Mike Frisch lays out the changes he’s seen and made in his fishing style lately
HEROES HEROES American American Outdoors Outdoors
Organization trades adventures for stories of service and sacrifice
By Robin Fish | Park Rapids Enterprise
A Park Rapids man heads an organization that takes veterans on outdoor adventures all over the Midwest.
David Morse is CEO of American Heroes Outdoors (AHO). Joined by seven directors, three employees and 21 ambassadors, he started AHO in 2014 in Grand Forks, N.D.
Morse moved to Park Rapids in 2017 to be closer to his wife’s family. “I travel a lot, because I’m active duty Army,” he explained. “Since I travel, it’s better for them to be closer to her friends.”
Originally from Dilworth, Morse said he came to Park Rapids kicking and screaming, but he’s grown to love the area. “I was in Europe at the time we put a downpayment on this house,” he said. “But I wouldn’t trade the community for anything. It’s a great place to raise a family.”
As an E8 first sergeant, Morse’s military duty has taken him to Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Norway, Ireland and most states of the U.S. He serves as the northwest region coordinator and Eastern European liaison for the Minnesota National Guard.
“I have seven national guard facilities – Wadena, Detroit Lakes, Bemidji, Fergus Falls, Crookston, Thief River Falls and Moorhead. That’s my day-to-day. But I go to St. Paul every so often; Camp Ripley; and I just got back from Croatia last week.”
He saw combat deployment for 16 months in 2006-07 in Fallujah, Iraq. He said that’s how AHO got started, between his experiences overseas and seeing certain veterans come home and struggle to reintegrate into society.
Morse, at left, presents a wooden U.S. flag to Vietnam Marine recon veteran Jeff Savelkoul.
Contributed Photos / David Morse
“It started out with just hosting adventures,” said Morse. “I feel that being outdoors is calming and rewarding. It gets you fresh air, blood pumping in the lungs. It’s very healthy for you to be outdoors, both spiritually, physically and mentally.”
He said they saw a lot of success as they started hosting trips hunting, fishing and cycling.
“The second side of our mission is (to) capture stories while we’re healing in the outdoors,” he said.
They do this through a TV show that airs on a variety of media platforms. “To tell the stories of our nation’s true heroes while helping them heal in the great outdoors” is their mission statement.
Stories of service and sacrifice
I feel that being outdoors is calming and rewarding. [...] It’s very healthy for you to be outdoors, both spiritually, physically and mentally
-David Morse
“We’ve done about 230 different stories in 10 years,” he said. “We also do short stories, probably around 75 to 100 little, five-minute segments. We partner with other organizations and do smaller series; not just our 30-minute TV series.”
Asked what kind of feedback they get, Morse said, “For every one person that has a bad or an OK experience, there’s probably 100 of them that have an amazing experience, and we’re still good friends. That’s the fun thing, making all these relationships and friendships.
“Some of the stories that we originally did in 2014, the veterans and the heroes that were part of that – World War II, Korea, Vietnam – they’re still mentors and good friends of mine today.”
What kinds of stories have they encountered? “We’ve seen it all,” Morse said. “One of them includes a Marine recon individual who was shot down in Vietnam. He was one of three survivors, and he had burns over 90% of his body.
“He hit the forest floor, and there was enemy all around him, and at the last minute a rescue chopper saw a pen
The American Heroes Outdoors veteran team competes in the Beastmode Challenge endurance race in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.
From left: David Morse, Wade Johnston, Alexander Pohlman and Kyle Grutzmacher.
flare that he had shot through the canopy and they rescued him. He had 25 surgeries, and he’s a walking, talking, real American hero.
“It’s not just stories like that. We’ll take any stories of service and sacrifice. We have a lot of law enforcement and first responders who have amazing stories. We’ve had a handful of POWs that we’ve done stories on. We’ve done Medal of Honor recipients that have some really cool stories. Some of those stories are bone chilling.”
Early on, AHO did a lot of fishing in the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior, offshore from Bayfield, Wisconsin. One of their Marine recon friends brought them to an island that his friend’s family used to own, and AHO crew taped a story about a group of veterans leading them to a memorial they had built there.
“It started out with just his recon team, and it grew and grew from there. There’s hundreds of different insignias and rank all over this tree of healing, and we got to do a flag raising on the memorial. It’s truly amazing,” said Morse.
