Transcript for On The Wing Podcast Ep. 339: Dennis Anderson on the Creation of Pheasants Forever and the Future of Upland Conservation
Speaker 2 (00:50.414)
Welcome to On the Wing podcast presented by Purina Pro Plan. On today's episode, I'm honored to have the man whose words on a typewriter started it all on March 7, 1982. At that time in 1982, Dennis Anderson was an outdoors reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Today he's the outdoors editor at the Minnesota Star Tribune.
And just a few weeks ago, we announced that Dennis will be our keynote speaker at National Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic's Celebration Dinner on Saturday evening, February 21st. Up front for our listeners, the intent of today's episode is not to steal Dennis's thunder for his keynote address. My goal today is simply to serve up a snackable episode an appetizer, if you will.
to whet the Pheasant Fest audience's appetite and introduce Dennis to our audience if they aren't familiar with this story and his critical connection to our history. I have no doubts there are long timers out there that have been with the organization since the 80s that know Dennis well. But I'm certain that there's a whole lot of folks that this will be the first time in being introduced to Dennis and I am thrilled to welcome Dennis back to On The Wing podcast. Before we get rolling, I want to mention as well, Purina Pro Plan is the national dog food sponsor of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, as well as the presenting sponsor of On The Wing podcast. All of my pups have always eaten Purina Pro Plan, not just because Purina supports the Wildlife Habitat Conservation Mission of our organization, which is incredibly important to me, and it should be important to you as well.
But the most important thing to know is that Purina Pro Plan has a team of the world's best scientists and nutritionists behind their dog food. It was built for the working bird dogs like yours and like mine. You can learn more at Pro PlanSport.com. All right, and joining me as co-host today, Jared Wicklund, PF and QF's Director of Communications and a guy who's become friends with Dennis Anderson over the years as well.
Speaker 2 (03:20.738)
Gentlemen, Jared, Dennis, thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having us.
Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to be here. Good to talk to you guys.
Yeah, it's great talking to you. Let's start with the fun subject of the day. Dennis, how's your hunting season been going so far?
pretty good. It's been a pretty mild fall early, which is, you know, interesting. I'm a duck hunter also, and ducks hung up north a long time, and everybody's fear if you're a duck hunter is that October will be mild and the first week of November will be mild, and then you'll have three days of blizzards and the ducks will end up in Arkansas or Louisiana non-stop. that hasn't happened, so...
It's actually been pretty good.
Speaker 2 (04:12.46)
What about upland birds? Have you been able to get out and chase?
Minnesota grouse has been a tough year, spotty. There are some people who had pretty good years, but it's not over yet. Things changed a little bit in December, of course, and the birds group up a little differently. But that's been tough. There's some woodcock that moved through. That's always a good standby, as you know. But pheasants have been pretty good, I think surprisingly good, especially in Minnesota.
especially with those summer rains that we had, heavier rains in June in the nesting season. Or what we thought was a nesting season, maybe the nesting actually occurred earlier and the chicks were big enough or old enough or tough enough somehow survived through it. with the second hatch, we got a pretty good deal out of it. So I think what has been good, and Iowa was on its way. They predicted they might kill 700,000 birds there, which would be amazing.
transformation of all kinds of things, history reborn. So, we'll how it turns out.
Yeah, that's right. What's upon a time, Iowa could make the claim of being the pheasant capital of the country.
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Used to do a million birds a year and rival South Dakota easily. I think occasionally top South Dakota. I know that back in the day when I was younger and we would go to Iowa and south of interstate 80, we could easily kill a limit of quail and a limit of pheasants in the same day. It wouldn't be tough at all. So the quail have... been a little tougher, I think, in recent years, but there's still plenty of pheasants around Iowa. It's kind of a different state as well to hunt. It's not like South Dakota, not like Minnesota, a lot of big ditches and so forth.
I think a lot of people forget that Iowa had 25 years or more in a row all the way through the early to late 90s shooting over a million roosters. Even when I was going, I was just on a podcast earlier today talking about Northeast Iowa when I was going to school between even 2004 to 2008 and it kind of dropped off after that and we're seeing a resurgence now. But there was plenty of birds in the landscape when I was going to school and tried to set up my classes accordingly.
