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SPEAKER 1: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's 42 degrees at KNOW FM, 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Twin Cities weather today calling for mostly sunny skies with highs in the low 40s. Clear skies tonight, a low temperature of 30 degrees. And on Friday, you can expect partly cloudy skies and warmer temperatures.

KORVA COLEMAN: Korva Coleman. Iraq's foreign minister, today, denied that Baghdad is blocking United Nations weapons monitoring. He sent a letter to the UN Security Council saying, Iraq had moved some sensitive weapons related equipment, but only to protect it from possible American airstrikes. NPR'S Anne Cooper reports.

ANNE COOPER: The Iraqi letter sounded a defiant tone in the continuing standoff over UN weapons inspections. For the fourth day in a row, Iraq blocked UN inspection teams. Iraq says UN inspectors are welcome to monitor for weapons of mass destruction, but not with Americans on the teams.

Yesterday, the chief UN weapons inspector told the Security Council that Iraq has taken advantage of the standoff to move sensitive equipment out of the range of UN monitoring cameras. He also said, it appears, Iraq has tampered with some cameras, covering the lenses and turning out lights.

In Washington, Vice President Al Gore said the United States is ready to force Iraq to comply with UN inspectors. Anne Cooper, NPR News, New York.

KORVA COLEMAN: The Senate Judiciary Committee has put off action on President Clinton's nominee to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. The committee has deadlocked over Bill Lann Lee. And Democrats have asked for more time to defend his civil rights record. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democratic member on the panel, says he believes a majority of the Senate would vote to confirm Lee.

Forestry officials surveying land near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, have discovered yet another casualty of the October blizzard. Colorado Public Radio's Theresa Schiavone says, a Western Colorado forest may have suffered the largest number of blown down trees on record in the United States.

THERESA SCHIAVONE: On the night of October 24, as four feet of snow were piling up in areas of Eastern Colorado, creating a state of emergency, wind gusts up to 100 miles per hour, were whipping across the Rocky Mountains over the Continental Divide, and through the Routt National Forest in Western Colorado. Forestry experts say root systems for the trees grew to withstand typical winds from the West. Hurricane force winds associated with the blizzard came from the East, where roots were thinner.

20,000 acres of old growth spruce trees or about 25 square miles were uprooted and are lying in the same direction. Eight hunters weathered the freak windstorm in a cabin covered with felled trees. Forestry officials are studying other blowdowns to try to determine what to do about the fallen trees, the potential for erosion, stream blockage, and displaced animals.

For NPR News, I'm Theresa Schiavone in Denver.

KORVA COLEMAN: Maryland health officials are investigating whether two more deaths are related to food poisoning from a church supper. Officials have already determined an elderly woman died from salmonella poisoning after dining at the church function.

On Wall Street, the Dow is down 14 and 1/2 points at 76, 78. Trading is active. This is NPR.

SPEAKER 2: Support for National Public Radio comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for reporting on biological resource issues.

KAREN BARTA: Good afternoon. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. Stadium supporters have announced their latest plan for keeping the Twins in Minnesota. Under the proposal announced at the state capital, Twins owner, Carl Pohlad, would transfer the team to a charitable foundation.

The plan also calls for the state to construct a new ballpark paid for by dedicating player income taxes and stadium sales taxes. The proposal requires the Twins to sign a 30-year lease. Lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene in special session a week from today.

A Minnesota woman wants students around the country to sign a pledge today, renouncing the violent use of guns. Mary Lewis Grow of Northfield began the national day of concern about young people and gun violence last year. She says thousands of schools, urban and rural, are distributing a pledge for students to sign and are holding classroom discussions.

MARY LEWIS GROW: Because guns are so easily available anywhere, including Northfield or any other community in the country, there's really no community that is not just one trigger pull away from a tragedy. I mean, I think we, sometimes, fall back into the fallacy of thinking that this is only a problem in the big cities.

KAREN BARTA: Grow calls the national day of concern a collective statement against gun violence.

The state forecast this afternoon, mostly cloudy, decreasing clouds in the West. Highs from the middle 30s to the middle 40s. Friday, partly cloudy statewide, with highs in the middle 40s to lower 50s. And for the Twin Cities this afternoon, mostly cloudy with periods of sunshine, and a high around 42.

Around the region in Saint Cloud, it's cloudy and 37. It's partly sunny and 34 in Duluth. In the Twin cities, it's partly sunny and 41.

That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

RACHEL REABE: Minnesota Public Radio's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening. We invite you to visit the Mainstreet website, go to www.mpr.org, and click Mainstreet. You can access Mainstreet Radio reports. You'll also be able to hear this broadcast on the internet. That address again, www.mpr.org, and click on Mainstreet.

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Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for this special Mainstreet Radio broadcast, which comes to you live from the MPR| studios of KNBJ and KCRB in Bemidji. I'm Rachel Reabe. We're continuing now this hour, our conversation about deer hunting. If you're with us for the first hour of the show, you know we spent most of the time talking about the deer. Where are they? How many of them are there? How can we best manage the herd.

This hour, we're going to switch our focus to the hunters. And we invite you to call us with your hunting experiences and observations.

When the firearm deer season opens on Saturday, a half hour before sunrise, hunters across Minnesota will be ready and waiting in the woods and fields. Among them will be brothers Kevin and Corey Cease. Kevin is a funeral director in Bemidji. Corey works for the United States Forest Service in Grand Rapids.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

KEVIN CEASE: Hi, Rachel.

RACHEL REABE: Hi, Kevin.

KEVIN CEASE: Hi.

RACHEL REABE: Since you are the oldest of the two brothers--

KEVIN CEASE: And the smartest.

RACHEL REABE: --let's talk about the Cease family hunting traditions. How old were you, Kevin, when you first went out hunting?

KEVIN CEASE: I was 13 years old, the traditional age for a lot of people in this area start going out. And I'll never forget, I was so nervous because here I was, going to go to deer camp. And we've always talked about it.