He said they do about 15 to 20 trips each year. In September, they led a fishing trip to Lake of the Woods. They go to Florida two or three times a year. They’ve gone to the East Coast. They’ve gone big game hunting in the mountains, including an elk hunt in early October.
“It seems like every trip is amazing,” said Morse. “We host a ton of them right here in the Park Rapids area because of all the resources. You can do everything here. Literally, it’s four seasons of outdoors.”
Patriot Houses
Also, there’s a Patriot House Project under the AHO umbrella, providing five ice castles throughout the Midwest. “Smokey Hills Outdoor Store helped us get that off the ground,” said Morse. “It was their vision. We are just the tool for it.”
The ice houses are located in Park Rapids and Detroit Lakes, on Mille Lacs, in South Dakota and in northern North Dakota, and are free for military personnel, veterans, law enforcement and their families.
“Some of the best stories and adventures are when the family gets
to be out with them, using those ice castles in the summer and the winter,” said Morse.
Interested vets, service personnel and first responders can go to patriothouseproject.com or -.org, click “Reserve a House” and send an email. The website also features calendars showing the ice houses’ availability.
Meanwhile, americanheroesoutdoors.com features buttons for “donations & contributions” and to “nominate a hero.”
“Most of our applications come from nominations,” Morse said. “We used to run an application process where anyone could just go on and apply, but it’s better to capture a story when someone nominates someone else based on their service. Because then we get the whole picture, the whole concept. We’re not just about the events; we want to do an event and tell a story.”
Partners, sponsors and volunteers
He said they partner with many other organizations, such as Mandatory Fun Outdoors, also based in Park Rapids. “We’ve done probably a dozen events with Mandatory Fun Outdoors,” he said. “We host probably 10 to 12 different nonprofits that do things like American Heroes Outdoors every year on our show, to help spread the word.”
The AHO website also provides links to these partners as well as episodes of American Heroes Outdoors Television, which air year-round on social media, streaming and traditional TV platforms like Waypoint TV, SportsmanTV, YouTube, Facebook, and during quarter 1 and 2 on the Sportsman Channel and the Outdoor Channel.
Funding for AHO TV is provided by sponsors, while the adventures are
American Heroes Outdoors takes a group of veterans salmon fishing in Algoma, Wisconsin.
American Heroes Outdoors filmed an episode featuring a veterans' pheasant hunt in Aberdeen, S.D.
With American Heroes Outdoors CEO David Morse at front, volunteers Sam Floberg, Greg Nathan, Mike Obach and Todd Simonson work together on a fundraising campaign at the now defunct Drumconrath Brewing Co. in Fargo, N.D.
separately funded through donations and grants.
“We just received a $3,800 from the Knights of Columbus out of Bemidji for a walleye tournament we helped facilitate,” Morse said. “Generous grants and donations like that help keep our events going.”
Asked how he feels about it all, Morse said, “I started it because, when we came back, there were a lot of different
ways to find relief. Some people turned to substance abuse. Some people were in dark places. We found commonality going goose hunting. It pulled a lot of people out dark corners and brought us together.”
Once it got going, he said, it gathered momentum and still hasn’t stopped. “I found the right people to hop on board,” he said. “It’s a feeling of satisfaction, when you volunteer and you build something, whether it’s a model car or a nonprofit organization, to see it grow, reach other people and affect their lives in a positive way. It just helps you sleep at night.”
Robin Fish can be reached at rfish@parkrapidsenterprise.com.
Morse, at right, takes Jeff Savelkoul and his son fishing at Lake of the Woods.
American Heroes Outdoors filmed an episode featuring a veterans’ crane hunt in Rock Lake, N.D.
Est. 1990
Wild Game Sausage Headquarters
FRESH SAUSAGE
Bulk Breakfast
Bulk Mild Italian
Bulk Hot Italian
Bulk Cajun
FRESH BRATS
All smoked brats & sausages available as fresh for $.50/lb less than smoked.
