hey all,
this post has absolutely nothing to do with fishing but it does has something to do with a small stream or river so i thought i’d post it anyway.
today me and a couple of my friends did a float down the zumbro just north of rochester. we went all the way from essex park to some closed bridge about three miles past 75th street. our main objective was to get some shooting at some of those giant canadian geese that have been sitting on the river for the past couple days because all the lakes in town have froze up tight. ended up shooting our six geese in no time, they were all over that river and they let you paddle right up to them. 
if it would have been duck season i think we could have gotten our limit on them too. there were flocks of big green heads around every bend and in every pool and sitting on every down fall. it was pretty cool to see. 
after shooting our geese we still had along way to go so we just started paddeling our hearts out. we got about 1 mile past 75th and my budy in the front of the canoe say “holy #@%$, look at that buck!” me being the one in the back of the canoe am looking up into the woods for this deer but i couldn’t see anything. “where is it,” i asked “i don’t see it.” “its right infront of us,” he says “in the water.”
i look ahead of us and about 50yds down stream i see a hugemungous antler sticking out of the water. 
apparently some gun hutner last weekend shot this big deer and didn’t do a very good job of tracking it. it was shot thorugh the neck and through it’s hind quarters. it must have just died trying to cross the river.
this was just a dandy 9pt and we weren’t about to leave it there for all the smallies to eat so we tied the water soaked deer to the back of the canoe with a gun case and finished paddling back to the car (it’s amazing how much harder it is to paddle a canoe with few hundred pounds of extra weight draging behind your canoe). we ended up cutting the whole head off and i think my friend is going to do a skull mount on it.
it was quite an adventurous day to say the least. i got pictures of the deer and geese togther but i don’t have a digital camera so i can’t show yall. oh well, maybe for x-mas this year (hint, hint). 
i guess the moral of this stroy is don’t let winter hold you back. get out there and have an adventure. not only did we get 6 geese and a big buck but we also saw a lot of big smallies that we’re gonna go catch in the spring….. well lookie there, i guess that this story did have something to do with fishing after all.