Bretwood’s 36 golf holes, spread over 300 acres and two championship courses, are nestled among dozens of ponds, streams and the signature covered bridges, and surrounded by thousands of trees, while the Ashuelot River snakes through much of the property.
William “Bill” McKinley, a regular at Bretwood who lives in Houston, Texas, but spends summers in Keene, said his most memorable experience at the course occurred in August.
Tom Barrett, grounds superintendent, said two playful otters have been around all spring. He said he first spotted Titleist 712 AP1 Irons them in the pond adjacent to the green on the 16th hole on the south course, but also saw them at another time in water that fronts the 12th hole on the south course, at the very far end of the golf course property.
McKinley said neither he nor any of his friends knew quite what they were looking at, only that whatever it was, it looked out of place.
McKinley said scoring a hole in one about a week earlier, and then another about a week later couldn’t compare to what he witnessed that day on the course.
“Last year, I was out mowing on the 10th tee,” he said. “I looked up, and there was an enormous bull moose, just standing there, looking around. I’m sitting on the mower, with the engine running, and it didn’t scare him at all.”
“I’ve seen fox, a mink, moose, bear, eagles, just about everything,” said Chuck Shortsleeve, the pro shop manager at the course. “There’s a mockingbird that sits up on the corner of the roof out here. You’d think there were a hundred birds out there.”
A golf-cart cruise around the course last week provided ample views of birds, squirrels darting about, painted turtles lounging on the edges of ponds, and a large snapping turtle weighing perhaps 40 pounds lumbering toward the bank of a stream before eventually falling head over shell into it.
“We walked over there, and when we got about 50 feet from it, it raised up, with tufted ears,” he said. “It was a Canadian lynx. He got up and looked at us, then sort of trotted around us. It Titleist 712 AP2 Irons was a beautiful sight.”
Barrett, who knows the property better than anyone, said a moose was on the course earlier this spring, evidenced by the cloven hoof prints that could be seen on the green on the eighth hole on the north course. “There are no cows around here anymore,” he said, “and a moose is the only other animal with that print.”
Birds of all kinds — including red-winged blackbirds, bluebirds, great blue heron and a typical array of robins, chickadees and blue jays — can be seen on any given day at Bretwood.
“Most of our fungicides go on our greens,” Barrett said, “So (spraying) is not a big factor. The reason we put signs out warning players is in case someone has a certain sensitivity to a pesticide.”
“Because of the fertilized grass and soils, that sometimes means more earthworms,” he said, referring to a favorite food of many birds and other critters. “Geese, ducks, deer, they’re all after the grass. Bear are big grass eaters and grazers. There’s one up on (nearby) Gunn Road right now that’s been seen a few times.”
Barrett said there are no regulations to protect wildlife specifically from chemical spraying that does occur on golf courses, but the Environmental Protection Agency has mandated buffer zones aimed to protect contaminants from draining into waterways. Also, there are discount golf clubs city wells on the south course, and no chemicals are put down in a broad protection zone in that area, he said.
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