JERKY
Whole Muscle
Ground & Formed (original or teriyaki)
BACON
Ground, Formed & Sliced
SNACK STICKS
Mild Sticks
Spicy Sticks
Teriyaki Sticks
Mild Cheddar Sticks
Spicy PJ Sticks
Jalapeno Cheddar Sticks
(POSSESSION
Garlic Sticks
Garlic Cheddar Sticks
Honey BBQ
Maple Sticks
Maple Jalapeno Sticks
Maple/Blueberry/Jalapeno
Old Smokey Sticks
Pepperoni Sticks
7-Pepper Sticks
7-Pepper w/Pepperjack
Cheese
Hot Italian w/Swiss Cheese
Ragin’ Inferno Sticks
SUMMER SAUSAGE
Regular
Garlic
Peppercorn Sausage
Thuringer
Jalapeno Cheddar
Pepperjack
Bacon Cheddar
Garlic Cheddar
SMOKED BRATS &
SAUSAGES
Bratwurst
Cheddar Brat
Bacon Cheddar Brat
Polish
Andouille
Porketta
Wild Rice Brat
Wild Rice Cheddar
North Country Sausage
Maple Country Sausage
Philly Steak Brat
Kickin’ Cajun Brat
Jalapeno Cheddar Brat
Jalapeno Pineapple
Breakfast Skillet
Western Skillet
Ring Bologna
German Sausage
TRIM BROUGHT IN:
Grind
Grind & Wrap
TREK TAKES PARK RAPIDS
By Craig Bihrle
The expanded version started on March 6, 2023, when Rob Hallstrom, Park Rapids; Paul Dick, Grand Rapids; and Rex Hibbert, Soda Springs, Idaho, left Grand Rapids on their Arctic Cats with plans to wind up in Fairbanks, Alaska, several weeks later. So it was a bit more than a day-ride from Park Rapids to Walker to Bemidji and back. 5,000-mile
Craig Bihrle/For the Enterprise
By the time they reached their end point some 5,000 miles and 38 days later, they were no longer just Rob, Paul and Rex finishing off another snowmobile adventure, such as a previous trip from Minnesota to Churchill, Manitoba on Hudson Bay. They were “3 Old Guys Ride to Alaska,” a Facebook page title that eventually attracted more than 38,000 Facebook followers, plus spawned many guest appearances at trade shows, conventions and club gatherings, numerous media interviews, and even a line of “3 Old Guys” merchandise.
“We had no idea that we would get any publicity,” Hallstrom said from the deck of his home on Little Sand Lake on a colorful early October morning.
“We’ve done other things, maybe not quite this big, but pretty big, and nobody’s ever heard of those, and we didn’t think anybody would hear about this one.”
But people did hear, and read, about “this one.” So much so that even a year-and-a-half later, more than a hundred curious fans packed the Event Room on Oct. 8, as part of a Headwaters Center for Lifelong
Learning event in Park Rapids, to hear Hallstrom’s retelling of the more than five-week journey.
The Facebook page got set up primarily to keep family members informed about where they were at and when they got in safe for the night, Hallstrom said. While they didn’t often have internet access or cell service where they were staying, they did have a satellite connection so they could send a brief message for Hallstrom’s daughter, Kasie Plekkenpol, to share with family members. But Kasie took the info and included additional details in her posts, and that started attracting waves of
I spent my whole childhood reading about polar explorers and gold rush guys and trappers … those were always my heroes. And so we went down the McKenzie River and we went through the Richardson Mountains (northern Yukon, Canada), these are historic routes that were used.
-Rob Hallstrom
interested fans as the “Old Guys” trekked on.
“She just took off with it and did a fantastic job,” Hallstrom said.
The first time they got an inkling that this wasn’t an anonymous trip, like previous rides, was at a little gas station in northern Manitoba, where they stopped to get a cup of coffee since they were ahead of schedule for the day.
“We were leaning on the counter talking to the clerk,” Hallstrom recalled, “and we looked down at the stack of newspapers for sale, and there’s a big article about us in the newspaper!”
Contributed/Rob Hallstrom
That was just the beginning. The growing publicity was not only enjoyable, Hallstrom said, but also helpful several times along the way, as local people who knew they were coming helped them find trails, and provided meals and places to stay.
“You know, there’d be a town of 200-300 people with no road to it, and we’d come into town and people would know who we were. … It was just unbelievable,” Hallstrom noted.
This year, Rex got a new knee to get ready for the trip. We used to buy new parts for the snowmobiles. Now we’re getting new parts for ourselves.
