My office is located at the south end of Game and Fish headquarters in Bismarck. I haven’t moved since I walked into the building 20 years ago.
Two of the maps that hang on one wall frame a shoulder mount of a mule deer buck. The maps provide quick insight and the locations of Game and Fish Department wildlife management areas and managed fishing waters.
On the opposite side of the room, three large bookshelves house multiple copies of North Dakota OUTDOORS magazines dating back to the early 1930s, hundreds of photographic slides, old black and white prints, three outdated dictionaries and a first-place trophy for a 4-H club crow control contest from 1947.
Over time, I’ve seen deer, geese, ducks, squirrels and wild turkeys out my office window. While I can’t see Hay Creek from here, I know where it’s at and I remember hanging over the wooden railing of the small bridge in 2011 as chinook salmon, seemingly so out of place that far from the Missouri River, went through the motions of spawning for naught.
While biologists at the time knew how the salmon ended up where they did, by exiting the Missouri and pointing their noses upstream for roughly 6 miles in Apple and Hay creeks, I still scratch my head at the illogical route I took to get here. In this office. Working for this agency.
As I look back, which is something I can’t help as the end of my career is way closer than the beginning, I’m certain Bill had much to do with it.
This is the way I remember it: Roughly 30 years ago I was sitting in a mammalogy class at the University of North Dakota, a required course to complete a wildlife biology degree that I was certain would get me hired at the Game and Fish Department. During a break in, say, examining the skull structure of Sylvilagus floridanus (eastern cottontail), Bill Jensen, Game and Fish big game biologist, gave a presentation on trapping mule deer in the badlands for research purposes.
It was a good presentation, teamed with some slides of him wrestling mule deer to fit them with radio collars. Cool stuff. Inspiring to those of us who envisioned ourselves wandering the rugged up and down of the badlands doing similar work.
During the question-and-answer part of his talk, one of my classmates asked for advice on getting hired at the agency. Bill asked for a show of hands of those of who did summer intern work at the Game and Fish? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? Ducks Unlimited? And so on. I was the only student who didn’t raise their hand.
I understood what he was saying, the significance of getting your foot in the door before the door was open. As an older than average student — easily the oldest in the class — it was obvious I was up a creek, didn’t even know where the door was located.
I switched majors before Bill made the drive home from Grand Forks to Bismarck.
I was reminded of this when Bill announced his retirement earlier this winter after 33 years with the Department. While I certainly won’t make it that long, I did have the chance to thank him for helping me eventually find the door.