So yeah, it was great, but I saw a lot of pictures from the opener in Iowa this last weekend. Boy, it looked pretty good and all the corn isn't even out yet. So I think it's going to be a great season there. Kind of all through the pheasant range to be honest, based on what I've seen and heard from friends and family. So it's looking good.
It's pretty interesting you mentioned earlier that some of the younger or more recent members of Fezis Forever might not know me, which is probably to their advantage, but it reminded me not that many years ago, but Grant, late Vikings coaches obviously passed away now, but we were in North Dakota probably in like 18 or 19, 2018 or 19.
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We went into some small town to grab lunch and, you know, North Dakota and South Dakota, big Viking country because they don't have, you know, their own team, obviously. And you get farther west, like Rapid City, that's a Denver, Bronco type of environment oftentimes. But anyway, we were in this small town and went in for cafe. Everybody in the little restaurant knew who he was, even though, you know, he was in by then almost 90 years old.
And so then for supper, we ended up in this other small town and we went into a restaurant and like nothing. mean, nobody knew him, nobody knew me, we're just a couple of guys. I said, Jesus, nobody knows who you are here and you know, it's Viking country. And he said, I've been retired for 30 years. People have been born and shot a lot of pheasants and or ducks and the time since I've been retired.
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And so it is with me in some cases as well.
Well, the other element of your history in addition to being an outdoors reporter is you've been a British lab guy for a long time. Tell us about that element of your life.
Well, my dad was a Labrador guy. was born in, speaking of North Dakota, was born in Minot, North Dakota and spent until about, I think, sixth grade. We moved to Upper Michigan. Apparently, North Dakota was too populated, so my parents wanted to move to Upper Michigan, but...
And you lived, what age did you live in the UP?
Well, I've just about through high school, actually. Yeah.
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The bingo card winner would be the person that would know that you grew up in Gladstone, which is the rival high school of mine, Escanaba, right across Little Beaty Knock. Rival. Yeah, down beta. ready. Twenty, well, eight miles. Escanaba, the Eskimos were class A school and we were, if I recalled, I'm sure the classes have changed, we were a class B school, we were smaller. And football, don't think we were a match, but basketball, we had a pretty good basketball team of which I was a member and there were some pretty heated.
He had games. fact, one ended up in a kind of a mini brawl at the home court of the Eskinova Eskimospa. Yeah, was nice. There's nice territory up there. But I was talking, my dad was a Labrador guy. And so I knew, you know, about dogs and I knew how he trained them. There was this, it all predated what was called at the time electric collars, now called electronic, I guess. And so that
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The method that when I got older and put it in perspective after buying a couple Labradors of my own in college and shortly thereafter, the method that basically he trained, which was the British method, which is just positive reinforcement, set the dog up for success. Both you guys are dog owners, so you know this. Set the dog up for success and praise them and then kind of build on that.
And that changed a lot with the onset of the electric collar and now the electronic. And I have a lot of respect for the people who use that device now correctly because they can get a lot out of their dogs and it's a useful tool. But the British never have used or advocated it. And so their emphasis has been always on that, breeding what they would call a dog.
that is very biddable and that is very soft. And so to advance the story a little bit, had a couple Labradors in the early 1980s. I became more aware of training methods and American Labradors and had bought one myself who was a male dog. I named Boogie who was out of Candlewoods Mad Mouse, who was by Candlewoods Mad Mouse, who was a national.
champion handled by Charlie Hayes actually and Minnesota guy who was a terrific trainer owner and a great guy. But that dog was pretty high strong. boogie was pretty high. I like that name. Continue. And that was actually a second boogie I had. The first boogie I had I bought in Atlanta was a golden retriever when I was driving a truck after I got out of college. I was lonely so I drove my semi to this suburb. read it in the paper, the Atlanta Courier Journal. said, no, that's a little Atlanta Constitution. And I saw they had a litter of puppies. So I went and bought one. That was the first boogie and he grew up with me on the road. But the second boogie was at Yellow Lab. And that's when I really started researching British Labradors and understanding the difference.
In about 1985 or so, I just picked up and went over there and went to the first national championship that I attended, which was in Scotland that year. And there are a few things that were notable to me right away was that it was being held in just a downpour. And I was the only person who thought it was a big deal. Everybody else thought, it's just another rain. so.
