Story and photos by Jeff Kurrus
“I once dated a girl who lived in that house,” Justin Stofer said from beside me as we drove the back roads of Fillmore County to our next bird-hunting spot.
The statement wasn’t braggadocios. Nor longing. It was simply information shared from my bird hunting guide last season.
But when he said it, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy.
While I consider myself a nonnative native of Nebraska, having lived here for more than 20 years, I grew up driving the back roads of a township of sorts north of Memphis, Tennessee, named Shelby Forest. As a kid-turned-teenager-turned-adult, friends and I drove these back roads hunting and fishing on any number of public and private lands.
This past winter, I had the good fortune of re-visiting this area with my son, pointing to fishing holes that I remember fondly that he’ll never remember again and even taking him to our public duck hole that I hadn’t seen in 25 years.
So, when Justin made that simple throwaway statement as we drove the gravel roads of his youth, I began to listen even more intently, because I knew what it was like to have these memories. Yet, having not grown up here, I couldn’t get enough of Justin’s nostalgia that returns to him every hunting season.
“As a kid, one of my grandfathers was a gunsmith and the other owned a mechanic shop in Geneva,” Justin said. “Dad says the only time he would shut the mechanic shop down was the opening day of pheasant season. It’s been a long-standing tradition for us.”
As a kid, Justin walked alongside his brother, Jon — 7 years older than him — on many bird hunts throughout the county. Being part of the farming community, where Justin eventually worked as a teenager, everyone knew everyone, and having places to hunt was easy.
“We hunted all the time,” Justin said.
Like all hunters seem to have, Justin and his family nicknamed their frequently traveled areas. Farmer’s, the Milligan Ponds, the Big Pasture, Konzak’s and more. The same roads he traveled then are the same ones he travels now.
And the memories constantly resurface, like when the family became dog owners for the first time.
“My buddy and I were driving out near Sandpiper WMA,” Justin said. “I worked on a farm near there, and a Brittany [spaniel] came out of the ditch. No collar. No nothing. Either someone had dumped her or she got lost hunting. So, we loaded her up, took her to the vet and put up signs. But nobody claimed her.
“She had no training. But was a fantastic dog.”
Justin hunted that dog through his teens and 20s, eventually buying a German shorthair and hunting over that breed since. But his shorthairs, Mojo and Trapper, aren’t normal shorthairs.
They’re gigantic.
“The shorthairs came out of Minnesota from the Minnesota Horse and Hunt Club,” Justin said. “As the story goes, the owner of the club went to Germany and grabbed the No. 1 stud there and brought him back to America. My dogs trace back to him. They’re just bigger.”
When we hunted, it was clear why he loves these dogs so much. They cut through habitat — regardless of height — with ease, and they can hunt long. This is beneficial to Justin because he can walk — I mean, really walk.
As I trailed him with a camera through field after field near Geneva, he reminded me of the 6-foot-5 hunting partner I had as a kid, working field edges and plum thickets for quail just like he does here.
In each instance, keeping up is the primary goal.
“This year we put on 18 miles at the Sharptail Shootout,” he said, the most unsurprising fact of the day. Each year, that number grows into the hundreds of miles. And he and his friends have most of the ground to themselves.
“You’ll see a few guys hunting early in the season,” he said. “But I can tell you that before Covid, no one was hunting. Now, you have to be at your spot at 4:30 or 5 a.m. on opening morning.
“You’re an hour and a half from Lincoln out here,” he continued. “A lot of guys will even come without a dog. But once you get later in the season, there’s no pressure.”
Those are the times that Justin and his buddies begin their own management strategies. “We won’t hunt coveys under 10 birds,” he said. “And we’ll stay in touch with each other to tell what we do at a certain place.” This ensures that, given good weather and no further loss of habitat, there will be birds around the following season.
“The last three to four years have been really good on private ground,” he said, “but plum thickets are still being taken out on places. This is great habitat that has to stay. A couple of years ago, public ground was great.”
Habitat remains the crucial linchpin to everything Justin loves to do each fall. “Since I was a kid, our spots have been cut in half for production ag. Those days, you could drive down the road and see birds in the ditches. We had more milo around. Better habitat. Better cover. And fencerows getting torn out makes a difference.”
But the weather has remained in his favor. “We had a good summer,” he said. “We were dry in early June. That allowed chicks to hatch, and they didn’t have to fight the cold, damp rain every day. And not a ton of hail. But we had plenty of rain the rest of the year to help with grass for cover and bugs for food.”
Because of these conditions and the fact that hunting remains such a huge tradition in his family, Justin knows he won’t be the only hunter in the field this fall. He will continue to hunt with his brother and his English pointer throughout the season, and his 73-year-old dad will still run blocker for their group.
Plus, there are the additions of his 16-year-old daughter, Ella, and his 14-year-old son, Teegan. “We started them as soon as they could come and walk,” he said. “Then we started youth hunts.” They were put on wild birds immediately, and Ella and Teegan have even taken shooting a step further by trapshooting for the Ashland Gun Club and even competing in the state championship in Doniphan.
Just like the days when his granddad would shut down the mechanic shop in Geneva to hunt on opening day, Justin has kept his family’s hunting tradition alive. Each opening day is a holiday. Each gravel road is a reminder of an old memory and a chance at a new one, just like every bird that rises from the point of one of his dogs.