RACHEL REABE: Sort of mystical.

KEVIN CEASE: Oh, it's deer camp, and it's capital D, capital C, and with the quotation marks around it. And we are just-- I'm just excited. And also, that first year, dad brought my-- now, Corey, all of us couldn't be here today, but my brothers are triplets. They are two years younger than I am. And Corey is one of the triplets. And I think that year, for some reason, why did dad bring out all four of us to deer camp?

RACHEL REABE: So you missed your chance to be the star, to be the--

KEVIN CEASE: I was not quite the star.

RACHEL REABE: --13-year-old that you could hunt.

KEVIN CEASE: That's right. That's right. But somehow, they were there. And it was just this rite of passage. And it was just a very exciting time.

RACHEL REABE: So you felt grown up.

KEVIN CEASE: I felt very grown up. I did. I wasn't, but--

RACHEL REABE: Corey, when this time of year comes around-- now, I know you were wearing blaze orange. And of course, this is radio. So as far as the listeners know, we're all wearing blaze orange. But you are wearing blaze orange. Do you get excited? Do things your blood start pumping at about this point, two days prior to opening?

KEVIN CEASE: Yeah, I think everyone does. I wore it because it gets you in the mood to talk about deer hunting, I guess. And being that we're on radio, there's no visuals, so it just stimulates.

RACHEL REABE: Gets us going.

KEVIN CEASE: Get the blood going a little bit and get ready for Saturday morning.

RACHEL REABE: How much do you love deer hunting? Is this a big deal to you? Or if I said, let's go the Megamall Saturday.

KEVIN CEASE: Well, yeah, I like it a lot more than the Megamall.

COREY CEASE: That'd be a negatory on that. [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: So deer hunting is a big deal in your life?

KEVIN CEASE: Well, I know people that it's a lot bigger deal. I wouldn't die if I didn't do it, but it's something I look forward to all year and put preparation into, out in the woods, scouting, and thinking about.

COREY CEASE: You haven't seen his deer stands. [INAUDIBLE] preparation for it.

RACHEL REABE: Have you ever missed a year, Corey?

COREY CEASE: Excuse me?

RACHEL REABE: Have you ever missed a year of hunting?

COREY CEASE: Well, I probably miss more deer than some people have seen. So that's what I brag about, anyway.

RACHEL REABE: Did you ever miss a year going out, though, or have you hunted every year since you were old enough?

COREY CEASE: I missed a couple of years when I was in college. I went through this idealistic phase where I wasn't sure about hunting and all this. But I still went to camp. And instead of hunting, I actually went out and cruised the timber out in our property. And then I started getting hungry in the winter and the meat was very economical. So I'm back.

RACHEL REABE: So you went back to it. OK. Is it a big thing in your family? When you think, Kevin, about family traditions, what you do on Thanksgiving, and how you spend Christmas with your family, is deer hunting right up there?

KEVIN CEASE: Well, we don't talk about it year round as a family. We have our normal lives. And a lot of other family matters come into play. But then this time of year comes around and I can't-- I've been hunting since I was 13. I'm 37 now. So it's 24 years that I've been hunting. I can't think of anything I've done for 24 years in a row. I think I've missed one or two when I was in college. But--

And similar cast of characters every year. And there's this sense of tradition that is very comforting. You come in and you see people pretty much in the same place every year. And we always tell the same stories every-- we might add one or two every year to the lexicon of our camp. But there's this kind of techno speak or this kind of lexicon that we enjoy at our camp.

And if you came in from the outside, you wouldn't talk about it. But for instance, Corey. My deer stand blew down. I told you that, didn't I?

COREY CEASE: Yeah, you did.

KEVIN CEASE: But I checked out Murphy's old stand?

COREY CEASE: Yeah.

KEVIN CEASE: Yeah, you know where that is. It's about the old red stand. Of course, the red stand isn't there anymore, but you go through there. That's the one that Andre shot those two buckets in opening morning, wasn't it?

COREY CEASE: Yeah. Then he had this goal, pin him right between the eyes, so he's bleeding a little bit.

KEVIN CEASE: Yeah. But it's right by that other stand, that tall one. But that blew down a couple of years ago. And so it's all these things. Unless you have this history, you wouldn't know what we're talking about or where we're talking about.

RACHEL REABE: So when you guys are out for your deer hunting expedition, do you talk about your other lives? Corey, are you telling them about your bad knee or what's going on with your job? Or when you get there, is it deer hunting time?

COREY CEASE: It's a little of each, I guess. You get some of that regular life out of the way so you can get into the mode. And--

RACHEL REABE: [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: --you get into dear hunting mode and you start talking deer hunting. And--

KEVIN CEASE: It's interesting, though, because--

COREY CEASE: --teasing people.

KEVIN CEASE: --I'll go home and Ann will say, so how Corey and Betsy doing? And-- well, we got a deer. [LAUGHS] Well, didn't you talk about what they're doing? And they're, you know, it's like, uh-- well, he missed a deer. [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: So not too much conversation about outside life. Do you guys have-- is it quite competitive when you go out with a group? Corey, are you like, if I could just get one and beat Kevin this year, if I could just pull ahead of him? Do you have your long term standings printed someplace or does everybody have that memorized?

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: Funny you might ask that.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: We used to--

RACHEL REABE: You spent last night compiling your stats.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: We used to have an old mobile home we'd pull in for deer camp. And we actually had everyone's name listed. And every year, and what they shot, a doe, or buck, and whatnot. A few of us, it broke up a little bit. We went out of state and they sold the trailer house. But it was right on the wall. So somebody started lying about what they had shot. We just point out, no, no, no. You shot a doe that year or you didn't shoot anything at all.

KEVIN CEASE: So but now, without this written record, we're trusting our memories. And so this is-- we can argue about this for hours, and it's great because we don't have to settle it. And sometimes, the history gets bigger than ever. So you can always just expand maybe what the truth might have been. Just a little.

RACHEL REABE: Although--

KEVIN CEASE: That happens at deer camp always.

