Here’s what the St.Paul

Pioneer Press (Minnesota)

had to say about us

on October 23, 2002

Motel welcome mat

extends to hunters

MINNEDOSA, Manitoba — Now

that the hunt was over, Jim Mar-

shall carried an armful of wigeon, teal,

gadwalls and mallards into the duck

cleaning room and proceeded to gut

and bag them.

While some birds were placed in

plastic bags for freezing, with each

hunter's name and license number

printed on the outside, a few of the

birds were set aside for further clean-

ing. Dark meat was gleaned from the

bones and washed under cold water. In

assembly-line fashion, Scott Scherer

took chunks of cleaned duck meat

from Marshall and wrapped them in

bacon.

About an hour later, we gathered

around a gas barbecue in the parking

lot of the Gateway Motel and cooked

ducks three ways — barbecued with

bacon, in a Cajun stew and in a Chi-

nese stir fry with vegetables. A bottle

of red wine was uncorked and, under a

blazing display of northern lights, we

feasted.

Other motel guests drifted by, per-

haps lured by the smell of bacon-

wrapped duck cooking on a barbe-

cue. Otherwise, our merry band of

camo-clad hunters didn't raise an

eyebrow, mostly because the owners

of the Gateway, Kathleen and Scott

Martin, love it when hunters are

their guests.

As any hunter can attest, it is not

always that way It's sometimes tough

to get good accommodations when your

boots are muddy and a wet Labrador or

English setter is your companion, m

the old days, rural motels in Minnesota

probably opened their arms to hunters,

but lately I've found some motel owners

aren't exactly hunter-friendly.

Three years ago, when the Martins

moved from Devon, England, to the

pastoral town of Minnedosa, they did-

n't realized they'd settled in the heart

of Canada's duck-hunting region. Some

of their hunting guests were pretty

rude, too. Scott realized hunters clean-

ing their ducks in the bathtub were

plugging his bathroom pipes.

Knowing they needed the cus-

tomers, the Martins launched a plan

to keep their duck hunters happy, but

also keep them living within the

rules.

"We knew if we wanted to attract

hunters, we'd have to allow dogs in the

rooms," said Scott. "We also knew we

needed something more than that, so

we added the duck-cleaning room and

barbecue."

Scott's duck-cleaning shed is a

beauty, with a sink, running water,

chest freezers and garbage cans. Later,

the Martins added the gas barbecue

because they realized some of their

hunters returned from a field after

most of the town's restaurants closed.

They decided to continue to allow

dogs in the rooms.

"Most of the hunters are good with

the dogs in their rooms because the

dogs sleep in the crate. The hunters

are far more responsible than the aver-

age (people on holiday)."

That the Martins have learned the

idiosyncrasies of duck hunters is

remarkable in itself, since three years

ago they had no idea that they'd be

motel owners in Manitoba. It started

with a real estate agent who dialed a

wrong number in England and ended

up with Scott, a social worker, on the

telephone.

The agent eventually convinced

Scott and Kathleen to visit Manitoba to

look at motel properties. An intense

hockey fan in a soccer-crazy nation,

Scott saw a visit to Canada as a oppor-

tunity to see "proper hockey," never

thinking he would move.

"I've always liked Canada," said

Scott, with a thick English accent,

"because it has hockey. It was so hard

to get proper hockey on TV in England.

I remember looking at the motel the

first time we came here and thinking,

'Wow, I get to watch the Brandon

Wheat Kings (the local pro team)

tonight!'"

But with Kathleen's experience in

motel management, finances and

catering, the Martins bought the Gate-

way and moved to Minnedosa. The

once-dilapidated motel has been

remodeled, and Kathleen has opened a

new restaurant that stays open late

enough for the hunting crowd- The

Martins' parking lot gets hunting rigs

with licenses plates from Minnesota,

Wisconsin, and Missouri-

Maybe it's the smell of barbecued

duck that brings 'em in.

Call the Gateway Motel at (204) 867-

2729. Or visit the Martins online at

www.gatewaymotel.ca. Chris Niskanen

can be reached at cniskanen@pioneer-

press.com or (651) 228-5524

____________________

Extract from the ”The St.Paul Pioneer”,

Minnesota. Sunday October 20th, 2002

PRAIRIE HOME

There is nothing complicated about hunting

waterfowl in the Netherlands of Manitoba.

Ducks and geese are just about everywhere.

MINNEDOSA, Manitoba

In the gathering twilight, flocks of mallards,

wigeons and teal tumbled out of the sky into a

quiltwork of potholes interspersed among wheat

fields and canola fields.

The ducks swoop in unwarily, wings cupped.

You could throw out decoys if you were so

inclined, but it's not necessary. There is nothing

complicated about hunting waterfowl in the

netherlands of Manitoba — ducks and geese are

part of the landscape like dirt roads and wheat

combines. They're just there. Waterfowl are, in

fact, just about everywhere.

People aren't.

To get permission to hunt on this pothole,

Scott Scherer of Minnetonka and I had to drive 15

miles into a small town and asked around to see

who owned the slough. The owner, we learned,

owned the local Chinese restaurant. He wasn't in

the kitchen, but his wife was, hunkered over the

grill. Farmers in the dining room sipped coffee

and chewed on the lunch special -— chow mein.

