NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1028906
58 NEBRASKAland • OCTOBER 2018 Send contributions to: Portraits from the Past, NEBRASKAland Magazine, P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370. Or e-mail to Tim.Reigert@Nebraska.gov. Photos should show people enjoying Nebraska outdoor activities, such as camping, boating, hunting or fishing, and must have been taken before 1980. We will give priority to unusual photos or activities. When possible, please include a story about the photograph and identify the people, places and approximate date it was taken. Text may be edited and photos adjusted for reproduction. All photos will be returned. During the mule deer season of 1954, Corky Greenough shot this mule deer south of Cody, Nebraska, on a tributary of the Niobrara River in a conifer and plumb brush covered canyon. As I remember we called this deer a 4x4 with brow tines. After field dressing, Cork brought him home to the Hibbs and Powell Ranch northwest of Cody and we hung him in the calving barn to cool out and age. Cork is admiring the buck with his son Doug. Corky, his wife JoAnn and two sons, Doug and Dale, lived and worked on the ranch with my wife, Charlotte, our son, Bill, Jr., and me. We had about 450 head of Angus cows and heifer calves running in 4,500 acres of pasture along that tributary. Corky and JoAnn moved to Lusk, Wyoming, in the late 1990s. He passed away in March 2017. Leonard Witherwax was a neighbor west of the ranch. He borrowed my Remington 270. He also got a mule deer near the same area a few days later. I have many good memories of those days in the 50s when mule deer were still living in the Niobrara area. There were no whitetail along the river back then. – W. C. Bill Hamilton, Ankeny, Iowa ▲ ▲ Here is a photo of a good group of friends (and memories of the past), on opening day of pheasant season, Nov. 1, 1980 at the Roland and Ruth Hatcliff farm a few miles east of Pleasant Hill, Nebraska. We started the morning hunt with this group and two Labrador retrievers. My dad Roland (pictured in the photo) made a few passes with the corn picker a few days before the season opener. This was on about 60 acres of corn. We would walk the field and flush the pheasants out. Those that managed to get away (and there were plenty) landed in two other cornfields nearby. We would then walk those fields and flush them again. I believe we made about three passes in each to those fields. We started at sunrise and by 11 a.m., we had our limit of 39 pheasant, 1 squirrel, and 7 quail. Those pheasants that we harvested did not even make a dent into the birds that were in the area back then. Back then, it truly was Pheasants Forever! After cleaning the wild game, we visited the Pleasant Hill tavern for stories and celebration. – Al Hatcliff, Crete, Nebraska