RACHEL REABE: --when I called you, Kevin, and I said, are you a deer hunter? You're like, yes, I'm a huge deer hunter. And I said, well then, you've gotten a deer every year? No, I can't remember the last time I shot a deer.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS] Well, that's why I was laughing when you asked Corey if it's competitive. Sure, it's competitive. It just doesn't take much to do better than me when I'm actually out in the woods.

RACHEL REABE: How many deer have you shot in your entire career?

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: Not shot at, but shot.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: Do you run out of fingers and toes, Kevin, or--

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS] I think three. What do you think?

COREY CEASE: Yeah, who's counting, right?

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: Corey, does that mean you've shot more than three?

KEVIN CEASE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

COREY CEASE: Yeah, I guess, I probably have.

RACHEL REABE: Like, five? Bigger than a breadbox.

COREY CEASE: Well, it's not written down, so there's probably a few dozen out there in the past few years. No.

KEVIN CEASE: He's probably shot, I bet you, 20. [LAUGHS]

COREY CEASE: It's hard to say. Half dozen to a dozen.

RACHEL REABE: You told me you were thinking about this story before you come in here.

[LAUGHTER]

Tell me your most exciting story, Corey. Now, with no help here from Kevin.

KEVIN CEASE: Can I laugh?

RACHEL REABE: Tell me, what was the most exciting thing that ever happened to you in the deer stand?

COREY CEASE: Well, I don't know if anything stands out more than any others, but it's fun when somebody-- if myself, I get a deer or if somebody else does, and you're involved in tracking it. Somebody might shoot a deer and come back to camp and say, well, we're going to go track it. A lot of times, you'll let a little time go by before going out and scaring it up.

And it's fun to be involved or going out to help your brother drag one in. And it's--

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS] He haven't had to help me very much.

COREY CEASE: I think it all-- the excitement that is in all of that actually, for me. Though, I do remember shooting a few bucks and felt really good. So I mean, as far as a fulfillment, you get all your scouting and put your stand out, and everything clicks. You see the deer and you get it.

RACHEL REABE: So you were walking a little taller when you came home that year, Corey?

COREY CEASE: Oh, yeah, you always do.

KEVIN CEASE: King of the camp.

COREY CEASE: It's something, opening morning, a lot of years, we'll meet for lunch or something. And so everyone's checking everybody out and seeing, well, do they have blood or deer hair on their feet or hands or whatever. And so it's a joke to see how long you can go if you shot a deer without anyone realizing it.

And if you can make it, a lot of times you'll crack before then. And you'll have to just blurt it out. So--

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: Kevin, your best story, your most exciting time at the deer stand.

KEVIN CEASE: I haven't had that many exciting time because mine all revolve around other deer people also have shot. But there's one time where, pretty much-- in fact, there's a couple of years, Corey alluded to it, where people weren't out of state and they just couldn't make it back. And so it was only me, my brother, Kent, and I. That was it. That was our deer camp. And so--

RACHEL REABE: So the Cease family--

KEVIN CEASE: We didn't stay. I go with them.

RACHEL REABE: --diminished considerably.

KEVIN CEASE: Exactly. But we had to keep our-- stake out our territory, and keep doing what we had to do. And so we didn't stay out there. Usually, we bring a tent and stay right at the site. And it's fun. It's a combination of public and private land. And so we're just-- you don't have to move anywhere. You're right there. But this time, since there's only two of us, we're not going to camp out there. It's a lot of work to do that.

And so it's Sunday night, opening weekend, it's just us two. And we can party hunt. And all of a sudden, just before dark, I hear three shots by Kent's stand. And it just started to snow. And he just had built the stand. We call it now the old buck stand because he had stolen it from Corey, since Corey was gone, right? But the stand is [INAUDIBLE]

COREY CEASE: Yeah. And then the year I came back, he shot three 8 pointers out of it. And that really-- I wanted to stand back then, but--

KEVIN CEASE: That's right. But now it's Kent stand. But Corey will call it the old buck stand. So because you have to label the stands. And it's dark now. And it just been clear cut, probably, about four or five years ago-- four or five years before that. And so there are these saplings, there's poplar saplings, and it's dark.

And we had compasses, but that doesn't always help you in the dark with snow because you look up, we had flashlights, and the snow was going all around us. We were dragging these. He had shot in two, a buck and a doe. Shot my doe tag, which I had gotten. And I wanted to go up--

RACHEL REABE: You sound happy to have something to put that tag on.

KEVIN CEASE: OK. But we still had another weekend. And that means I don't get to hunt because we filled up our tags. So thanks a lot, Kent, already. I'm already torqued off at him. And then we got to drag these things out of his stand, which is way back in the woods, through these saplings that are just barely maneuverable through. And then halfway through, because of the snow, he got lost. And so we're making circles, dragging these deer. It took us--

RACHEL REABE: Bet you're sorry you missed that year, Corey.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS] And it took us at least an hour to drag these things out. And then finally get out there and we're going, [PANTING]. And we load them up in his pickup. And he got stuck in the pickup, on top of it. And then his pager went off because we needed to go back home. Everybody was wondering where we were. It was way after dark. They're checking up on us. And we didn't have a cellular phone back then.

And so we had-- all we had was this-- it was hung up in this log, and all we had was this little hatchet. And it was this huge Papa log. And we spent another hour and a half chopping this darn log down so we can get out of the woods. Finally did.

So that's not really an exciting deer hunting story, but I'd never let-- every year, I'd never let my brother, Kent, forget that.

RACHEL REABE: When you guys go out, do you say to yourselves, well, don't shoot my dear? I don't care if I go home with nothing, don't shoot it.

COREY CEASE: I think when we're younger, it was a lot more competitive. But as the years go by, you're just happy that somebody else can get a deer and have the experience. And it's not quite that competitive now.

But when we were younger, we definitely were, that's my dear, I saw it first, or whatever. But it's changed a lot since then.