And the other thing I found the trial grounds when all of their shoots, I should say all of their trials are held on actual shoots on estates. And the trial society is a guest of the estate owner. So in other words, you're going to have this shoot held, which the first day is a walk up, second day is usually a driven shoot. But the field trial society that is conducting, in this case it was a national championship.
they're a guest of the estate and they're conducting their trial in concert with the shoot. And so all of the birds are shot in, as you would expect, and as you would in South Dakota in indiscriminate ways might land, a bird might fall over a fence, it might be a barbed wire fence, it might be in Britain, it might be a stone fence, and oftentimes is. And oftentimes birds are crippled, what they call...
because they shoot a lot of low brass shells, whereas we shoot a lot of high brass shells. And one reason, the primary reason they shoot low brass is because they shoot a lot. And their shoulder would hurt otherwise. So you're walking along. Anyway, I pulled up and the first thing I saw was the contestants that day. There were about 30 or 35 contestants with their dogs and they're all standing.
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together talking, their dogs are off leash, lying down or sitting at their heels. No dog, messing with another dog, no dog doing anything, you know, out of, and I thought, well, that's unusual. You know, there's no free for all involved. And then once I saw the trials and the control they had over their dogs, which was basically the result of a strong obedience foundation, which you both of you know is critical no matter how you train your dogs.
You know, I just became enamored with the methodology of training and ultimately applied to the specific type of dogs that they breed. I'll give you just one example and then stop it. for instance, when they retrieve a pheasant at a trial and the bird is brought back, it's delivered to the hand of the handler, of course. Then the bird is delivered.
to the judge who runs his fingers along the breast of the bird. if the breast were punctured, your dog would be out immediately. But if the bones were detectable as cracked, you're out also. There's no hard mouths accepted. there's no, like if your dog ever whined so much as let a little whine while you're in the line.
waiting for a retrieve, or while another dog is retrieving and you're honoring, you're out of there immediately. And since those are not, as two examples, training results, they are breeding results. You know, they were examples of the emphasis that they place on certain qualities that I admired in Labradors, and I'm not saying everybody does. you know, American...
Field trailers and of course even hunt tests people now have advanced their training methods and their dogs To such a degree that you know, I respect that but you know, everybody respected and it has an interest in different types of Dogs and then so that led in in the direction for me and my wife and I ended up importing and breeding British Labradors as a business for 31 years and then before we sold it so
Speaker 2 (17:02.434)
How many bird dogs do you have at home nowadays?
You asking you sound like my wife Exactly what's out there for for that, okay?
there. And are they all British?
Yeah. Okay. And I wish I had, I mean, I've owned a setter and I'll be honest, I really, I really love pointing dogs, especially for grouse and Woodcock hunting. I love them for pheasant hunting as well. They have their own, you know, great advantages. And the setter I had was, you know, just a very loving dog. And, but you know, there's a limit to what she can handle. So.
Well, I could talk to you for hours, Dennis, which is the main reason we asked you to be our keynote, because you're filled with wonderful stories that I have no doubt that our members are going to cherish the time together with you at Fez & Fest. But I am going to keep this short as I intended to be a tease to get people to Fez & Fest. I do want to talk about 1982.
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in the article that started it all. Before we get there, I want to thank Grain Belt Premium and Premium Lite, the pheasant-friendly beer available in liquor stores right now in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Today's Grain Belt Premium Moment comes from Iowa, and it's Jeremy Yost on Instagram who writes in.
Lea Bug and I were hunting an IHAP, Iowa Habitat and Access Program, when a vehicle stopped by it. After striking up a short conversation, the gentleman asked me to follow him. I'll show you what pheasant hunting is really like in northeast Iowa, he said. It turns out this fellow bird hunter
has 160 acres of well-managed CRP and had recently lost his own bird dog. He saw someone hunting and just wanted to follow a bird dog again, so Leah, Bug, and I went with him. The moral of the story is sometimes it's okay to follow strangers down a dead-end road because there were a lot of birds on that property. Jeremy, thanks for writing in with that fun story. We've got a Grain Belt Premium prize pack headed your way. Grain Belt Premium is the pheasant friendly beer. All right.
