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ORTONVILLE, Minn. — "Paul Bunyan's anchor" can't help but catch your eye when you come to the intersection of U.S. Highways 75 and 12 here. It's a 110-ton rectangular block of granite mounted on two concrete pedestals.

But even though I love history and museums, I wasn't expecting much when I ventured into the Big Stone County Historical Museum after a morning duck hunt here. The small main building also houses the local Chamber of Commerce.

I was the first person in three days to sign the guest register as I entered the museum. But since my late mother used to volunteer at the Batesville (Ark.) Museum, I knew that small-town historical preservations like this typically don't overflow with visitors.

Earl Komis, who will be 90 years old on Jan. 2, met me at the door. I really wanted to just browse the room on my own, but Komis insisted on showing me around. And I'll admit that the first geological history section we stopped to view was quite interesting.

Although New Hampshire carries the state motto of "The Granite State," you quickly notice that Minnesota could stake that claim as well. You see granite boulders along every lake. And a granite quarry has long been in full operation here.

But millions of years ago, during the Paleozoic Period, layers of sedimentary sandstone, shale and limestone accumulated here. A map recreating that period shows that today's U.S. East and West coasts were long ago separated by a vast sea. Proof of that lies in some of the fossils at the museum — long extinct species of sharks and squid.

Now, I knew this, being from Arkansas and having seen a few ancient dinosaur-age fossils myself. But I hadn't thought about it in such graphic terms for awhile.

Frankly, I started getting a little bored when Komis, whose mind is as sharp as someone half his age and who lived through much of this area's recent history, started taking me through the sections of old farm implements, women's clothing and doctor's surgical tools.

But we had conversed enough for Komis to know that I was in Ortonville to hunt ducks, so he insisted I had to see another exhibit in a separate building. I wasn't expecting much when he grabbed an extra set of keys and walked me across the gravel parking lot to the old Artichoke Lake General Store, made of hand-hewed logs.

Komis unlocked the door, flipped on the lights and I thought, "Oh, my gosh!" Suddenly we were surrounded by waterfowl. This roughly 20-feet-wide by 40-feet-long building was lined with the glass-cased taxidermy known as "The Charles Hanson North American Wildlife Collection."

But don't take my word about this astonishing display. It has been described by the Minnesota Star and Tribune as "one of the largest and most impressive mounted bird collections in the United States and possibly the world."

It is breathtaking. Over 500 bird species — mostly waterfowl, but also prairie chickens and woodcock — were crowded into the display cases.

"(Hanson's) still adding to it, but when he brings another one in, we have to take something out," explained Komis.

At least for now, that isn't a loss, since Hanson has multiple mounts of some common American species, like wood ducks and mallards.

But there are waterfowl from all over the world here: a balkal teal from Siberia, an African tree duck, an emperor goose from Alaska.

Maybe most impressively, Hanson's taxidermy skills, begun when he was a teenager and refined over half a century, allowed him to recreate an extinct species — the Labrador duck, which vanished from the Earth in the late 1800s. Using feathers and features from three other species, Hanson produced the long-gone Labrador.

A duck hunter's diet

After our successful hunt that first morning in Minnesota, James Overstreet and I offered to buy Steve Lee's breakfast. Even if it was past noon, breakfast seemed to be the order of the moment.

"Where's a good place to eat around here?," Overstreet asked.

"I don't know," Lee said. "I only eat gas station food."

Lee later admitted that he does keep his winter hunting quarters here stocked with canned chili and spaghetti and meatballs. Health food? Nowhere in sight or mind.

"When I'm fishing (in the spring and summer) I'll put a can up on the boat deck to it warm up," Lee explained. "That way it doesn't come out of the can in too big a chunk."

I tried to tell Lee about "Super Size Me," Morgan Spurlock's film documenting how his health declined after eating 30 straight days at McDonald's. Spurlock's doctors' were begging him to stop before the month was up, after viewing the results of his increasingly unhealthy blood readings.

So where did we end up that day in Ortonville? The Hilltop Cafe, where Lee ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, white toast and three pieces of French toast. He tried to order a cherry Coke to drink, but they didn't have it, so he settled on a Pepsi.

The medical professionals agree that good genetics can offset almost any poor health habits. Lee's Scandinavian background must be filled with superhuman genes.

Friendly folks

When Overstreet and I walked into Bud's Bait, an outdoor store in Ortonville, to buy our duck stamps, there were a couple of other men in the small shop, sitting around telling hunting and fishing stories.

Once we opened our Arkansas-accented mouths, they quickly questioned, "Where are you from?"

We're used to that question and Southern slowly answered, "Arkansas."

They smiled and one man said, "Why did you come here to duck hunt?"

Arkansas' reputation as the "mallard capital of the world" is wide-ranging. But, in addition to the fact that we were on the ESPN Mississippi Flyway Duck Trek, Minnesota doesn't have anything to be ashamed about when it comes to waterfowl hunting.

When Steve Bowman and I published the "Arkansas Duck Hunter's Almanac," we included a graphic showing that Minnesota ranked No. 5 in the nation in both total ducks harvested and mallards killed.

The headwaters of the Mississippi River, obviously, attract plenty of ducks. And those guys knew it. But it didn't keep them from having a little fun with us two Arkansans.

Plus, we noted, the Arkansas season didn't open for almost another month, so why not Minnesota?

One final friendly reminder

During duck season, you get accustomed to programming ungodly hours on your alarm clock. But the day of our Minnesota departure was particularly absurd.

With a 6 a.m. flight to catch in Fargo, N.D., a two-hour drive to get there and a rental car to return once we did, our alarms were set for 1 a.m. to allow a 2 a.m. departure.

We'd been on the highway heading north from Ortonville for only 15 minutes, when a policeman's blue lights were flashing behind us as we departed the town of Milbank. The officer said we were going 41 miles per hour in a 30 miles-per-hour zone as we left town.

It was 2:15 a.m. and we'd barely seen another vehicle on the road. Milbank, unlike Ortonville, does have a couple of stoplights, but getting stopped at that hour of the morning was, well, surprising, especially since we weren't trying to break any speed limits.

When the officer came back from his vehicle with a warning ticket, it was just one more example of how friendly the folks are in western Minnesota — no matter what time of the day or night.

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Editors note: ESPN Outdoors is taking you down the Mississippi Flyway for Duck Trek,