Giving us options
By Nick Simonson
My grandmother and I shared a special connection with the outdoors. She was an avid birder, having seen more than 110 species just from her dining room window throughout her
nine decades on the planet, and dozens if not hundreds more in her limited travels around the country. While she was not a hunter or an angler like me, she often told stories of her forays into both pastimes during her childhood on the prairie, which occurred nearly 100 years ago. The two tales I remember most were the one of her and her sister sitting on the hoods of cars being driven through the grassy fields of pre-developed western North Dakota, taking shots at flocks of prairie chickens and sharptailed grouse so thick she feared they’d collectively knock her from her perch in front of the windshield. The second was fishing carp and bullheads on the pre-dammed Missouri River with her grandfather, using
grasshoppers found in the streambank vegetation to catch the rough fish for dinner. The two tales differed considerably. One detailed the bounty of untouched lands and just how amazing populations can be with the right conditions and no need for management in that stretch of time and the other showing just how important fisheries management is in turning flows of undesirables into waters holding the gamefish anglers prefer to pursue.