get it for him. Boy, I've got my own green belt premium story. Some years ago, I think my oldest, our oldest son was still in college. can't remember. But anyway, we bought a, a drift boat used from this guy in Iowa off the internet, of course. And the deal was we were going to, as a family, maybe we were still, he was still at home. can't remember, but
Speaker 1 (20:17.942)
As a family, we were going to go out west and use the drift boat ourselves and hopefully not drown or wreck or whatever and fish. And so the deal was that we had this dog client living in Jackson, Wyoming, and he used to live in Minnesota. And so I said, the deal was the guy we bought the drift boat from agreed to pull the drift boat to Jackson and leave it at this guy's place.
and until we got out there. And so then I called this guy, he was a dentist, a dentist, as I say, a Labrador client of ours. And I said, would it be okay if we left this drift boat for a couple of weeks at your place until we get out there? And he said that, yeah, that's no problem. He said, but I would like you to bring me 10 cases of Greenbelt Premium. These days, these are after one cases.
I know, yeah, so we barely had room, you it was a family vacation. And I was worried that if we got in a wreck, know, and they got the mom, the dad, the two little kids, some pancakes and stuff.
Ten cases? He used that in place of Nova King?
Yeah, he was a serious guy, but he didn't... Apparently they don't sell it out there well, I know they don't.
Speaker 2 (21:36.191)
Yeah. Greenbelt will love to hear that. You're very good customer buying 10 cases at a crack.
I figured there was some law being broken, but I didn't know what it was.
won't tell anybody.
All right, take us back to 1982 and what was going through your mind more than 30 years ago that was the catalyst for writing the newspaper story and the pioneer press that ultimately got Pheasants Forever started.
It was a pretty, actually, to use a little bit of an overused word today, organic result, that column I wrote. I had gone to school in Western Minnesota at the University of Minnesota Morris, which is a small school, a liberal arts school. at the time, although a few of us got in under different circumstances, it was supposed to be kind of a
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selective admission college. And so we got in and some of us said we went to school Morse because it was the best school in the flyway that would admit us. But it was great pheasant hunting out there. And so we spent, you know, as much time as we had available in the fall hunting pheasants. But even in the time that
You know, we were in college and this reminds me that great Belushi line in Animal House where he and his buddies finally get kicked out of school and Belushi says, nine good years down the drain. We weren't there that long, but even while we were there, we saw habitat going away. And then every year thereafter, we would open up in Morris in that area. And it was quite a...
quite a scene. was the hotel was still there under a different name, I think, but it was called the Sunwood Inn then and they allowed dogs and you know, I mean there were as many dogs in the aisles of that motel as people and it was filled and there were pickups everywhere was great. So, but every year we saw the habitat disappearing and I became the outdoor columnist at the Pioneer Press in 1980. And so,
We had been talking among ourselves, my friends and I, about this situation of losing habitat and pheasant hunting being more challenging and more challenging. And I had talked to who was the DNR commissioner at the time, Joe Alexander. And I remember him saying that there will always be, you know, I said, why don't we have a pheasant restoration program? South Dakota had one at the time, and I'm not sure they called it restoration, but it was a program. It was an emphasis.
And I said, why don't we have one? said, and Joe was older at the time, great DNR commissioner and a great guy. And he said, there will always be remnant populations of pheasants in Minnesota, but it's never going to be an important species. And I said to myself, hey, instead of what says, not according to me. mean, that's not the way my friends and I have seen it. That was very important, know, critical.
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to our enjoyment, our appreciation of the western part of the state and the southern part of the state and so forth. So that, when I say organic, that was in our discussion points all the time. so I had a friend at the time, Norberg, who was at the time deputy chairman of control data, and he was...
you know, a real smart guy and experienced businessman and a hunter. And he was a guy who I bounced a lot of these ideas off of. And so I just wrote the column and I say, you know, we should have a pheasant. I was more forceful than that, but we should have a pheasant organization. And it's time that we revive. And at that time, you know, the late 1950s,
When, I think in 1958, was the peak of Minnesota pheasant hunting. We had over 300,000 licenses sold. was a big deal. WCCO, which is a big radio station, the Twin Cities, sent reporters out to the western part of the state for the opener. And they had all these wonderful vignettes about families getting together, kids coming home from the Twin Cities, know, cooking outside.
