Anderson: With Bud Grant gone, his partner recalls good times afield while anticipating Minnesota's deer opener

Pat Smith can remember as if it were yesterday the first time she fired a rifle, because it was the one and only time she shot a deer, an 8-point buck. This was near Roseau, in northern Minnesota not far from the Canadian border. The year was 2019, and she and Bud Grant were in a stand all day, side by side.

Bud and Pat had been partners since after Bud's wife died in 2009 of complications from Parkinson's disease.

While watching for deer on that cold November day, Bud and Pat fell easily into small talk, whispers mostly, and laughs, their on-again, off-again conversation interrupted occasionally by a squirrel scampering along a deadfall or by Canada geese migrating in neat arrows overhead.

"We both shot bucks that day, Bud and I,'' Pat said. "I shot mine first. Then, at the end of the day, another buck appeared and I said, 'You better shoot it, it's going to be dark pretty soon.'"

Replaying like endless videos, memories of her time with Bud, who died in March 2023 at age 95, are what Pat has now.

After his passing, she moved back to Mankato, back to her home after being gone so long. It's there, while working in her yard or cooking dinner or watching a Vikings game on TV, that she often spools in her mind's eye the goose hunts the two of them took to western Nebraska, the duck hunts they made to North Dakota and the fall days they spent at Bud's cabin in northwest Wisconsin.

Growing up in the Twin Cities, Pat didn't hunt or fish. So it was new to her, and fun, these autumnal traditions the two of them forged in their later lives, spending time outdoors together.

"My parents didn't hunt or fish, so I wasn't exposed to it as a girl. But I was happy to go with Bud, so long as I could drive,'' she said. "That was the deal we made. He could look out the window for birds or deer or whatever he could find, and I would drive.''

On their trips, at Bud's Bloomington home, or wherever they were, they bantered. With his sweet tooth, Bud had a hankering for Dairy Queens, and believed it was bad luck to pass one without stopping for at least a cone.

So Pat kept an eye peeled for DQs.

Also, if it was autumn, and someone would ask Bud if the Vikings were going to win on Sunday, Pat knew he'd say, "That's why they play the game.''

Pat also knew what Bud's answer would be if someone inquired about his secret for living such a long life.

"I chew my food,'' he'd say. "Slowly.''

And if a little kid asked Bud for an autograph or a selfie, Pat knew he'd oblige, and knew, too, he'd pull from his timeworn billfold a Vikings sticker and send the young boy or girl away smiling.

A lifelong educator who in retirement still occasionally substitute taught, Pat was considered a streetwise teacher who brooked no foolishness from her students. One time while giving a misbehaving young lad the heave-ho from her class, she called the kid a name that left no doubt about her opinion of him.

"I'll tell my mom,'' the kid said.

"Let's call her right now,'' Pat said.

So it was in ways discernible and indiscernible that Pat and Bud's world views melded, she as a former teacher with a penchant for order and humor, and he as a polio-stricken kid from Superior, Wis., who found athletic fame at the U and in the NBA and NFL before turning to coaching, winning four Grey Cups in the Canadian Football League and leading the Vikings to four Super Bowls.

"Still,'' Bud would tell friends, "I've always felt like an outsider.''

Except, that is, when he was in nature — an awareness that first overcame him as a kid, he told me over the 40 years I knew him. It was then, in autumn, after football practice and on weekends, that he'd catch a city bus to the edge of town, where with his shotgun he'd walk for miles targeting rabbits and grouse.

He'd arrive home with more than feathers and fur, however. Visions of streams came with him, also tall pines and alder thickets and the long shadows of autumn, all of it galvanizing as a sensory feast that infused every part of him, and which he spent a lifetime seeking, and finding, outdoors.

"I'm not a bird watcher," Bud would say. "I'm a bird observer. Bluebirds. Swallows. Wrens. Blackbirds. Crows. Seagulls. And, of course, ducks. I'm interested in all of them."

By October 2020, Bud was 93, and while still capable with a shotgun, he was having trouble swinging fluidly on ducks as they banked swiftly over decoys.

I know this because he, Pat and I were in North Dakota hunting mallards with Bud's longtime friends Mark and Penny Hamilton.

"Pat might say, 'There they are!''' Bud said at the time, referring to Pat's alerts that ducks were approaching. "And I'll say, 'Where?' and she'll say, 'Right in front of you!' But it doesn't bother me. It's part of the aging process."

The same process yielded changes in recent years in the way Bud and Pat hunted deer.

They still wore blaze orange and still climbed into a stand together. But they brought no guns.

Instead, as deer moseyed through the woods toward their perch, they acknowledged with nudges and smiles the sightings of repeat whitetail visitors or the presence of newcomers.

"That's what we did the last few years: Watch deer, not shoot them,'' Pat said. "That and we drove around, talking to other hunters.''

Pat was recalling these good times the other day by phone from her Mankato home.

"What about Saturday's opener?'' I said. "Do you want to go? I've got a place where you might see a deer or two, and maybe even shoot one. Or you can watch deer or talk to them or do whatever you want to do.''

"I'd like that,'' she said.

So it is that like 450,000 other Minnesotans, Pat and I on Saturday morning will immerse ourselves in the same feast of sights, sounds and surprises that amazed Bud during his life.

Whether we shoot deer or just talk to them remains to be seen.

Stay tuned.

Editor's note: Read Dennis Anderson's column about the opening day of deer season in the Sunday Minnesota Star Tribune.