KEVIN CEASE: Again, try to picture this. Here's our father who has-- at that time, I'm two years older. So when my brothers first hunted, they were 13. I was 15. He has four kids in the woods with guns. Can you imagine that?

RACHEL REABE: I'd be in the--

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: I'd be in that trailer, staying real low underneath the windows.

KEVIN CEASE: And amazingly, though, we all made it. And I was carrying the old gun. We've got this gun. And Brett's going to get it this year, two years. But my brothers ended up with a single shot, 30, 30. How well did that shoot, Corey?

COREY CEASE: Well, we'd go out before season and shoot them and have a hard time hitting the target.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: Wasn't the best sighted gun ever. So you started when you're 13. Is that legal in Minnesota that at 13, you can go out and hunt? If you've had, do you have to have a class first?

KEVIN CEASE: You have to have your drivers-- your hunter safety class.

RACHEL REABE: OK. Kevin, you brought your son, Brett, along today. Brett is 13 years old, is in the seventh grade in Bemidji. He's skipping school today to talk to us about deer hunting.

Brett, this is your first hunt this year. So you've gone through your class. Are you ready to go out with these guys, Brett?

BRETT CEASE: Well, I guess.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm still thinking about it, but yeah.

RACHEL REABE: Tell me what you're most excited about.

BRETT CEASE: Well, probably, what every boy is interested in is just getting a buck the first year, and bragging about it the rest of deer camp.

RACHEL REABE: Are you kidding, Brett? You hear your dad saying, you'll be bragging about the rest of your life. This may have to stand you for the next 30 years.

So when you hear grownups say, like your dad, I don't really care if I shoot anything. I don't care. I just want to go out in the woods. You would say what? I care--

BRETT CEASE: I want to get a deer.

RACHEL REABE: You care desperately at 13?

BRETT CEASE: Well, not desperately, but yeah, still.

RACHEL REABE: So what time will you be getting up on Saturday?

BRETT CEASE: 4:00 to 5:00, maybe.

KEVIN CEASE: Yeah, about 4:00.

RACHEL REABE: And have you ever been to-- do you get to go to deer camp, even when--

BRETT CEASE: Yeah, I've been there. My dad's been taking me since I was three or two. So I know the setting and everything, but this is the first year I'm probably going to handle a gun by myself, so it's pretty exciting.

RACHEL REABE: And do you have your own gun, Brett? Or are you using this old--

BRETT CEASE: I'm using the traditional one.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS] What is it, Brett?

BRETT CEASE: It's the Winchester lever-action 30-30.

RACHEL REABE: And so this year, will you be going to your own stand? Or when you're 13--

BRETT CEASE: No.

RACHEL REABE: --do you go to a stand with your dad?

BRETT CEASE: My dad's still going to watch over me.

KEVIN CEASE: We talked about this. And he's actually been in the stand with me before. And so we know about this. But this year, I'm in with him, I'm just going to be his shadow and just being with him. And he's using this gun that's my grandfather, his great grandfather used, my father used, all of my brothers and I used.

And so I'm just going to be his shadow there. I think it might be a little bit easier. Plus it'll make us that bonding experience there. It won't be so lonely in the woods then.

RACHEL REABE: But can you talk when you're on the deer stand or is that totally taboo?

BRETT CEASE: No, no.

KEVIN CEASE: Can't talk in the woods.

BRETT CEASE: Sacred.

KEVIN CEASE: That's right.

RACHEL REABE: Corey, I think you'd have an easier time with that than your older brother.

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: Would I be right about that? That's got to be the big challenge for you, Kevin, is sitting up there, silent.

KEVIN CEASE: Well, actually, it's funny you should mention that, because for me, obviously, I do like to talk a lot. But when I'm forced to sit alone, I really hesitate to call it a sacred experience or a spiritual significance, but it's a time of year when there is no phones, there's no kids, well, this year somebody will be bugging me, but there's no outside interference. And I can just sit there for hours and hours-- no TV, no radio, no nothing.

And you just-- it reaches inside of you. It touches something very, very, very old and ancient inside of you. And silence is good. I've found that out. There's solitude, which is a very good thing. You're not alone. That means you're lonely, but solitude means that you've got to focus, and it's exciting.

And then buck fever usually sets in somewhere. So I mean, that is one of the neatest rushes that you'll ever get in your whole life, this adrenaline surge that you, oh, I hear something. It could be. And you start looking. And then your heart rate starts getting a little bit bigger. And you hear something crashing a little bit farther. And it could be anything. You don't know what it is. And it might come later, it might come later. And then it might go away. And then pretty soon, everything starts looking like a deer. You see twigs rustling in the grass. And pretty soon, they're antlers. And you see some squirrel.

RACHEL REABE: That squirrelly horn.

KEVIN CEASE: And you can swear it's a deer and--

COREY CEASE: Or a squirrel, whatever.

RACHEL REABE: Brett, do you have the first dibs on anything that comes by your stand? Was that the agreement you made with your dad that yeah, yeah, you'll go up with him in a stand, but you get first shot?

BRETT CEASE: Yeah, pretty sure.

RACHEL REABE: Brett, tell me, in school, are other kids talking about deer hunting? Because you're in the seventh grade and you're all probably 13 years old or almost 13 years old, are your friends, are they excited about hunting? Or is hunting not a big deal for today's 13 year olds?

BRETT CEASE: Well, as a matter of fact, this lunch period, I heard some people asking, well, who's going deer hunting this season? And what time are you getting up? And all those questions. So yeah, it's not the biggest deal right now, but some people are talking about it.

RACHEL REABE: And do you feel, Brett, like after Saturday, you're going to be a man or you're going to go out as seventh grader, but you'll be coming back whether you-- or do you have to shoot something before you really feel like you've crossed the great veil?

BRETT CEASE: I probably have to shoot something before I cross the threshold. Yeah.

RACHEL REABE: But some stories wouldn't hurt.

BRETT CEASE: No, I can make up a couple along the way. Yeah.