I knocked on the kitchen door. Mrs. Choy came

out and guessed my question by my camouflage

shirt before I could get the words out.

She said simply:

"You just go."

"Are you sure?" I replied.

"Yes, just go. No problem. And no, I don't want

any ducks."

Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

The slough was a series of ponds separated by

a dirt road and surrounded by willows. We split

up. Scherer and I hunted one side. Jim Marshall of

Fairfax, Minn., and Robbie Faught of Woodbridge,

Va., were on the other side of the road. Ducks

coursed between the ponds- Gadwalls. Wigeons.

Blue-winged teal. When the afternoon waned,

flocks of mallards flew in from the wheat fields

where they fed all day.

A few miles away, a flock of snow geese a half-

mile long swarmed over a recently cut canola

field. Canada geese fed in a wheat field not far

from the snows. We had watched all of them with

binoculars.

Waterfowl were everywhere.

With a few hours left in the day, we gathered at

the edge of the slough. Faught shook his head and

said he rarely had seen such waterfowl shooting

in his life, especially on the East Coast. We were

just a few birds short of a limit (in Manitoba, the

duck limit is eight birds per person daily, two

more than in the United States), so Scherer sat on

a different pond and waited for the evening flight.

As we watched ducks on the horizon, a pair of

coyotes howled to each other from across the

ponds. It was quiet enough to hear a car door

slam a half-mile away. But of course, there was no

one about at this time of the day; the farmers

were done combining, the narrow dirt roads quiet

of traffic, the countryside empty of people except

a few duck hunters.

"There's beauty here like you find in a desert,"

Scherer would say later. "You're out in the middle

of nowhere. There's farming here, but it's still

wild, as wild as farmland can get. There's kind of

a purity in the landscape."

Desolation, too. When it came time to pack up

for the day, Scherer's truck became stuck — and

so were we for two hours. While northern lights

flickered overhead, not a single vehicle passed us.

Coyotes were the most plentiful night time

travellers. 

THE HEART OF

WATERFOWL COUNTRY

Minnedosa is a small town in south-central

Manitoba lying in the heart of Canada prairie pot-

hole country. The surrounding countryside is no

more or less populated with waterfowl than other

towns such as Boissevain, Shoal Lake, Neepawa

or the area known as the Interlake Region, north

of Winnipeg. It is here in Minnedosa,

though, where much of the early stud-

ies on canvasbacks and other water-

fowl species were conducted by Cana-

dian and American researchers.

It's a landscape dotted with pot-

holes, sloughs and-small-grain farms

that seem like a throwback to the 1950s.

/ Large corporate farming largely hasn't

reached Manitoba, but as one farmer

said, "We're getting fewer and farther

between."

Because the region is rich with

duck-producing wetlands, it draws

waterfowlers like Marshall, who start-

ed coming here four years ago.

"The fanners are very friendly,"

said Marshall, who has become friends

with landowners in the region. "You

don't get turned down when you ask

permission. A lot of people come to

Canada and expect to find ducks within

a five-mile radius of their motel. That's

not quite the case. But if you get out

and explore, knock on doors and get to

know the countryside, there are plenty

of ducks here."

John Plahn, 68, of Mound and Dick

Guentzel, 68, of Austin, Minn., have been

waterfowling in Saskatchewan and Man-

itoba together for four years. They said

they enjoy the multitude of waterfowl,

but also the friendliness of Canadians.

"We've had great associations with

people up here," Plahn said. "You have

to stop and visit and have a cup of cof-

fee. I don't think we've ever been

turned down."

DROUGHT COMES

TO THE PRAIRIES

Manitoba, like North Dakota and

South Dakota, was rich with water dur-

ing the 1990s and helped pump North

America's waterfowl populations to

record levels. But drought conditions

finally have come to the Canadian

prairies, prompting biologists to worry.

Bob Brudy, a conservation officer

with Manitoba Conservation, the

province's equivalent of Minnesota's

Department of Natural Resources, said

drought this year has hit central Mani-

toba's prairies hard.

"I would definitely call it a drought,"

Brudy said. "We went a month and half

this summer without rain. In 2000 and

2001, we had 400 percent above snow-

fall levels. That spring and summer,

every pothole was full of water. Who

knows if it will change? But right now,

our wetlands are drying up."

The loss of water is evident. Ponds

brimming with water last year are mud

puddles this year. But many of the larg-

er lakes and sloughs still have water

and continue to provide nesting and

refuge for ducks.

Last week, Marshall huddled along

a marsh's edge and watched ducks

careen from the sky. It was freezing

farther north; snowstorms swept down

from the sub-arctic, putting hundreds

of thousands of waterfowl into the sky.

He watched and knew something was

happening.

As Canadian lakes and swamps

become locked in ice, hordes of birds

were moving out of Canada and into the

United States. Freeze-up isn't far away.

Marshall, and all waterfowlers,

know what those signs mean. Ducks,

snow geese and Canada geese — from

The Pas, Manitoba, to Pierre, S.D., to

Minnesota's Swan Lake — are on the

move.

The migration is on.