DULUTH, Minn. _ Jerry Kern used to hunt deer at a camp north of Island Lake. But after what happened 40 years ago, Kern no longer hunts deer. Or any other kind of game.
Now 82, Kern still makes the drive up to the camp from his St. Paul home each fall, in the weeks before deer season. Often, he brings along some of his grandchildren. He cuts and splits some wood, sits by the campfire and stays overnight in the shack his dad and friends built in 1940.
But he doesn't come up during deer season. And he doesn't poke along the camp's trails hunting grouse during September and October.
Kern has a cabin at Silver Bay, too, and drives up every few weeks to stay for a few days. He's a friendly and outgoing guy, a tall and rangy man with ruddy cheeks and a good thatch of gray hair. He's still working. He tends 27 honey-bee colonies near St. Paul and sells the honey his bees produce. He finds time to sharpen 100 mower blades a week for a lawn-care business that two of his sons operate.
I have come to know Kern over the past year. He stops in Duluth regularly on his way to Silver Bay. He's a bright and genuinely happy man, inquisitive and well-read.