RACHEL REABE: Are you the first of the Cease grandchildren to go out hunting now? Are you the oldest of the grandchildren in the family?

BRETT CEASE: Yeah, my cousins are only two and four, so I'm going to be the first one.

RACHEL REABE: Kevin, you also have a daughter. When she turns 13, will she join the group?

KEVIN CEASE: Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it? My feeling is if she chooses that she wants to be a part of this whole experience, I would love to invite her into that whole process.

RACHEL REABE: Has she been out to deer camp?

KEVIN CEASE: Yes. Yes. Yeah, she's been out to deer camp, too. My spouse feels a little bit differently than I do. And I'm sure we'll come to terms, somehow. But I'll probably leave it up to Allison. So--

RACHEL REABE: Brett, do you have any concern that you might see the deer, you might be there in the deer stand, and then at last minute, you just think, I can't do it, I just can't do it? Or is that not going to be happening?

BRETT CEASE: Well, it depends on what happens during that time. I'd pretty try desperately to get the buck or whatever the deer I shot. But if somebody was in the way or something like that, no.

KEVIN CEASE: We've talked a lot about safety. And especially when you bring a new hunter in, that's something that's a big concern. We have had people in our deer hunting party in the past that haven't observed some of our-- we are really very, very strict and very, very fussy about safety because it is a big deal. And they haven't been invited back. So Brett is just making just an allusion to that, if it's a good shot, take it. But if you're even questioning it, just don't even-- don't worry about it. It's not worth taking the shot.

RACHEL REABE: Now a story in the Minneapolis Tribune this morning, talking about 12 to 17-year-old hunters, twice the accident rate of the hunting population in general. Does that scare you as a dad?

KEVIN CEASE: It does. It really does. But since I'm going to be with Brett this first year, it concerns me less because I'll be right with him. And also, again, Brett seen what this gun can do. We've--

BRETT CEASE: We've taken it out and shot it into puddles and trees.

KEVIN CEASE: And he's aware of the great danger. And then I get to tell him my story. When I turned 13, I forgot to the part where the same very gun, I wasn't really totally aware of how it worked. And I was ejecting. It's a lever-action. And then I'd put the hammer down because the hammer would be back. And I'm worried about safety. And then I'd put it back. And then I'd do the lever-action, eject the shell.

And my brother, Kurt, was there. And he's bending down to pick up the shells as I ejected it. And the hammer slipped out of my thumb. And it just went off as he was bending down to pick up, another foot. We'd be talking a lot different. So that has imprinted me ever since. I mean, that was extremely--

COREY CEASE: Imprinted everybody, I think.

RACHEL REABE: [LAUGHS]

KEVIN CEASE: Everybody in our camp. And in fact, Brett, how many times have you told me to tell that story?

BRETT CEASE: About close to the umpteenth time.

KEVIN CEASE: Yeah. So safety is a very, very critical factor in our family.

COREY CEASE: And as far as success for Brett, I'll probably take him out so he can actually get a deer rather than just go out with his dad. So--

KEVIN CEASE: [LAUGHS]

RACHEL REABE: So that might be easier. Corey, what do you think about in the deer stand? So if you guys get up at 4:00 or 5:00, and you're in your stand a half hour before sunrise, and you stay there straight through until lunchtime, or do the hardcore ones do, sometime, you just stay there all day till sundown?

COREY CEASE: Yeah, we usually bring a lunch with. And if it's nice weather or if you just feel like staying, you stay. And the code is not to bother someone if they don't come in for lunch. And I end up thinking about a lot of things in your life and going through a lot of it, and planning, and thinking about whatever issues are going on in your life at the time, or you just might be enjoying the scenery.

RACHEL REABE: So is it a spiritual experience? I hear people say that over and over again, that when they go out hunting, and I don't know if it's the fact of being in the woods or if it's because it's, perhaps, the first time in months we have stood still long enough to think a cogent thought. I don't know what it is. But what's your thought on it?

COREY CEASE: Well, I think, maybe for some people, it might be the only time they're out there in the woods and really taking a chance to really soak it in. And it probably is a lot different experience where I tend to be out there a lot more than that and hoping for a deer and thinking about, well, if this doesn't work out here, where else am I going to go tonight or tomorrow morning? Maybe in the early years, it might have been a little more, but it's less so now.

KEVIN CEASE: For me, what Corey is getting, I don't get a lot of chance just to be out in the woods alone. And for me, I end up thinking about creation. And gosh, what a neat thing nature is and how lucky we are to live in a world that God's created like this. And you get to observe nature in its full force. And then something comes along and you aim a gun at it. It's an oxymoron. I do realize I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth, but--

RACHEL REABE: Well, we've heard today, people calling up and saying, how could you ever deer hunt? And if you are a conservationist, you cannot be a hunter. Or if you are an environmentalist, that does not go along with being a hunter. Your take on that, Corey.

COREY CEASE: Well, I guess, I look at it as if you're out there to take an animal and to eat the meat, a lot of people are out there, eating hamburgers and eating animals they never saw or never saw killed. And this way, when you eat that meat, you know exactly what happened. And as a meat eater, I tend to appreciate what I'm eating a little differently than going to a supermarket and buying a bunch of ground up meat and thinking, it just comes in white packages.

RACHEL REABE: So not unlike the experience of the gardener who picks the tomato, and comes in, and slices it as opposed to just throwing it in the brown paper bag with the rest of the groceries and bringing it home? A connection [INAUDIBLE]

COREY CEASE: Well, it's a little different. A big brown eyed animal is a little different than a vegetable. And I think most hunters, whether they admit it or not, probably have some period of remorse after they kill an animal and go there to go through the other process of field dressing it and all. And every time you field dress an animal, you're probably thinking-- I personally think about what it is I just did because you get inside field dressing animal, and you're right in the thick of it. But it's all the process. I love to eat the meat and love sausage and jerky and--

KEVIN CEASE: And we've talked about this, too, a lot of times. We've grown up with this tradition. And for us, I mean, there's two different things, there's the tradition, there's the hunt part that, I think, we're talking about. But when you grow up at it, it's normal. Everybody does it. You don't think about it very much. It's just something that you do.

