A Touchstone on Borrowed Ground

I don’t own the land. I never have. But for nearly three decades it has been part of my life in a way a deed can’t explain.

It sits in the heart of South Dakota – thousands of acres owned by a rancher who has become a friend. I first got the chance to hunt it in 1997. I’ve been back every year since, except one. That was the year my wife and I were expecting our son. He showed up two weeks late and now carries a birthday that falls in deer season. Thrilled to have a son, I still missed the trip. Because it wasn’t just a hunt; it was a marker.

People who haven’t done it won’t really understand what it means to hunt wild birds on that kind of ground. They’ll hear “private land” and “pheasant country” and think it’s about comfort. Or convenience. It isn’t. It’s about freedom to move. To walk hard all day. To follow a good dog. To hunt birds that act like birds, not like targets.

Our group has held together in a way that surprises me when I stop to think about it. For years it was my dad and me, and our friends Doug and Curt. Curt dropped out a few years ago. Time does that. Since then we’ve rotated the fourth slot with friends who wanted to come and friends we wanted to bring. A place like that is too good to keep to yourself.

A lot has changed since 1997. I’ve married, divorced, and remarried – better this time. I’m raising a son. I’ve built a life, taken it apart, and built it again with more care. Jobs changed. Priorities changed. I’ve changed.

But the South Dakota trip stayed. Year after year it showed up on the calendar, and it did something I didn’t fully appreciate until I had enough years behind me to see the pattern. It gave me a way to measure my life. I could walk the same draws, the same cattail slough, the same field edges, and I could remember who I was the first time I walked them. I could remember the younger version of me – what he worried about, what he carried, what he thought mattered. Then I could keep walking and let those thoughts settle.

I’ve hunted this land with four dogs, three Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and now a Brittany. Four different personalities. Four different kinds of grit. Each one loved it in the way a hunting dog loves a place: not for the memories, but for the work. The birds. The cover. The miles. The sudden stop. The look back. The expectation that you will do your part.

My picture of heaven isn’t a golden city filled with cherubim and seraphim – it’s a grassy draw. A shotgun in my hands. A beloved dog working ahead of me.

That picture is tied to this land.

That’s the thing about a place like this. It becomes a touchstone. Not because it stays the same – weather changes it, seasons change it, farming changes it – but because it stays familiar enough to hold your history. Whatever was happening in my life, I could go back there and be reminded of the past without getting trapped in it. I could feel continuity. I could feel progress. I could feel gratitude. I could feel small in a good way.

So I want to say this plainly.

Thank you, Vern, for letting me hunt your land all these years. I can’t ever repay you for it. What you gave me wasn’t just pheasants and good walks. You gave me time with my dad and friends. You gave me years with my dogs doing what they were made to do. You gave me a trip that stayed steady when a lot of other things didn’t. And you gave me a connection to a piece of ground that helped shape the man I am.

It’s not mine.

But it’s been a part of me for a long time.

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