Deer Season at Leech Lake

A nice 10-point buck taken on our property on Ottertail Peninsula, Leech Lake

I may be back in California, but that doesn't mean I don't think about Leech Lake on a daily basis. So it was a pleasant surprise when I opened my email the other day and saw a note from my neighbor John Newman giving me an update on this year's deer season in Northern Minnesota.

I have two deer stands on my property and John has a very large, almost palatial deer stand on his. For the past several years now John and his son Greg have used their deer stand, while our friend (and the guy from whom we bought our house) Clancy uses one of the stands on my property.

Apparently, this year John and Greg didn't even see a deer. Clancy on the other hand not only saw a deer, but bagged a nice 10-pointer. Clancy knows I much I enjoying grilling and eating venison brats, so he's promised me a few will be waiting for me at Leech Lake when I next visit.

One of these years Kathleen and I are going to spend a full year in the Northwoods so we can enjoy Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's at Leech Lake.

At Leech Lake -- November 1, 2010 (Back to CA today)

For some reason sleep eluded me last night. I don't know if I was anxious about traveling back to California today or what, but I watched as the clock moved from 1:00 a.m., to 2:00 a.m., to 3:00 a.m., and so on,. Finally, just around first light, about 7:15 a.m., I fell asleep. Of course I awoke not much more than an hour later and decided to get out of bed for good.

At 8:30 a.m. this morning the temperature was 28 degrees, the sky was partly cloudy, and the wind was light at 5-8 mph from the WSW.

I took a walk around the properties at 9:30 a.m. to ensure that all was locked up and that things were put away. Everything was good. I then checked all the windows in the house to make sure that they were shut and locked, and again, everything checked out fine.

There has been a slight change in plan with regard to my transportation to the Bemidji airport. Tom Malay was going to take me into town today, but he wants to stay here on the peninsula because Mark from Shore Brothers is coming out today to take out our docks and boat lifts, and Tom wants to talk to Mark about his broken boat lift motor.

Further, Tom's wife Elaine has an appointment in town tomorrow, so what they've proposed is that I drive their Jeep to the airport, leave it there, then they'll pick it up on Tuesday. That works for me, so I agreed. It's really nice of them to help me get to the airport. Taxis don't even come out this far, and even if they did, it'd be a couple hundred dollar fare.

It's now 11:00 a.m. and Tom should be here to drop off the Jeep in about 15 minutes. Before I leave I need to go down into the crawl space underneath the house and shut off the circuit breaker for the well pump. I don't want our water on when we're not here during the winter.

I'm sure I'll make random posts to this blog when I'm in California, so check back in occasionally. But my next in-depth posts will come during my next visit -- whenever that may be -- to Minnesota's spectacular Leech Lake.