And it's a part of our annual calendar of events. And we just know it's deer hunting, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to get together. We're going to see that same ugly hat that you're going to wear every year. And we wear the same costumes, if you want to call it, every year. And there's something comforting in that.

And then listening to-- we have a brother, Kent, who tells the same story, takes him half an hour to tell it every single year.

COREY CEASE: We warn people. And I actually time him. And it takes him a half hour to tell the story.

RACHEL REABE: Is this the story of the time you almost killed him?

KEVIN CEASE: No, no, no.

COREY CEASE: No.

RACHEL REABE: This is different.

KEVIN CEASE: This is some other-- this is another story, but we got him down to 20 minutes last year, I think, wasn't it?

COREY CEASE: Yeah, it's when he was hunting in Wyoming and it's just a long story.

KEVIN CEASE: It's a long story.

RACHEL REABE: We have 25 minutes now before 1 o'clock. Dr. Dwight Fultz, a psychology professor at Bemidji State University, is joining us now in the studio to give his perspective on the culture of deer hunting.

And Dr. Fultz, you also are from the Bagley area, along with the Cease brothers, and you are a lifetime hunter as well. We have talked today with their own particular experiences about hunting. Do you find those to be universal in a sense?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, I'm thinking of all kinds of hunting stories of my own. So--

RACHEL REABE: So it brings that out in you.

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Yes. And listening to the stories of near death and a lot of years without getting deer, as far as my own experience, it feels universal. And lore, nationwide, does seem to-- hunting lore seems to include a lot of the same kinds of stories, the same kind of meaning. And I don't think there's a lot of variability here in the United States in hunting experiences.

RACHEL REABE: Why is it so important? Why is hunting so important? We talk about it as a ritual and a tradition. Why are those important in our lives?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, I guess, I would talk about those a little differently. The word "Ritual" actually implies something of spiritual or religious significance. It's associated with procedures that have ceremonial, sacred value, and so on. We use the word "Ritual" sometimes loosely, I think, to talk about habits or repetitive behaviors or events, things that we just do. But it implies there's a meaning there and that we tap into something bigger than our own immediate experience.

And as Kevin and Corey were suggesting, there is something very, very solemn and meaningful about not just going out into the woods, not just getting away from offices and children, and becoming inaccessible, in some ways, to the outside world, enjoying nature, and so on. All of that's solemn, back to nature, something you'd get in the boundary waters, which has its own spiritual value. But you're also out there, at least in part, to take the life of an animal, to contribute to the family larder, to be a provider, to be responsible.

RACHEL REABE: So this hunter gatherer, it feeds into it. That's all part of it.

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Yeah. I don't think we even need to think of this hunter gatherer a tradition or a need or a ethic as a primitive sort of thing. I did grew up on a farm as well. And I remember feeling sorry for my friends who didn't have the experience of raising their own food.

RACHEL REABE: Who were that far removed from it.

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: They were far removed, as Corey was suggesting, this food chain that we're a part of. I had to remove the heads from chickens in order to eat them. And they thought that was awful. I remember a friend who was horrified when she discovered where milk came from, because it was so gross, as she put it.

But I think there's a sense of responsibility, a sense of rightness in participating close to the action in the food chain. And there's something solemn about taking this life, about doing it in a safe manner, about doing it ethically, about participating in a responsible way. As Brett is anticipating, the grown up responsibilities that come along with it, I think, are powerful.

RACHEL REABE: I want to talk to you about those rites of passage. But first, we're going to go to a very patient, John, calling us from Saint Paul.

Good afternoon, John.

AUDIENCE: I'm on the air? Hello.

RACHEL REABE: We've got you on the phone. Go ahead, John.

AUDIENCE: Thanks. I just wanted to address the issue of not getting it. To me, wilderness is a religion. And I've hunted for 25 years. I've taken a trip around the world. And it's a religion on the decline. Worldwide, there's a decline of wilderness and people that harvest it and commune with it.

And it seems to be that this century is a century of moving away from wilderness towards the city and technology and corporations who are taking control of a lot of our wilderness. And I just think it's a great loss. And our religious people, the Jews look at the Christians and say, I don't get it. And the Muslims look at the Christians and say, I don't get it. And city people look at wilderness people and say, I don't get it. It's just a big kind of a Buddhist thing, where if you harvest this deer, it doesn't die, it lives in you. It's a bigger thing than we are.

And from the religious aspect of it, I think of the wilderness as my religion. And I mourn the loss of the wilderness worldwide. It's happening everywhere. And the people that harvest it are being pushed out into city jobs, where really, their life is less of a life. And if you can get out and be in wilderness in any way, the deer hunters, the fishermen, or any kind of a wilderness communal experience, I think it's great for individuals, it's great for their soul, and it's a spiritual experience. So I'm all for it in any way that you can commune with that beauty that's in wilderness. That's my experience with it.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Fultz, let's talk about this. How common is that to think of wilderness or hunting actually as a form of religion?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, I'm not an expert in all the forms of religion. Certainly, nature has been worshiped. People feel often spiritual, in one sense, when they get into nature, when they interact with it. I think nature is powerful. I think it's beautiful. And certainly, there are religions that exalt certain parts of nature and worship them. But again, I'm not familiar with the various religions, so I couldn't name specifics.

The tendency, though, to worship something that's powerful and beautiful and beyond our control, I think, is universal. We don't-- it may be a reaction against the concept of God, a person, so that we worship nature. I'm not sure.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go back to the earlier point I wanted to make. We heard Brett Cease in here, a 13-year-old, going out for his first hunt. And we heard from his dad, Kevin, when he was 13 years old and went to the woods, and what an important rite of passage that was for him.