-Rob Hallstrom
Following historic, remote route
The “3 Old Guys” were purposely on a route through towns with no roads to them.
When other groups have taken long-distance snowmobile trips from Minnesota to Alaska, they typically follow an established road system, Hallstrom said. “We intentionally went the opposite of that,” he added. “We took an extremely remote route.”
“I spent my whole childhood reading about polar
explorers and gold rush guys and trappers … those were always my heroes,” Hallstrom explained. “And so we went down the McKenzie River and we went through the Richardson Mountains (northern Yukon, Canada), these are historic routes that were used.”
The first thousand miles of the trip, from Grand Rapids to Flin Flon, Manitoba, was all groomed trails, Hallstrom said, but after that, a lot of the time they were “boondocking,” or following a route, but not a trail.
“We knew where we were trying to go,” he said, but it was often more difficult than simply following a plotted line on a GPS device.
Calling himself “a little bit of an adventure junkie,” Hallstrom, an electrician and electrical superintendent before he retired, said his family was one of the first in town to have a snowmobile back in the mid-1960s.
“I imagined I was going to the North Pole,” he said of his first snowmobile rides with his dad.
The Hallstroms lived in the Twin Cities area at the time, “but my parents were from Thief River Falls and
we went back there a lot. … In the winter when we went back, we’d take the snowmobiles and we’d ride. It was always an adventure, we were going someplace.”
Those childhood and teenage adventures carried into adulthood, which has included, among other things, a dual sport motorcycle ride from the Canadian border to Mexico; wilderness canoeing in Canada; and a cross-country drive with wife MaJeana in a 1972 Ford Bronco to meet up with other vintage Bronco owners in Arizona.
The other two guys, Paul and Rex, met through long-distance snowmobile racing. Hallstrom met them later when he entered a couple of the same races, and that’s how they became friends. “Then we just got too old for racing,” Hallstrom said.
But not too old to take on long distance trips.
At 67, Hallstrom is the youngest of the “3 Old Guys.” Dick and Hibbert are in their early 70s. Plans for future trips are in the works.
Last winter, they were going to try to ride from Grand Rapids to the East Coast, and they had their snowmobiles ready to go, “but we just didn’t have any snow last year, so you couldn’t do it,” Hallstrom said, “so now we’re hoping to do that this year.”
Hallstrom would also like to journey back to where they left off in Fairbanks in 2023, and snowmobile to the west Alaskan coast to Nome.
“So there’s a couple different trips I would like to do,” he said.
But as “3 Old Guys,” he noted, it’s a little different preparing for long trips than it once was.
“This year, Rex got a new knee to get ready for the trip,” Hallstrom said with a chuckle. “We used to buy new parts for the snowmobiles. Now we’re getting new parts for ourselves.”
Craig Bihrle is a retired writer and photographer who lives in the Park Rapids area.
Trip planning and encounters along the way
Planning for a 5,000-mile snowmobile trip, much of which is through wilderness during the cold of winter, takes a long time. Some of this involves planning the route, some of it is all the details of what to bring along that can fit into cargo sleds towed behind each snowmobile.
A fourth sled
The “3 Old Guys” each drove a snowmobile, but in the cargo sleds they basically towed the contents of a fourth machine that was broken down into parts in case one or more of the working sleds needed replacement parts.
Emergencies
The “3 Old Guys” didn’t necessarily plan to camp outdoors on their way, but they brought camping equipment, just in case. Fortunately, they only had to use it once when they couldn’t make it to their planned destination.
“Our goal was not to camp out,” Hallstrom said.
Winter clothes
In addition to typical snowmobile gear, their outfitting included military-style, rubber boots which have the insulation encased in rubber so it still functions if water gets in the boot, plus chest crash protectors and shin pads and knee pads.
Slow going
Hallstrom said they encountered some days “where we were burning more chainsaw gas than snowmobile gas” because of trees across the trail that they had to cut apart and move.
Lots of gas money
The intermittent small towns along the way typically had only one place to buy gas and
that was only open a few hours a day. If they wanted to gas up before or after those hours, they had to pay $50 just to get someone to come to pump what was very expensive gas. Then they’d fill up the sleds and gas containers they were towing along. “It was nothing to spend $500 bucks at a gas station,” Hallstrom said.