wonderful experiences together in the field and so forth. So we were, you know, what I said is we can still leverage some of that goodwill that's in the ether among Minnesotans. And that's in fact what happened. I wrote this column and I was flooded with at the time real mail, snail mail. You guys might not remember it, but we used to have mail. And some people even sent cash, which presented a new
challenge for me, you know. So I'm opening all these envelopes and I could tell I hit a big deal. So in the newsroom there was this guy, I think he might still be there, Kirk Lytle. He was an artist and I grabbed our, from the library, I grabbed our photos of pheasants and I threw them to him and I said, I need a logo real quick, like today. And
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Then so he drew up the first one that you guys have used until just recently. Yeah, still use it, you and you've modernized it recently. And then Denny Lean was a reporter in the office and he had grown up in Marshall and then worked at the Rochester paper before he came. So he and I hunted together. And I, and I remember going over to his desk and I said, give me 10 bucks. I said, what for? said, you can be the first Pheasants Forever member.
And so I said, said, well, can I be number, a member number one? And I said, no, we're not having a member number one. We'll start at number five. said, you can be number five. And so he said, okay. Which he was for many years until they redid the computer system and then he became member like 6,000 or whatever. don't know. But so a couple of weeks later then based on that response, I wrote another column. said, you know, we're going to have this group Pheasants Forever.
you
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And a guy who later became the executive drafter, Jeff Finden, actually the, and I had lunch with him periodically. He was the national advertising manager at the Pioneer Press. And so he took an interest in it as well. He was a hunter, not particularly a pheasant hunter, but a hunter, bird hunter, a goose hunter. And, um,
And so things just snowballed. mean, there was a timing is critical, serendipity plays a big role. And we ended up, so that would have been in March, give or take as you referenced, 1982. And then August 5th, 1982, incorporated by then I had a board of directors. I mentioned Bud Grant previously. I wrote him to being on it. Norb was on it. Dave Vassale, who was a retired
of fishing game chief at the DNR, great guy from Stillwater. He's now passed on a farmer from Western Minnesota, from Clinton, named Anderson, no relation to me, and eight or 10, 12 others. And it was a good group, ambitious. NORB at Control Data provided us a place to meet. so we worked toward
two things right away and I'll try to make it brief. But the first thing was to have a Minnesota Pheasant Stamp. We had that legislation written. And the second thing was to have a fundraising banquet. And so it took us a couple of years to get the Pheasant Stamp done. The banquet was on tax day on 1983, April 15th, 1983. And the governor at that time, Governor Rudy Perprich gave the keynote address and he did sign the Pheasant Stamp bill there. So we passed it that day.
And we raised about 25 grand at that banquet. It was a success. We had about 800 people there. And then Jeff resigned from his job at the Piner Press, and we opened the first Pheasants Forever office in his basement. Cleaned it up first a little bit. He asked the, remember he had a couple friends who were handy carpenters, which did not include me. And they did.
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made some revisions down there and that's where it got its starts.
I always think, I was just looking at some of those historical pictures the other day. think the move in day to the basement and then the move out day to the basement. going back to the beginning of your story, it just kind of hit me because I was on a podcast earlier today. You begged the question of the commissioner, like, don't we have a pheasant?
Rest restoration plan somewhere or something going on like South Dakota does. it's like, they're always going to be here, but they're not big enough of a bird, a symbol. And you your, your answer there, like it matters to me and my friends. man, that just, that hits me because I was asked that question two hours ago on a different podcast. Like, Hey Jared, why do, why do pheasants stir up these like feelings and raw emotions and people and their bird dogs? And it's, it's just this.
this iconic bird that's become just a resident of the Midwest and Great Plains and just the places where you chase them at. I don't know. The beginning of your story there just strikes me as that reason, like, why are we doing this? It's like people do care. And that's a big...
that it's a bit to that point that one way we got started, you know, first of all, there was a lot of interest around Minnesota and we would sometimes Jeff, but frequently Jeff and I would drive and oftentimes through a snowstorm to get to Jackson, Minnesota in the southwest corner or the first out state bank we had was in Wilmer that drew 500 people. And then Morris, I had friends still there and we had a
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full sellout there as well. But anyway, I would drag and convinced and Bud was still coaching at the time or he might've been, it might've been the year of the strike too. There was an NFL strike. You guys probably don't remember that, but when they didn't play or didn't play the whole season, I can't remember, but I roped him into into some keynote speeches. So, and he gave his introduction. He was a great extemporaneous speaker, which
especially if you talked about these subjects. He could talk about football forever, but he didn't really like to. But he would love to talk about his hunting experiences, which he dated to when he was just a kid. And he had actually an old Minneapolis Tribune paper route up in Superior, Wisconsin. And he had a, again, I'm dating myself, but I used to have a paper route too, but you had this bag that fit over your shoulder.
and all of your papers fit in it. And then you went from house to house and delivered them and threw them up. And that's what he had. He used to catch a city bus out of Superior with that bag, his newspaper bag, and go grouse and rabbit hunting by himself, and then get back in time to catch the last bus on the edge of town to take him back home. But he had all of those hunting stories. loved it, but he always started every Pheasants Forever speech the same way.