Do we have a serious lack of rites of passage in our culture now? I hear people often saying, when is it you get to be a grown up? We don't have any formalized ceremony for the most part. Are these rites of passage quite important? What function do they serve?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, I think we come up with rites of passage. And I'm not quoting research here or anything. These are observations. Every group seems to have rites of passage. If you live in a big city, if you live in another country, if you don't hunt, if you do, you will have rites of passage. And every group seems to have theirs, whether it's getting a driver's license or having children or something else in this area, hunting is one of those, I think we will have rites of passage. We need markers and methods by which to confer status, and maturity, and responsibilities on people.

So I think we'll find them wherever we are. Hunting is just another one that we seem to prefer here in Northern Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: We've talked about earlier in this show, going out into the woods, getting away from your regular life, not having the laptop computer, not having the TV, the VCR, the Nintendo, all the electronic gadgets and gizmos that become such a part of everyday life. You hear people constantly saying, I can't think if there's not some other noise in the background, if I don't have the radio on, if I don't have the TV on.

What function does it serve going away into the woods and hearing the silent? Do we see a rebirth of conversation in these outings when people go out and must speak to each other instead of watching a screen together?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, one of the observations that I've made over the years is that there are a lot of groups that seem to go to the woods, pull the camping trailer out there, or go to the hunting shack, who very fiercely protect their culture they've developed, which is a inaccessible culture.

And when somebody brings high tech equipment, someone brings a phone-- excuse me, someone brings a phone or a pager, as I guess Corey had, or has access to the outside world, there are sanctions in place by the group, that this isn't the way we do things. We don't bring TVs. We don't bring radios. We talk with each other. We tell jokes, stories, lies, whatever we want to tell.

Many groups seem to develop or carry out something that I think is as close as some of us come to an oral tradition in that-- yeah, in Cease's case, they marked down deer that were gotten. And then they sold the house. So now they can go on with the tradition.

And oral tradition sometimes encapsulate values of a group or almost caricaturize what this group stands for. The stories that are told year after year are stories that are funny for a reason because maybe someone stumbled over some group norms or because they are powerful, danger was involved, or because of a particular incident that stands out in that group's collective mind as being important. And so we develop an oral tradition. We need to tell the stories.

And Cease's case, Kent probably needs to tell this story. It wouldn't be hunting season without it, even though anybody could tell it. They've heard it enough times. It's still important.

RACHEL REABE: Do we love the repetition of it? I've heard deer hunting groups who say, we have the same hot dish always the Friday night before deer hunting. We get up at the same time always on opening day. We eat the same things. I heard Kevin and his brother talk about wearing the same crummy old hat that they wore every year. The son now is hunting with the same gun that his father had his first hunt, the grandfather's gun, the great grandfather's gun.

Is repetition important to adults as much as it is to kids? It seems like children love to do the same thing to know, yes, we're always going to have wild rice soup on Christmas Eve because mom, you made it last year and the year before, and I guess, that qualifies as a tradition. We know it's important for kids. Is it important for adults?

DR. DWIGHT FULTZ: Well, I guess, I'm thinking of two answers to that-- one, yes, it is important. Repetition is efficient. Habits are efficient. At the same time. One thing that ritual type behaviors actually do habits with meaning, if I could say it that way, one thing they seem to do is to easily help us to connect with this bigger context we belong to, the meaning of the event. And whether it's a religious event or a hunting kind of event, there's a deeper meaning behind it. There are values there. There's family history. There's a sense of rootedness. We have names for places, names for stories. We have categories for our fellow hunters that tie us back often into a history, our roots.

Let me give an example that I'm thinking of as I'm saying this. The land that I hunt on with my family. I have a fairly large family. And our extended family hunting group gets to be fairly large. It's land that's now public land, on which my father was born. And my grandparents homesteaded on this land. My grandfather cleared, with an ax and horses, the field that is there. And my father was born out there in the woods. We can see the hole in the ground where the cellar was. The house was burned down years later.

And when we hunt over this land and when we tell stories about it, we know the land. We know the hills. We know the swamps. We know the old roads. And we have names for them from long, long ago. And people that my dad knew as a child seem as familiar to us as if we knew them personally. And that sense of being rooted, of belonging to the land, to that place in this part of the country is very, very strong, especially during hunting season. That's where we go back to those roots. And the stories serve that purpose and the repetition easily connects us.

RACHEL REABE: We have spoken during much of our show today, two men about deer hunting. It's important to point out in the show that deer hunting is not just for men. About 5% of the state's deer hunters are women, and their numbers are growing nationwide. The number of female firearms hunters has jumped almost 30% since 1990.

Jean Bergerson of Grand Rapids has hunted for 30 years. She joins us today to talk about a new national program designed to teach women how to hunt and fish.

Welcome, Jean. Thanks for joining us today.

JEAN BERGERSON: Good afternoon.

RACHEL REABE: You're the state coordinator for the Becoming an Outdoor Woman Program. What's that all about?

JEAN BERGERSON: Well, it's about getting more women involved in what have been traditionally male sports, hunting and angling. And we do workshops and formats in which we want to teach and familiarize women with hunting and shooting sports, angling and other related activities to that. And we also do canoeing and nature photography and some of the more non-consumptive traditional outdoor activities.

RACHEL REABE: You heard the statistics. And you know it anecdotally yourself that there are more women that are interested in hunting and deer hunting. Big game. Going after big game. Are you personally seeing more women in the woods? Is it not unusual in 1997 to see a party come through and to see a woman as part of it, or to see a party of all women?

JEAN BERGERSON: Well, it's interesting because I'm just starting to see parties of mostly women or all women. I've bow hunted for a number of years and hunted by myself. And I'm just seeing women reach a comfort level with being in the woods and with hunting, where they will go and do those things by themselves rather than always needing to be part of the traditionally male family group or doing it with a significant other.

RACHEL REABE: I've seen statistically that most women get into hunting because they're either born into a family or they have a husband who takes them hunting, teaches them hunting, or a boyfriend. When people don't-- when women don't have those opportunities, they didn't grow up in a hunting family. And whether there are men in their life or not, they're not learning it from them. Is that why the workshops that there has to be an opportunity to teach these skills if people don't have another way to learn them? You can't just get a gun and head out for the woods, I wouldn't think.

