Brad Dokken: Afternoon of exploring offers memorable time outdoors

Apr. 20—It was the kind of afternoon — filled with the promise of spring — that was much too nice to spend indoors or outside doing yard work.

It was the kind of afternoon best spent exploring — just for the fun of it — to get off the beaten path for an hour or two and see what we could see and hear what we could hear.

The wind wasn't howling for a change, so conditions were in our favor to hear what nature had to offer. A ruffed grouse drumming somewhere back in the woods, perhaps. Or the first chorus frogs of the season, a joyful noise these ears look forward to with great anticipation every spring.

So it was that a friend and I set out last Saturday afternoon to spend an hour or two off-trail exploring a patch of public land that rarely gets explored.

With a mix of aspen trees, swampland and thick brush — the kind that snaps you in the face and stings — it's not easygoing.

That only added to our sense of adventure.

If the stars aligned, perhaps we'd find a shed antler or two, left behind by a whitetail buck, though the odds of that were about as favorable as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

It's been an extremely dry spring in the north country after a winter with very little snow, and swampy areas that might have had shin-deep water in many years were either dry or barely deep enough to get our boots wet. By all indications, though, the winter was good for white-tailed deer, and well-traveled trails seemed to weave in every direction along our route.

If the abundance of deer signs was any indication, someone ambitious and in good shape could have themselves quite a quality hunt come deer season. No doubt it would be difficult though.

Getting turned around in the country like this wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility, but the ringleader of this afternoon excursion knew the area well — much better than me, I might add. For insurance, we both had the

onX Hunt mapping app

on our phones.

At one point, the brush opened up into a large, grassy area that obviously had provided snow-roosting cover for sharp-tailed grouse, based on the evidence they'd left behind in many places. One could only imagine the rush of watching a sharptail explode from the snow, startled from its winter roost.

The sharptail sign came as no surprise, as we'd seen perhaps 20 or more on the drive to our hiking spot. It's nice to see the birds doing so well, a trend that seems to be the case throughout northwest Minnesota and North Dakota.

The highlight of our afternoon walk, though, occurred when my hiking partner noticed a patch of grass that had been completely flattened a few yards from where we stood.

Walking up for a closer look, we saw deer hair strewn everywhere, along with a few chunks of bone. About 30 yards beyond that, we came across the partial skull of a small buck with a 4x4 set of antlers.

The skull, along with a short length of vertebrae and rib bones, had been picked clean.

The wolf kill that resulted in this discovery must have been quite an encounter. Such kills, like them or not, are part of the natural cycle of things and a reminder that nature indeed can be a cruel place.

In nearly two hours of exploring, it was the only deer kill we encountered, yet another example, perhaps, of how easy the mild winter of 2023-24 was on local deer populations.

The legs were burning a bit, and the water we carried provided welcome relief, as we left the brush and crossed the ditch to the road that would take us back to the truck. We'd only walked just under two miles, according to the app on my phone, but it felt much farther because of the uneven terrain.

There's much to see in nature when one takes the time to look, and our hike off the beaten path had been well worth the effort. The truck was a welcome sign, for sure, but we felt like we'd accomplished something on our afternoon hike of discovery.

We were just about to hit the road when we heard them — chorus frogs — the first ones of the year. The sound they make reminds me of teeth being plucked on a comb.

In that moment, what had already been an enjoyable afternoon got even better.

In my mind, at least, spring was officially here.