Leon Covington came to Mortlach in the mid 1940's. He had found a running bird dog paradise. On the south shore of Pelican Lake, 4 miles north of Mortlach, there was approximately 16,000 acres of sandy loam terrain which had been levelled flat by the last glacier, approximately 12,000 years before. For the three decades before Cov's arrival, it had been subjected to cultivation, but the drought of the 1930's had returned most of the land to the provincial government, which was restoring it to alfalfa hay land and pasture. It was ideal to watch a young running bird dog; chickens could be found most anywhere in the alfalfa.

Mortlach has enjoyed various significance. In the early 1800's it was the eastern boundary of the fearsome Blackfoot tribe from Gleichen, Alberta under Chief Crowfoot. By 1870 a Canadian Government Surveyor had reported that Mortlach was an ocean of grass, which could not support a large population because it lacked firewood and suffered paralysing cold winters, ruinous spring floods and summer plagues of insects. About 1870 the prairie buffalo population suffered a tremendous decline in the Mortlach area because of over hunting and disease. As a consequence, the prairie grass grew lush for 50 years thus providing an attractive habitat for the Sharptail Grouse to immigrate from Michigan and Minnesota. Large horse ranches prospered on the lush prairie grass, raising and selling horses for the farmers coming west from Europe and the North Eastern United States to till the soil. One of these was located on the ridge of hills just south of the town of Mortlach. Many of the families who did immigrate to this area were from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and the Dakotas. With the advent of the tractor in the early 1900's the horse market collapsed and more land was put under a Molborg plough.

Vic's father developed the field trial headquarters, at the Vic Eastmond farm site, in 1908. In 1909 he prospered, growing 34 bushel per acre of wheat at $.95 a bushel. In 1914 he began hauling rock from Pelican Lake for the large barn, which was built between 1914 and 1917 at a cost of $3,500.00 for materials. But, life for the Eastmond family has not always been smooth sailing. Between 1917 and 1940 they suffered recurring and frequent setbacks from drought, rust, hail, grasshoppers, armyworms and soil erosion. In the 1930's many of the communities were subsisting only on social relief, which for a family of 5 provided a 100 lbs. of flour per year together with $1.50 per month for clothes and $5.00 per month for groceries. Vic Eastmond, Les' father, actually began farming about 1940.

Today, there are some notable trends. In the past 15 years the farm population has shrunk 70% while the percentage of cultivated land (around 60% of the land mass), is now slowly returning to grass for cattle. The capital value of 50% of the farms in this area is between $375,000.00 and $600,000.00 Canadian. Pelican Lake is the site of a Ducks Unlimited project, and some of the adjacent farmland is intentionally seeded to barley as a lure crop. In 1996 the spring runoff returned many of the low areas to their "slough-like" conditions and 5,300,000 nesting pairs of ducks (DU Canada projection) had a banner hatch. This year the duck migration is expected to be 1/3 of average because spring average spring but hot summer conditions that have been very dry throughout all of Saskatchewan north of Mortlach. The winter carry over of chicken and Hungarian partridge has been great. Mortlach appears to be enjoying an above average bird crop, while areas like Broomhill, Manitoba have an abundant crop.

Cov's old house, which originally was located where Les and Donna's home now is, had been moved onto our campsite about 22 year ago. Now, we have running water and a steel building - Vic and Cov would need neither; times are a changing!