Average day
In designing the trip, Hallstrom said they planned for roughly 200 miles a day. Sometimes they made more, sometimes much less. The goal was to get up early and fire up the sleds by about a half-hour before sunrise, and then hope to reach the planned destination with some daylight remaining.
Ideally, Hallstrom said, they could get to the town, gas up for the next day, then scout out the next day’s route out of town before it got dark.
“Our goal was to not ride in the dark,” Hallstrom said. “It didn’t always work, but that was our plan.”
Trip timing
The three planned their trip from early March into April for a couple of reasons. One was that the amount of daylight was significantly longer than in January and February. In northern Canada and Alaska at that time there is still typically plenty of snow, and temperatures are more favorable than early winter.
“A few days it was 20 to 25 below,” Hallstrom told the crowd at the presentation, “but most of the time it was around zero.”
Trip takeaway
“A big part of the trip was the people we met,” Hallstrom said, and a lot of that was due to the social media effort that brought people out to help, or just meet the “3 Old Guys” along the way.
Contributed/Rob Hallstrom
HUNTERS CAN HELP SCIENTISTS UNDERSTAND WILDLIFE BEHAVIOR
By Grace Milanowski | University of Minnesota
Minnesotans are gearing up for the firearm deer season opener on Saturday, Nov. 9, with bow hunting season already underway.
Each hunter is uniquely positioned to help scientists better understand who visits and eats offal, the internal organs of a butchered animal left behind by hunters after field dressing.
Grace Milanowski, University of Minnesota (UMN) Extension’s program coordinator for the Offal Wildlife Watching Project, answers questions about how you can participate.
Q: Why are hunters good candidates for participatory science?
Participatory science, also known as community or citizen science, is research and monitoring that relies on contributions and observations from members of the public. Hunters have been long-time contributors to monitoring efforts and supporters of sciencebased wildlife management.
Hunters have historically contributed samples such as teeth of black bear, waterfowl wings, deer samples for mail-in chronic wasting disease test kits and remote camera observations that are all useful tools to monitor the health and distribution of species.
Many hunters already use tools, like remote cameras, to scout hunting locations. We’re tapping into this knowledge, experience and key observations from hunters to gather more information about how hunter-provided gut piles are being used by wildlife around the state.
Q: How do UMN scientists study offal?
The Offal Wildlife Watching Project is aimed at understanding how hunter-provided offal is used by wildlife in Minnesota. UMN researchers ask volunteer hunter participants to set up remote cameras on the offal they leave behind immediately after they field dress their hunted deer. These cameras collect images of scavenger visitors like fishers, foxes, eagles and other raptors, all the corvid species of birds in Minnesota, woodpeckers, domestic dogs and cats and even other deer.
Over 325,000 images of offal visitors have been collected since the project’s inception, with 2024 being the sixth year of data collection. All project images are posted on the online platform, Zooniverse, where volunteers from all over the world can log on and help identify and classify the wildlife in the images.
Q: How can people join and do you need to be a hunter to help?
Participation from both bow and firearm hunters throughout the state is welcome. Contributions from bowhunters who are hunting earlier in the season and any hunters in southwestern Minnesota are especially needed.
Hunters may use their own cameras or receive the loan of a camera by mail. All shipping costs are covered. Participants can hunt as they normally do and then set the camera up as soon as they’re done field-dressing their deer.
Cameras stay out for one month and then images are used to identify and analyze any visitors. Hunters should be aware of camera regulations in the areas they hunt as there are restrictions to setting up cameras on some public land. Hunter sign-up and camera setting protocols can be found at offal.umn.edu.
Anyone with an internet connection is welcome to help identify and analyze project photos at: zooniverse.org/ projects/embeller/offal-wildlife-watching.
Q: What do you hope to discover?
We’re trying to learn more about how this nutritious food source is being used by Minnesota wildlife. Offal is a human-provided food source that typically wouldn’t be available to wildlife without wide-scale hunting. Early fall is when deer are at peak physical fitness and aren’t typically successfully hunted or scavenged by other wildlife.
We can analyze a lot of different aspects of offal consumption by simply having location data (which we don’t share), a timestamp and images of scavengers. For example, one hunter participant alerted us to new behavior observed of owls and bobcats using gut piles
Minnesota
2023.
