming study by the Minnesota Department of Health that will involve 500 women of childbearing age in Cook County and measure blood mercury levels over the course of one year.  The study is in response to research showing elevated levels of mercury in North Shore newborns.  The “Mercury in Newborns in the Lake Superior Basin” study was conducted by the MDH Environmental Health Division from 2007 to 2011, in collaboration with state newborn screening programs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  Produced by Carah Thomas.

Adolph Ojard grew up in Knife River, Minnesota, on the North Shore of Lake Superior.  He's the grandson of two Norwegian fishing families, the Ojards and the Torgersons.  

In this edition of Moments in Time, Ojard, who is now the Executive Director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, remembers his boyhood in Knife River, fishing on Lake Superior with his father and grandfather.  Produced by Carah Thomas.

Each week a group of parents and their kids head to the Grand Marais Art Colony to participate in the Music Together class offered by local teacher, singer and musician Amanda Hand.  In this edition of the Local Music Project WTIP producer Cathy Quinn listens in on one of the classes and visits with parents, kids and Amanda Hand herself.

Along with the rest of the universe, the upper Trail heads off into 2013 chapter two, February’s a calling! Wow, what an ending to January.
 
Although as of this keyboard exercise, the territory has warmed somewhat, we Gunflinters have endured serious cold conditions. Here at Wildersmith the thermometer did not ascend above the zero mark from Saturday afternoon the 19^th, through about the same time on Saturday the 26^th.
 
That calculates into nearly 170 consecutive hours, brrrrr! When the mercury did climb above the nothing point, it seemed like we should be getting out the Speedos. It is amazing how warm zero to 15 above can feel after such a stretch.
 
During the Arctic spell, the area has been a place of soul-soothing silence. With exception of the wind whirring through the pines, the only sounds of consequence were the creaking of the house, the deck contracting/expanding against the bitter onslaught and occasional popping of the frozen sap from one of our forest sentinels. I didn’t hear even one complaining groan from the lake ice to our north. 
 
Cuddling in the confines of homey warmth, about the only venture outside was for a sling of firewood twice a day and a frigid run to the mailbox. The ritual of feeding the neighborhood critters was even subdued. Visits from all the wild regulars seemed less frequent and their business at the trough was serious, with little chatter and bantering with each other.
 
The mystique of living through crispy segments like we’ve just experienced is captured in simple things that are often just overlooked. An example would be the frost around the eyes of the local jaybirds and, believe it or not, seeing the tiny puffs of expiration coming from the nostrils of our red squirrel varmints. Now that’s cold confirmation.
 
More nostalgia on life in the cold is watching the fleeting artistry of gray shadows being cast on the snow-covered ground from a puffing wood-burning stove. Ascending through midday sunshine, these remnants of warming combustion are but another sight that might never be paid attention if one wasn’t house bound.
 
Cold magic can also be captured if one is fortunate enough to be outside and catch a whiff of wood smoke during one of those wood shed runs. It kind of sends a spirit of border country warmth to the soul.
 
As the cold snap became more subdued, the neighborhood got a new delivery of snow. It was not a big dropping. The new four or so inches, coupled with the one from the week before, makes it look a lot like Christmas should have been. The quiet place where I do my snow measuring is now approaching about a foot and a half.
 
With the combination of new snow and more reasonable temps, winter activities are sure to pick back up…although I did see a few ice angling crazies that were not thwarted by the cold. Going by here at 25 to 50 miles per hour on a snowmobile en route to the old ice fishing shack is a scary/dangerous example of manmade wind chill!
 
Cross-country ski trails having been regroomed and tracked, and look to be in fantastic shape, and plein air artists and snow sculptors have been out capturing our winter outdoor world over this past week. By the way, Winter Tracks activities get underway around the county this weekend.
 
Meanwhile, the Gunflint woods will be howling with more than wolves, as power sleds will be roaring through the forest tomorrow (Saturday). The fourth annual snowmobile club “Fun/poker run” will scream off mid-morning.
 
The big slide will cover some one 100 miles from Devil Track Lake out to Gunflint Lake and back. As many as 150 sledders are expected to take part. Lots of fun activities are planned in concert with the happening. Hope for a safe and sane day!
 
Keep on hangin’ on and savor winter as we have it now! Come out and enjoy!

Airdate: February 1, 2013