Continuing a 100 Year Legacy

Who doesn’t love a birthday party, especially one celebrating 100 years of existence? Kansans, in particular, are primed for this special blowout since we  live in the Central Flyway. As a result, we directly benefit from the centennial of the Migratory Bird and Treaty Act and its later companion, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act (aka the Duck Stamp Act). In general, waterfowl hunters and birders profit most, but every Sunflower State resident can appreciate migrant birds winging across our skies or landing on nearby waterways and refuges.

In a century, hunters and other conservation efforts have protected and managed migratory species so that we expect to see cranes, geese, ducks, and other transient waterfowl. That wasn’t always so. Because so many market hunters decimated populations to sell either meat or feathers, populations suffered. According to one source, “As many as 15,000 canvasbacks were shot in a single day on Chesapeake Bay during the 1870s.” 

When concerned hunters noted declining numbers, they contacted legislators. In response, Congress passed the Lacey Act (1900) and the Weeks Maclean Act (1913) that prevented transportation of illegally taken game across state lines, spring waterfowl hunting, and migratory game bird marketing. Soon after, the Migratory Birds and Treaty Act (1916) strengthened initial efforts.

Unfortunately, lack of funding made it difficult to enforce these laws and support President Theodore Roosevelt’s refuge system. Some might consider it ironic that hunters stepped in to meet this need. I ask who better to identify this concern?

To complicate matters, waterfowl populations declined from 100 million to 20 million during the DustBowl drought years. Franklin Roosevelt sought solutions from the Beck Commission. Their response was to conserve more habitat. Unfortunately, inadequate finances left planners with empty coffers.

Ducks Unlimited explains that FDR appointee Jay Darling was an avid duck hunter and a conservation-minded editorial cartoonist. As head of the Bureau of Biological Surveys (eventually the US Fish and Wildlife Service), Darling supported and designed the first Federal Duck Stamp in 1934. It depicted a pair of mallards. Initially, that stamp cost each hunter $1.00. Like most expenses, this one has increased. The 2016 edition sells for $25.00. Fortunately, 98% of that fee directly supports habitat development. Since the program’s initiation, sales exceed 700 million dollars. According to the Federal Wildlife Service, the result is more than 5.7 million acres of conserved habitat.

Not only has does this act support waterfowl conservation and management, it also encourages wildlife art. Artists compete annually to display their efforts on this collectible stamp. Depictions include Darling’s first two mallards to mergansers, wood ducks, Canada geese, and now trumpeter swans.

Thank goodness, hunters protected this resource and funded habitat development. However, you don’t have to hunt to enjoy the results. You can view waterfowl at any of our state refuges and lakes. Collectors can haunt auctions and antique shops in search of stamps, decoys, and other ephemera. Photographers can combine Kansas sunrises and sunsets to perfect shots of transient visitors. Gourmets can explore endless recipes for delicious goose or duck dinners. Only lack of imagination limits possibilities.

That said, non-hunters as well hunters can support migratory bird populations by buying a Federal Duck Stamp online, at the post office, or local sporting good outlet. In a little over a 100 hundred years, responsible hunters/conservationists have made sure these species continue to thrive.

Follow That Sign to Shake-up an Adventure

While I’m not much for adventures that involve crowds, loud noise, or frenetic activity, I enjoy out of the ordinary explorations. We unexpectedly hit the magic button on our latest road trip and found ourselves looking through several families’ no longer needed treasures and eating Indian tacos. Even better, a Shoshone grandmother prepared our food under blue Wyoming skies. While we ate, we enjoyed visiting with her husband, a tribal artist whose work hangs in offices and homes around the world. 

The key to our unplanned side trip was a garage sale sign stuck along the ditch of a road through a reservation. Once we spied the invite, we said, “Let’s see what they’ve got.” The irony in that comment is that both of us are over sixty and have plenty our own loot we could sell and not miss. Despite knowing we have dust collectors decorating our home, we can’t help but inspect what other people have spent a lifetime acquiring. Heck, who knows when you’ll find a petrified dinosaur tooth or a Made in Occupied Germany teacup?

While we didn’t find dinosaur dental work or rare porcelain, we did find aged buffalo horns, an antique hunting knife, a heavy chef’s skillet, local literature, and homemade Indian tacos made by a professional.