Contributed/University of Minnesota
as opportunistic rodent hunting grounds. We have also analyzed how patterns of scavenger visits to offal vary throughout different periods of time and by habitat.
Q: What has the project’s impact been across Minnesota?
We have documented 60 different species of offal visitors since the inception of the project. In our fifth year of data collection, we added 10 new species to that list. We also engaged over 350 hunter participatory scientists who have helped us collect data over the years.
Many participants are surprised and curious to see firsthand how the offal they left behind was consumed. There is still a lot of untapped potential out there, as Minnesota sold over 300,000 deer tags over the past three years. For more information or questions about the project, check out our website or email us at offal@umn.edu.
BOATS,WADERS,&GEAR
A golden eagle scavenging at a hunter provided deer gut pile at Camp Ripley in Little Falls,
in
This photo was captured by an Offal Wildlife Watching Project remote camera.
Frisch: Adapt and Adjust
Mike Frisch lays out the changes he’s seen and made in his fishing style lately
ALEXANDRIA — One thing that I often see from professional anglers, guides, and good “weekend anglers” is the ability to read the current conditions, particularly if they have changed, and adapt and adjust their fishing locations and presentations in response to those changes.
A few examples from my personal fishing experiences this year served as good reminders for me and my fishing partners regarding the importance of adjusting and adapting to the conditions. Mid-summer saw us on a 5,000-acre Midwestern lake with a maximum depth of around 27 feet. In past summers, lots of walleyes have been roaming the extensive and featureless basin of the lake.
We have had good success with the lake trolling crankbaits, in particular small Salmo horns. This day, we got on the water, set our lines to run maybe 2-3 feet off the bottom, and attached off-shore planer boards, which allowed us to spread our lines to cover more water and keep fish from spooking from the boat and our baits. We caught a couple of small fish but noticed several bigger “marks” up 5-to-10 feet from the bottom. We quickly raised our lines to target the 8-10 foot zone from the bottom and were rewarded with several bigger “over” walleyes, those over 20 inches in length.
than I had been fishing. What I found was green, living coontail weeds that were holding good bass. In an hour, we wrapped up the TV shoot with several catches.
Lastly, just days ago, a partner and I were amped up to film a TV show featuring top-water frogs and big largemouths. We spent an hour fishing a couple of very good spots that usually yield fish. With no bass in the boat, we pulled out deeper to try our backup plan, which was casting crankbaits to weedlines and underwater points. Our first stop was a point where we both caught a number of bass in the past. My partner’s first cast with a Pro Model Series 3 crankbait, a traditional bass producer, yielded a 16-inch walleye. Our next two casts led to a double on comparable fish. The fish were aggressive, fought hard, and appeared to be numerous.
We let our upcoming TV guests know what was happening and transitioned to a walleye segment for TV. We didn’t catch any big walleyes but ended up putting around three dozen fish up to around 19 inches in the boat. We got a very nice “casting crankbaits” segment that should be informative and enjoyable for TV viewers this winter. Plus, it was lots of fun for the anglers involved.
Mid-August found me on a smaller lake with good weed growth and lots of largemouth bass. I had been targeting heavy weeds in about 8-to-10 feet and “dropping” big jigs and plastic craws to the fish. This method was putting a couple dozen fish a day in the boat, with several being 2 ½ to 4 pounders. We decided to do a TV shoot detailing this pattern. On “TV day,” however, three hours of fishing had yielded one of those nice largemouth and a few small fish. The one nice fish had come as I randomly pitched my jig to around 13 feet of water while approaching the shallower depths in one of my previously good areas. With that in mind, I decided to probe a bit deeper into water and weeds
The more I fish and learn, the more I realize that the “rules” in fishing seem to be ever-changing. And, if we want to be successful on the water, we need to change as those rules and fishing conditions change. The next time you are on the water and things don’t go as planned, consider the current fishing conditions and how you might adapt and adjust to salvage that day on the water.
As always, enjoy your time on the water, and remember to include a youngster in your next outdoors adventure.
Mike Frisch hosts the popular Fishing the Midwest TV show on Sportsman Channel, World Fishing Network, and Bally Sports. Visit www.fishingthemidwest.com to see more.
Contributed photo
Mike Frisch lands a bass that he caught after making some on the water adjustments.