He said, a pheasant to your point, Jared, a pheasant is a trophy. He said, you can talk about deer, you can talk about ducks, but a pheasant in your hand, a rooster pheasant in your hand, you look at it, it's a trophy. And the more you understand about pheasants and their habitat needs, they're also a fascinating bird and they're also a very durable bird, as you know, when those...
winters come along and the wind's blowing and somehow in the spring they're still there or at least enough of them to sustain their population.
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we never give the bird enough credit. At least I don't. I talk with Bob and my coworkers about this all the time and that like, my gosh, you know, it's June 10th and we just had five inches of rain. We're totally screwed. And I think to some degree, you know, this year there was a lot of people in that mind frame. Like there's no way these chicks can survive, you know, these nine and 10 inch rains that we're getting. And then, you know, in some parts of the state that might've been the case, but other parts...
You get to the roadside counts and we've just got these incredible increases because we've got quality habit. We understand their needs. We've got the quality habitat on the ground and yeah, it's just a, it's, it's a bird that just sparks something inside of you. so yeah, what, what you said there at the beginning just really, really hit me.
Mm-hmm.
I wonder, you mentioned that very first event in the prom center on tax day, April 15th, 83, correct? Yeah. You said there were 800 people there. I bet you I have 800 people telling me at game fair that they were at that very first. Woodstock. That's exactly right. I've said that before, that the very first event Pheasants Forever held is like Woodstock.
83.
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There's like 8,000 people who claim to have been there. do you feel that at that moment you... mean, obviously you touched a chord with this newspaper article, but when you saw it in flesh and blood and people, what was the energy like that?
was tremendous. We tried to break some new ground in terms of banquets. We had a band actually, Stoney Lonesome, which I think that name is still around. was obviously those guys. It was the same guys. They're a little older, but...
I'm writing that now. I gotta look them up.
We had a band and we also had, and this was Jeff's connection again, he had some friends who were kind of techies and we speeded up the whole process of if you won something or bought something, that was a big deal. know, we'd all gone to a lot of banquets where you stand in line at the end, you're trying to in Europe. But the other thing too is,
Jimmy Robinson, who is a legend in Waterfall Circles, predates you guys. And he had been, you know, a big help to me in this, you know, and I went to him. He was one of the first guys I went to and told him about this. And he's a huge supporter because he was a pheasant hunter as a kid in Western Minnesota, in addition to this whole duck thing. And he was a legend in raising money. And so I went to his house out in St. Louis Park and I visited him often. And I said,
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Jimmy, you know, here's the deal. said, I need some money and to start this thing. And he said, okay, just a second. So he called up and called two guys who were his money guys. You know, just they were dyed in a wool suppliers of cash for Ducks Unlimited. One of them was Vern Aniston who owned his family. I think still does own old Dutch chips and old Dutch foods.
And he says, yeah, yeah, Mern, I got this young guy here. He needs $3,000. Well, I hadn't told him any of the figure, you know. And he says, yeah, yeah, okay, just send it to me. I'll get it to him. And so that was that. then he called, oh, his name's blank. He's forgetting his name, but a huge guy in the outdoor billboard business ultimately.
And the same thing, we got 3,000 rooms. So suddenly we had $6,000 to get going. But he came to the banquet as well and was a real, he was a real star and a great character and had a big following. to have him was a bit, and then we had our Pioneer Press humor columnist, Bill Farmer was a close friend of mine and Jeff's also.
He was so funny that he got fired from our paper. But he was a funny guy. And then after that, he wrote jokes for CCO, the morning crew, Boone and Erickson at the time. He'd just get up in the middle of the night and write jokes. And they were funny. But he, for some reason, I can't quite remember why, but he took to showing up at these banquets in drag, which was...
