Paynesville, Minnesota, 1875
It was cold. A damp kind of cold that reached into the bones and could scarcely be shaken away. The lateness of autumn had arrived and soon winter would descend on Minnesota’s once rugged back country. Before long, tens of thousands of lakes, rivers and sloughs would be locked in thick ice, and copious amounts of snow would clog the foot paths and drift over the horse trails that meandered through the countryside. For the time being, however, the icy throes of winter abided while autumn played its curtain call.
A renowned photographer of the time, Charles Zimmerman, known simply as “Alsace” by his closest friends, was gearing up for the cold morning ahead. He and “the boys,” John, Walt and Henry, who were close friends, roused themselves from a warm and cozy slumber in a Litchfield, Minnesota, hotel. It was 2:00 a.m., and they planned a weekend getaway at a well-known duck pass on Lake Koronis, a large, deep lake with wooded shores, nestled in the hills south of Paynesville, Minnesota. There, they would seek out an old timer named “Bill Willcox” who lived in a little farmhouse on the lake’s shore. He would guide them to the vast flocks of migrating ducks that staged themselves on the lake for a big push south.
A foggy cold front had settled in through the night, and with it came a bitter chill—a sharp and penetrating kind of chill that cut through the air like a knife. In thick woolen mackinaws, buckskin choppers and fur caps with the ear flaps tied down, the boys hitched a team of horses to an old open-bed wagon. With two retrievers in tow and several hours of travel in front of them, they headed north along an old oxcart trail that snaked through wooded thickets and across open prairie toward the home place of their guide.
The lateness of the hour, along with the fog, cut visibility down to no more than a few feet in front of the horses. The beasts, however, were well trained and had the good sense to push on down the trail that sprawled out before them. Aside from the dull clip clop of horse hooves on frozen ground, the creaks and groans of the wagon and retrievers running happily through the tall grass, the trip was made in relative silence.
As they neared Koronis, the dull gray of pre-dawn began breaking the darkness in the eastern sky. How the boys rejoiced when the sun crowned the horizon—its rays rolled away the fog and cast a cheery, pink glow across the trail. In a short time, the rich, pastoral autumn landscape of the near wilderness was on full display—every branch on every tree and each blade of grass glittering like diamonds from the fog that froze to them.
In those days, ducks were abundant in such numbers that a hunter scarcely needed to rush to his blind to catch a pre-dawn flight. Such as it was, the boys found themselves in no hurry to their quarry when they reached the home of Willcox and, rather, took some time to warm their bones and partake in a breakfast of flapjacks with cream and white sugar being prepared by the host’s wife.
“Been expectin’ you for near three days now. The bays are icing up,” exclaimed Willcox, knowing full well the boys would want to catch the last flight of migrators before the real cold set in. “Don’t be in no hurry,” he said. “The ducks won’t fly ’til the fog lifts from the pass.”
With their bellies full and the anticipation of a great hunt ahead of them, the boys filed into a wooden rowboat and pushed on for a rocky point that jutted out toward three islands sitting in the body of the lake. The fog refused to lift, and even thickened some, so much that the boys needed not to conceal themselves and instead stood at the very tip of the point.
The dense fog rendered it impossible to see the ducks flying overhead that their ears told them were there—with each pass, the whistling of wings cut through the air above them, but the outstretched necks of mallards, redheads and scaup could not be seen through the mist above. This state of things was endured for a time. The dogs grew impatient and wined as they paced the lakeshore in hopes of breaking into the water to make a retrieve. Suddenly, the piercing honks of a goose, or possibly geese, broke through the air.
“Geese above,” cried Alsace, and the boys looked up to see the faint outline of three Canada “honkers” silhouetted against the mist and growing larger. Guns broke open, BB loads were fumbled for in pockets and guns slammed shut again. With eyes fixed upward, the boys eagerly waited for the geese to come into range. The lead gander, with its neck outstretched and wings cupped, began its descent to water with five more honkers in tow.
“Ready boys,” cried Alsace, and the guns went up. A ringing report from the hunters was followed by the lead gander and two of his companions crumpling toward the water and falling with a resounding splash. The dogs gave tremendous leaps, gooseward, into the water and returned to the delight of their owners with a prized quarry that would be prepared for the upcoming holiday dinners.
A freezing wind began to set in from the northwest, rolling away the fog and numbing cheeks and fingers. In consequence, the boys, the dogs and with three plump honkers in hand, loaded into the rowboat and made the voyage back to Willcox’s place.
With red noses and frosty features, the boys reached Bill’s warm and cheery living room. To their delight, their host, with his dog in tow, came into the yard with a string of fat mallards.
“Didn’t hear much shooting your way,” he exclaimed. “Cheer up though, been mallards dropping into the pass all morning and will be there this afternoon.”
Bill, being given the management of the afternoon hunt, led the boys to Willcox Pass, a narrow strip of land that jutted into the short but wide river that flowed between Koronis and a feed lake called Rice. The five of them split into two boats, of which the bows were concealed with rice stalks. Quietly, the boats were rowed upriver and around a bend to the pass where a flock of mallards and snows, numbering in the thousands, loafed before the evening flight.
The boats were pulled to shore and stashed in the rushes and the boys, with Willcox in the lead, crawled on all fours into range of the birds—their sounds and movements masked by the wind that blew in their faces. It was decided that each would give a barrel on the water and a second when the birds jumped. Bill gave a whistle, at which the birds promptly stuck their necks up to find the source. Five resounding cracks came from the guns and the birds sprang into the air. Another five cracks and several large, feathered bodies of great colorful mallards crashed into the water with a splash. With the excitement of schoolboys, the hunters raced into the water with their hip boots up and retrieved a large string of mallards and snows.
That night the wind howled, and the air grew cold—winter cold. The boys sat around the fireplace and listened with glee as Wilcox told his tale of settling the land and escaping the Indian attacks in 1862—how the settlers built a stockade, how he lived in it for a week and how a good friend of his was killed.
When morning came, it was clear that the season of hunting waterfowl was at an end. The lake and the river were locked in an icy veneer and the low, gray overcast gave the feeling of an oncoming snow. With their mackinaws buttoned tight and the wagon loaded with birds, the boys began their long trek back to Litchfield, knowing full well that scarcely a duck would remain in the area and that they would have to wait another year for a shoot at Wilcox Pass.
This article originally appeared in the 2023 November December issue of Sporting Classics magazine.