JEAN BERGERSON: Well, it's interesting because we have women from 18 to 80 in the workshops. And some of them are women who traditionally hunted in the way that you're talking. They were small children and started out like I did, with a family group. And then got into those other rituals of life that Dr. Fultz was talking about, having children, raising families, working. And some of them, once they retired, said, I really remember, as a kid, doing these things. And I would like to go back to them.

Some of them are women that are single parent moms that are saying, jeez, I've got a son or a daughter at home that would really like to do these things. And I'd really like to learn about them so I could go with them or so I could teach them. And others are just women that are striking out independently and saying, jeez, this seems like fun. I'd like to give it a try.

So women approach things in different ways. I was just talking to a couple of fellows yesterday. And I said, guys would go to the sports shop and buy a gun and buy a license and say, well, I'm going to do it. And women say, I'm going to go to the library and read about it, or I'm going to take a workshop, or I'm going to go to a clinic, and I'm going to learn about it. And then from there, I'll decide whether I'm going to really do it or not.

RACHEL REABE: So a whole different way of learning about it.

JEAN BERGERSON: It's a different approach. And I think part of that has been the insecurity of not traditionally doing those things. And so you don't feel like innately, you ought to be able to go out and deer hunt. So you research it and you want to make sure that you do a good job of what you're doing because women do not do it for the same, I hate to call it macho reasons, but they're not as competitive about their sports as men are. And so they do it more because they enjoy nature and because they want to do some of the other things that are associated with hunting rather than just harvesting the animals.

RACHEL REABE: Jean, how did you get into hunting?

JEAN BERGERSON: I got into hunting, it's interesting, the same way that the other folks did. I was raised on a farm. And killing animals for food was part of the culture of the farm, whether it was the chickens Dr. Fultz was talking about or shooting the squirrels so they didn't raid the corn crib and make a mess out of our crop that we needed for the cattle for the winter. And a lot of us that were raised on farms got into hunting out of necessity, and then in adult life, [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me, realized that that was our connection to nature and wanted to maintain it for that reason.

RACHEL REABE: We have a phone call on the line. Pat, you can go ahead with your question or comment, if you would.

AUDIENCE: OK. I was just chewing my lunch, so I might sound funny. I wonder what it is that's caused these men to doubt their masculinity so much that they have to feel that they have to go out and kill something, a creature that's not threatening them and they don't need for food. I just heard that women like to do it too. I think that's more an artificial thing that women-- it's rather new for women to do it in great numbers.

And they're talking about being alone in the woods. And there's wondrous spiritual experience being one with nature. You don't have to kill something to be alone in the woods and have a spiritual experience. As for food, there is no-- I can't see any opposition between eating meat that you get commercially and not wanting to kill deer. Because you don't need the deer for food. We can go to the store and buy meat. And I'm a carnivore, I don't think it's wrong to eat meat, but you don't need to do this.

So I just wonder, what has happened to these men, modern men, that they feel they have to do this? I'd like to hear some theories about this, besides the wonderful traditions.

RACHEL REABE: Jean, let's have you address that. Why the need to hunt? Do you feel a need to hunt or is it like any other activity, you just enjoy hunting?

JEAN BERGERSON: Well, I'd like to make, probably, three comments on that. One is, it's not new to women, it's actually very old to women that traditionally, frontier women did hunt because their husbands were off trapping or doing other things. And they hunted to provide food for their families.

Now, the caller's point is that we no longer need to do that. That's true. But one of the reasons that I hunt is it's far healthier food than you can buy in a grocery store. It's far lower in cholesterol. And I honestly and seriously enjoy eating wild game far more than anything I can buy in a grocery store.

RACHEL REABE: Jean, have you been surprised by the interest shown in your becoming an outdoor woman workshops? And you have, for a year, Minnesota is one state chapter in a national. This is a national organization. We need to make that clear. Have you been surprised by the interest shown?

JEAN BERGERSON: Yes. Nationwide, we have about 10,000 women that have participated in the program since 1991. And I think it's growing. And I think that the reasons it's growing is a couple of things-- more and more women are finding out about the program, but also, more and more women are looking for ways to get out of the urban community and do that reconnection with nature that we were talking about.

RACHEL REABE: Will you be out in the woods or in the fields on Saturday?

JEAN BERGERSON: I have been out in the woods and fields. And I will not be out this Saturday, deer hunting. I no longer firearms hunt in the traditional season. I hunt with primitive weapons. So for the last several years, I've done my deer hunting, either with a bow and arrow or with a muzzle loader.

And interestingly enough, I just returned from a deer hunt in Alabama, which was an all women's hunt, with 27 other women. And it was the first time I had been at deer camp with 27 women. And there were some real interesting observations that those of us that traditionally are part of a all male camp made on that hunt.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for joining us for this special Mainstreet Radio broadcast. We'd like to thank all of our guests today, Joe Wood, Jim Brian, Kevin, Brett, and Corey Cease, Dwight Fultz, and Jean Bergerson, as well as our callers.

Our Saint Paul producer for the show was Sara Myer. Mel Sommer and Kate Smith were the executive producers. Our engineer today was Rick Kaczynski on location, and Randy Johnson in Saint Paul. We'd like to thank Kristi Booth and Ellen Barr of KNBJ KCRB for their hospitality in bringing you this show from Bemidji. Thanks also to our site producer, Joe Kelly.

Minnesota Public Radio's Mainstreet Radio team is Mark Steil, Catherine Winter, Leif Enger, Dan Gunderson, and myself, Rachel Reabe. We invite you to visit the Mainstreet website, go to www.mpr.org, and click Mainstreet. You can access Mainstreet Radio reports. You can also hear this program on the Mainstreet website. The address again is www.mpr.org, and click on Mainstreet.

MPR's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening.

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