I can't remember why that was appealing to us. We thought it was funny. So he was part of the whole kind of crew there. At that time, the DNR was different. was led by a whole phalanx of real hunters, authentic people.
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they were all... believe the Billboard family was Nagley. original Bob Nagley and their family was the original owners of the Minnesota...
He's a guy, Jimmy used to write these books, know, Jimmy Robinson's Stunning Tales. just if you ever see one, grab it because they're great. But he had them published up in Detroit Lakes with somebody up there. And I remember at his house once and he called up Bob Nagley and he said, yeah, yeah, I got my new book published. How many do you want? And so there was
you was quiet for a second and then Jimmy said, 10,000, why you cheap son of a b*tch.
you
I remember us at a lunch with Nagley and all the guys that work for him and that one guy sitting next to me says, we're like the Hunt brothers with the silver market. We control the value of that book. You know, we've got them everywhere. But having said that, they're very interesting and very telling of the times. know, Jimmy was, as I say, legend. hunted with Clark Gable up at his camp, a Delta Marsh and Hemingway.
Speaker 1 (40:57.742)
and others as well. you know, he, I can remember every year I would go up to Delta Marsh and take my buddy, college buddy, Will Smith and I, and we would stay in Portage-le-Prairie in this, what was arguably a real crummy motel, but it was what we could afford. And it did have a hot plate so we could cook. but every trip we would make time to go over to Jimmy's camp.
in St. Ambrose and see him. so we'd go over there and I said to him once, we're down and talking, know, was afternoon and everybody in camp was either sleeping or resting because he didn't let them hunt in the evening. He was real tight on that. Never let him shoot a limit either. You shoot it. In that camp, you shot a sportsman's limit. which was, I think, just fine, you know, which is a couple of birds.
And I said to me, don't you ever invite me to stay at this camp? And he said, look around. said, you can't afford it.
He was a funny guy. I'll tell you one quick Jimmy story. It's in his book too. It's Cans of Cans of the, Bull Cans of the Deltas, the name of the story. But the, make it so they're all sitting around drinking whiskey and playing cards. And one of his lead guides comes in, a French Canadian guys, and he writes it the way, you know, he said, Jimmy, Jimmy, the bull cans, the bull cans came in.
And Jimmy says, we're season's closed. We got the boats put away. We're not going out anymore. said, Jimmy, Jimmy, the bulk hands are out there. We gotta hunt. He says, okay. So they get up in the morning and they row out there. He had these wooden boats. They still use them, I think. And row out and you know, there's a guide and then there's the hunter, sometimes two hunters. Well, it was so rough that Jimmy and one of his buddies,
Speaker 1 (43:04.002)
got in the same boat and they rode out there and the buddy was in the bow and the wind was blowing fiercely and it was a great late season duck hunting day. And so, in dark still in the morning and they row up to the point and then they drop the other guy off and then Jimmy and the guy go nearby but they wouldn't hunt together. So they barely get up to the point fighting the wind and they say, get out, get out, get out, okay good, we'll pick you up after a while, we'll put your decoys on.
So they disappear and Jimmy goes to his point that he hunts and he shoots a limb in a bulk hands and they come rowing back later and the guy's all mad and everything and he's jumping up and down and I said, what's the problem? said, you took my gun.
Well, undoubtedly we could go on and on. You're going to have no problem filling 15 minutes of stories for your keynote. I'll point folks to pheasantfest.org. You can see all the ticketing for Pheasant Fest. I wanted to thank onX for being a partner in On the Wing podcast.
as well as a partner in our PATH program, Public Access to Habitat, which has already opened up more than 100,000 acres of habitat, private lands to public land hunters in South Dakota and Nebraska. And new this year, PATH is coming to North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Michigan. If you're not...
yet an onXmember, you can go to the onyxhunt.com link in the show notes, use the code PFQF and you get 20 % off your membership to onX and they'll make a contribution back to our habitat mission. All right, Dennis, we're a few months out from you being at that podium speaking at National Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic. So obviously I don't want you to...
Speaker 2 (45:16.514)
Give away your keynote, but I'm curious if you have thought about, do you have a goal in mind, what you would like to accomplish when you take the stage?
