November 1, 2011 South Dakota Magazine
Take 5 An interview with Lee Schoenbeck Meet Lee Schoenbeck, our new outdoors columnist. Lee grew up in Webster and graduated from Augustana College in 1980 and the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1984. He and his wife Donna have been married 24 years. They live outside of Watertown where they are raising their four children (two in college) and four dogs. His principal hobby is pheasant hunting, and on a fall day you can find him and his three labs in cattail sloughs and fields somewhere in northeastern South Dakota. Lee and his son Jake recently answered a few questions for us regarding the Schoenbeck family's outdoor interests.
You and your son golfed every course in South Dakota last summer. What's your favorite course?
There are so many great courses with different local flavors, but if I could only play three, they would be Southern Hills at Hot Springs, Elkhorn Ridge at Spearfish and Willow Run in Sioux Falls - and then there are 50 more of the 129 that would come in fourth (you should see the astro turf tee box and greens course at Corsica).
Jake: My favorite three courses are Sutton Bay west of Agar, Southern Hills and Elkhorn Ridge. If I could throw a fourth in, I would say Prairie Green in Sioux Falls.
Who is better with a shotgun, you or your son Jake? I think even the young sprout would concede he's got a ways to go to match me with a 12 gauge.
Jake: No doubt he's better with the shotgun, but when it comes to using the most shells, I win.
What's a perfect day in South Dakota for the Schoenbeck family? We're not much of a cookie-cutter crew - you'd get a different answer from each of us. Jake and I would be up before the sun, and most of the rest would prefer to give the sun a good head start. Donna and I would definitely have our 4 mile power walk in near the end of a perfect day. In between, it depends on the season. We're big gardeners, readers, and everybody has a job. Sundays would involve breakfast at the Wheel Inn in Watertown after mass. Otherwise, every day we get to hang close to our place in the country and goof around there is a pretty good day.
Do bird dogs adopt the personality of their master? What's your dog like? I think so. Mine are pretty disciplined and focused, with an eye toward the opportunity for trouble on occasion. They hunt hard all day and would do it every day if I would take them. By the way, I don't have a dog - I have three of them.
What's your favorite pheasant dish? It's a very complicated dish. You have to buy this special sauce called Yoshita sauce. You cut up the pheasant in bite size pieces, marinate it in the sauce in a baggie for as much time as you have, and then brown it in a frying pan or on some tin foil on the grill. This is best prepared on a portable stove on a tailgate out hunting - but we've made it many times for family and friends at our home, too. One time another group of hunters eating their bologna sandwiches in a farm yard near Witten saw us eating off our tailgate. Three of us were sharing a fork and eating out of the frying pan and a guy walked over and asked if he could try it. We handed him the fork and he joined in - turned out he was the president of Cargill! Too bad we didn't have a second fork so he could have had his own.