Not at all like- Deliverance

By Ron Roettger

The title of this piece is in reference to the 1972 iconic American drama thriller starring Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox. The movie is based on four men canoeing down the fictional Cahulawesse River on a bow hunting trip. While the following true story is about four men canoeing down a river on a bow hunting trip that is where the similarities end.

Our river was the very real St. Croix River, and we did not bring a guitar just in case we did run into a banjo-playing country boy. This made for an incredible adventure and not the horrifying nightmare of the movie’s plot.

The idea for our trip began last April while driving back from a Nebraska turkey hunting trip with my good friend Dave Hegge. We were thinking of ways to add more adventure to our annual fall bow hunting weekend with my brother Rick Roettger, and good friend Arne Skatrud. This was to be our third Annual Pink Feather bow hunt. The name was giving the first year when we had a contest to see who could place their arrow closest to a pink feather that was stuck into the foam target as an aiming spot. Arne won the contest the first year followed by Rick last year. Dave mentioned the idea of a canoe adventure as part of this year’s hunt. I started researching the possibilities and came up with a plan that could work well. In late April I hiked into a remote canoe camp site on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River. The river was at flood stage and the river bottoms very wet making for a 90 minute hike. The camp site was everything I had hoped. After taking photos and notes about the site, I e-mailed the info and possible dates to the others. October 14th-16th would be our trip dates with the 14th being the birthday of Ricks and my late father who knew Dave and Arne well and respected both of them very much as they did him as well. To pay tribute to him, we each selected an arrow shaft from a bucket full of his old arrows. I had fletched them up to work with our bows and this year the target would be a log laying on the Minnesota shore across from our camp. The archer coming closest would be this year’s “Pink Feather Contest” winner. The log was 192 yards away!

To pay a personal tribute to my dad, I selected an old wooden shaft in the bucket that I remember Dad, my older brother Bob, and I using in 1972 when we first started bow hunting which would mean the arrow was produced at least 45 years ago. I cleaned, straightened, re-fletched, and installed a new nock. Spine testing showed that I should mount a 125 grain broad-head in order to achieve good flight from my longbow. I nicknamed the arrow the “Phoenix”. Had I ended up with an opportunity to shoot it at a deer or turkey perhaps this story would have been given another movie title name –“Flight of the Phoenix”

For old time sake, I brought along a 46 year old Svea 123 camp stove that was a gift from my uncle Herb which I had recently repaired. We boiled all the water which we filtered from a nearby spring stream for two meals the first day using the little stove. This brought back many great memories.

As for the hunt trip, after floating four miles to our camp spot we set up camp, ate, held our shooting contest, scouted, and sat in our stands for the evening. Arne and I saw a doe as we were heading back to camp the first day, and a fisher while scouting.

The second day Dave had a fisher under his stand but no deer were spotted. Sunday the final morning of our hunt we awoke to heavy fog and very quiet conditions. I had a grouse land five yards from my stand but spooked it while drawing back my longbow. Even though no other game was spotted, we all agreed that it was a very special day to witness the natural world as it awakened. We all felt very privileged to do so. After returning to camp, we packed up and floated the four miles to the next landing where we had dropped off a car on Friday. On the float down the beautiful Upper St. Croix River we did as we had the entire weekend- shared stories of our youth, families, past hunts, and our ideas on how to solve most of the world’s problems. We laughed in good nature over so many things including the fact that the lone longbow shooter was able to cast an arrow the closest to a log 192 yards away in Minnesota!

Plans are already underway for next year’s hunt. Have a safe and enjoyable hunting season.