Well, first I'd like to say it's a great opportunity to attend. I've been to a number of pheasant fests, quail fests, the past, and they're not only fun and an opportunity to meet new people and see especially new innovations. I particularly like to the parts of the exhibits that deal with farming agricultural practices that can enhance not only the profitability for farmers, but the viability of upland bird habitat and other wildlife habitat. So it's a great opportunity A to B there, I think for everybody and to meet people of like interests, both men and women. There's a lot of kids that attend and it's a great opportunity to an honor also to speak. And I think
You and you've asked me something to reflect, you know, briefly this morning about the beginning of Pheasants Forever. And I certainly want to recount that because those are interesting times and they are unknown to a lot of our members who are obviously younger or more recent members. But the challenges today are interesting and different in a lot of respects.
no less challenging and I think it's important, critical really that we all recognize that and that we all sort of renew our energy, collective energy, individual energy, chapter energy to fight the good fight. You know, I used to believe actually, in fact, one of those columns I might have written in that first column, that I said, well, know, pheasants are, if we have given the right habitat and the benefit of some good weather, they can read.
Speaker 1 (47:23.874)
reproduce quickly, you know, and be abundant. I think I said we'll have a marching up 4th Street in downtown St. Paul, which was a street right in front of the newspaper. And while that was hyperbole, the point is that it's possible. It's possible to have a balanced farm program.
Right now, we don't have a federal farm program at all, but it's possible. We have made tremendous inroads there since Pheasants Forever has been started in terms of our impact nationally in Washington, certainly. I don't think there's anyone on the congressional, any of the committees, subcommittees or committees that have anything to do with writing farm policy that they don't know who Pheasants Forever is, what our intent is, and don't respect us.
And that's critical. It's true also at the state level. And it's true also in the general ether among conservation groups that people respect pheasants forever. They expect, respect the energy and the achievements. And so, you know, that's important that we, that we honor that and continue. But in today's marketplace, as it were, with kids, more and more kids being raised in urban areas.
more more kids being involved with team sports rather than individual sort of lifetime sports or activities such as hunting, which was a lot easier when you grew up in a farm or in a small town and it wasn't that long ago. Certainly people still alive. can remember walking out their back door after school and hunting pheasants. And of course, electronics today that
that attracts so many people and takes so much time away from kids, free time, is those are all challenges. But the expectation that those can be overcome and or progress made so that conservation can prevail as an alternative and a necessary one for all of us, especially given
Speaker 1 (49:40.462)
the effect that upland habitat, well manicured and well undertaken, has a critical effect on our water, our surface water, especially our subsurface water, drinking water. All of that is important. mean, our cause is as valid today as it was in 1982 and 1983. And the people are different.
Their journeys are different. Of course, a member's journeys are different. Their expectations, though, in many cases are the same. They want to recreate. They want to get outside. They know that's where they can get away from the phone, get away from their laptop, and experience firsthand opportunities that few people, you know, speaking nationally and throughout the world, few people have the opportunities that we do.
and sustaining them and keeping them in the forefront of policymakers' minds is critical. So with any kind of luck, I will try to pass that message along come February.
to it. Yeah, I've heard from a tremendous number of long-time chapter volunteers that they're very enthusiastic to have you as part of Pheasant Fest and be the keynote. know, I know that, you know, for transparency, you've declined any sort of speakers fee. You're doing this out of the goodness of your heart. You want to, you know, perpetuate something that
from 1982 and earlier hits you deep in the soul and that's a love of birds and the love of the habitat and you'd like to put voice to that for the future. So thank you for making that commitment to... Yeah, you're welcome. ...2026. folks, pheasantfest.org, Dennis... Excuse me, Dennis Anderson, our keynote speaker, the gentleman who wrote the words that...
Speaker 2 (51:49.71)
created so much inspiration in 1982 that people took money out of their wallet, put it in an envelope, and snail mailed it and said, start this organization. Think about that. A newspaper article that was so inspiring, people were taking money out of their wallets, putting it into an envelope, and saying, start Pheasants Forever.
Dennis Anderson, Jeff Finden, a group of their friends and co-workers did just that. And all of us as bird hunters owe a debt of gratitude to them all. Dennis is going to tell a little bit more of the story, the origin story and his vision for the future at Pheasant Fest on Saturday night, February 21st. Please join us. Pheasantfest.org.
For Jared Wicklund for Dennis Anderson. I'm Bob St. Pierre reminding you to always follow the dog. Something good will rise. Thanks for listening, folks.