Over decades, I’ve learned garage sales are perfect places to sample local foods. In Northwest Kansas, I’ve bought German bierocks, hertzen, spitzbuben, and Bohemian kolaches. You know when you see the “homemade” sign, you’re in for a treat. There’s something about a woman serving her family recipes that makes her put her best work into what ends up as food for gods.

The lesson learned on this journey was that women everywhere share this  tradition. The silver-haired elder shaping a dough ball before frying it in hot oil was every bit as proud of her traditional food as women in Ellis, Rooks, Rush, Russell, and Trego Counties who tempt taste buds with mouthwatering fare. As she swiftly formed  an oval, the cook explained she could never make her recipe in batches that served less than 80 people. With that kind of practice, it’s no wonder forming those discs looked so easy.

I like making fry bread myself, but this woman’s was better than mine. As I listened to the bread sizzle on the camp stove, I told her how I mixed my simple ingredients. In a flash, she identified two ways to improve my recipe. Ironically, one of those was the addition of butter flavored Crisco to the flour mixture until it crumbled like pie dough before adding liquid. She also let me know my use of milk  darkened and hardened my product. After seeing her golden results, she’s right.

We ate under mid-August rays, savoring chili, lettuce, tomato, and cheese –topped fry bread and discussing Indian art, native colleges, and garage sale bargains. By the end of our meal, we knew one another’s names as well as our preferences for serving this traditional staple. 

Following our instincts and turning into that garage sale was the best part of our expedition. We may not have found an ancient fossil, but every time I make fry bread I’ll smile and recall this chance encounter where I learned to cook from an expert.

A Turkey Thanksgiving

It’s the time of year when turkey producers dream in dollar signs. In a few months, their products will be bagged, tagged, and on sale in the frozen food department of area grocery stores. Cooks in charge of Thanksgiving dinner will be saving tasty recipes picturing birds roasted to golden perfection and surrounded by a platter of colorful accompaniments. Diners who prefer wild turkey to farm-raised stock are eyeballing native flocks to see where they feed daily and roost at dusk. While humans plan their upcoming feasts, camouflage –toned Rios and Easterns are living in the minute, enjoying a banner grasshopper crop.

This spring’s ample rains nurtured fields, yards, and ditches full of cultivated plants and weeds, favorite hopper foods. Hungry, leaping insect hordes explain why roads, fields, and yards in our area appear animated. If you ramble around your yard or a nearby field, you’ll rustle up at least a hundred prickly-legged characters who spring shoulder high from the ground and dangle from the fibers of your shirt or cling to your hair. It’s enough to make a finicky person gyrate like a 70s disco dancer.

Recently, we visited friends in the country who share their property with a number of hens, gobblers, jakes, and poults. It’s a thrill to drive up their road and spy ungainly birds wandering over pastures and into the farmyard. If it isn’t mating season, it’s eating season and these walking drumsticks have big appetites. You can count on watching them scratch and peck at any seed or insect in their vicinity. This year, grasshoppers reproduced like crazy, so plenty exist to fatten feathered foragers.

Since my friend and I enjoy gardening, I hoped to check out her little oasis. She quickly apologized, explaining how hoppers had decimated both her vegetables and flowers. I understood exactly what she meant since I had stems in my own flowerbed sporting well-gnawed leaves that looked like poorly woven fish nets. As we stood outside lamenting the sad fates of our spring dreams, part of her turkey flock wandered near, heads bobbling up and down as they gobbled grasshoppers.

In an area with so many delicacies to choose from, those poor birds struggled to decide which bug to eat first. Once they swallowed their prey, they intently moved on to the next crunchy critter. In a matter of minutes, they wiped out more than my friend and I might have squashed in a day of smacking and stomping. We quietly cheered on this squad of hens and mostly-grown poults. In the distance, gobblers worked the edges of a field, leaping into the air like a hovering  basketball rebounder to snag an escaping hopper.

Perhaps some of the turkeys I watched this summer will end up as the main course of a Thanksgiving dinner. Whoever enjoys that banquet should know that turkey scored a feast that lasted for months. In fact, area gobblers heading to roost struggle to attain lift off with their stomachs full of once-leaping protein snacks.