A good friend of South Dakota Magazine, an urbane young fellow, showed up at the Lesterville Fireman's Dance last Saturday night. He found the whole experience quite interesting -- the price of drinks, the big crowd in a tiny town, the music of "East River Cowboys." But he found something just a little amiss. "I thought these cowboys were tough guys," he said."But look at that guy! He's obviously been practicing his dancing!"

That's what happens when the price of fat cattle hits record highs. At $85 per hundredweight, the cowboys can afford dance lessons. Heck, they can even afford cowgirls. So why not indulge?

If you really want to see a cowboy "twist and shout," just bring up Mad Cow Disease.

Aberdeen native Josh Heupel at Oklahoma

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota sports fans will enjoy NBC newsman Tom Brokaw's trip down "Sports Memory Lane" in a recent Sports Illustrated. Brokaw notes that his home state has had a surprising number of athletes on the national scene, but South Dakotans also love to recall local heroes as well. He writes, "If you go to Onida, home of the (golfing) Byrum brothers, someone will surely point out that their second cousin Jim Sutton led the local high school to the 1953 Class B basketball title. I saw that game and the one two years later in which defending champion Hayti lost in overtime to White River, a thriller that still has a place in my memories even after a lifetime of watching World Series games, NBA finals and Olympics."Brokaw, of course, is a USD grad who got his broadcasting start at KYNT in Yankton.
Link to Tom Brokaw article

South Dakota faces big economic choices in the years ahead. What types of development are good? What types are not worth the risk? The issues are similar in many states. Well-known rural activist Wendell Berry wrote an interesting article about this for Orion Magazine. It makes good weekend reading.

Katerina Redlin of rural Summit is a colorful, interesting lady. One of my first jobs out of college was as a courts/police reporter for the Watertown Public Opinion. To avoid getting scooped (at least by more than a day) by ace radio reporter David J. Law, I often tuned into his station. Every now and then, a lady with a thick German accent would call in to KWAT with observations on life and our government. Slowly I figured out her story from her radio conversations. Her husband was a German soldier who was killed in WWII. She had a little son, and was scared to death when Allied forces occupied Munich. But she soon came to admire the Americans. Eventually she came to America as a mail order bride. I plan to write a full story on her soon.

Katerina still calls into the David J. Law talk show "What's Up" at this time of the year to talk about what a wonderful country this is from an immigrant's point of view.My daughter, Katie, and I visited with her a few months ago. We asked her why she came here. She told us that she had a small son and she was worried for herself and the boy when Allied Forces occupied Munich, where they were living. "The English (soldiers) were arrogant. They never looked at us. The Russians stole from the poor. They would not do anything for us. The Russians began to build a brick wall. The Americans came and told us with their loudspeakers not to be afraid and that we could go in the stores for milk and bread.

"Then two guys came in my house. Two great big guys ... I got so scared. They couldn't speak German and I couldn't talk English. They patted my hand so I would not be scared. They made sign language. They wanted to look in the basement for guns. I held the candle. My hands were shaking so bad. Then they made sure we had something to eat."

The Americans continued to be generous and kind to her and her son. Several years later, when she decided to leave Germany, it wasn't difficult to decide where to go. We'll tell you her brave immigration story in a future issue. But we thought her comments on the kindness of Americans was worth hearing in this Thanksgiving week when we once again have American soldiers overseas.

Please pass the swan ....
We wish all our magazine readers a Happy Thanksgiving. It has been 383 years since the pilgrims gathered for that first American holiday in 1621 at Plymouth. That was a three-day feast. Ninety Indians joined the party, and the pilgrims dined on duck, geese, turkey and even swans. Swan farms? That's something we haven't tried in South Dakota.

Seriously, those of us who love life in South Dakota have much to be thankful for. We enjoy clean air, wonderous landscapes, commune with wildlife, blue lakes, big mountains and wild rivers. The same things the pilgrims loved about the East Coast when they first arrived, come to think of it.

Ninety-three Christmas trees will be lit tonight at 7 p.m. at the South Dakota capitol rotunda by fourth-grader Gracie Gunderson and First Lady Jean Rounds. Everyone is welcome. The trees will be on display until Dec. 29, and if you love holiday decor it's worth the trip.

More on deer hunting. A few years ago, educator and outdoorsman Roger Wiltz of Wagner wrote a true story for the magazine about a cold November day when he was deer hunting along Choteau Creek (west of Avon) and fell through the ice. Fortunately, the creek wasn't deep enough to drown him ... but as he tried to climb out he couldn't find solid ground because the bank was steep and slippery. He finally took the belt off his pants and used it as a rope to climb onto the frozen, snowy bank. Exhausted, he lay resting and weighing whether he could make it to a farm a half mile away. Then he heard a crash in the brush and saw a huge whitetail buck charging toward him, less than 30 yards away! He grabbed his rifle and held it at arm's length. In no time, the deer was close enough for Roger to smell his bad breath. He squeezed the trigger and the four-point buck tumbled at his feet. Was the buck intentionally trying to harm Roger or was he just running full-out? We'll never know.

By Bernie Hunhoff
I haven't hunted deer for many years, but I must admit that if you ever chased a whitetail with a rifle, your pulse quickens just a little on these chilly November mornings and evenings. This year a buck with a big rack is roaming around our farm, north of Yankton. In fact, I've seen him right in the farmyard. He must know we have a truce. But the neighbors also are talking about him, so he'd better be more cautious come Saturday morning when the season opens.

Deer hunting has a long tradition, even pre-dating the explorers and settlers. The Native tribes depended on deer as well as antelope, elk and buffalo for subsistence.
Before 1800, the antelope population in modern-day South Dakota was estimated to be 700,000.

When white men arrived here, they nearly wiped out the elk population and it had to be restocked from Wyoming. In 1875, Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge took a party of 400 soldiers into the Black Hills for a scientific expedition (gold, perhaps?) and they reportedly killed about 1,000 deer a day. As late as the 1890s, famed naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton reported seeing 8,000 to 9,000 antelope a day in the Badlands.

Fortunately, it didn't take territorial leaders long to realize that the game populations were being destroyed; and the 1883 territorial legislature (the last such gathering held in Yankton) established the first game laws. It took a few years for most hunters to start abiding by the rules, but nowadays we have a pretty good set of laws and hunters.

Be careful if you're driving in South Dakota at night during deer season. The bucks and does will be spooked from their normal habitat, and they may find themselves in your headlights.

The season is part of our outdoor culture. Chili feeds, card parties, lutefisk dinners and other social activities have grown around it. Enjoy the excitement.