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  • November 17, 2009

    Chad Love: Predators Behaving Strangely

    There are wildlife photographers and then there are National Geographic wildlife photographers. Even in today's real-time, caught-on-tape video-dominated culture the photographers of NG just keep capturing still images and stories with the power to awe. Images and stories like this

    Besides highlighting the exceptional clankers one needs to be a NG photographer, it shows - in dramatic fashion - how little we really know about animal behavior: how they process information, what they feel, how they think, what emotions they are or aren't capable of.
    Hunters and wildlife photographers both spend large amounts of time hidden or undetected while observing the natural world around them, and I'm sure we've all watched animals do things or act in ways that challenged our fundamental assumptions, what we thought we knew about those animals.

    Granted, it might not be as amazing (and amazingly terrifying) as having a monstrous-big leopard seal try to adopt you, but have you ever witnessed something that made you think "What the hell?"

  • November 17, 2009

    Discussion Topic: Do You Trust Your State Fish And Game Agency?

    From a Southwick Associates Press Release:
    In an October 2009 survey, Southwick Associates asked anglers and hunters which type of organization they trust the most for accurate information regarding fish and wildlife conservation. The results of the monthly AnglerSurvey.com and HunterSurvey.com poll show that state fish and wildlife agencies are considered the most trustworthy source of conservation information among hunters and anglers.

    Of the 2,771 anglers surveyed, 54.4 percent reported state fish and wildlife agencies were their most trusted source. Of the 3,378 hunters surveyed, 50.7 percent agreed.  The second most trusted source, with 25.1 percent of anglers and 29.5 percent of hunters, was sport-fishing and hunting non-profit conservation groups.

    Other options included federal agencies, outdoor television, and outdoor print media. Who do you trust most?

  • November 13, 2009

    New Hampshire Hunter Ends Maine Amber Alert

    From AOL News:
    A 2-year-old girl whose temporary abduction sparked an Amber Alert in Maine on Monday is now safe at home again -- thanks to a passing hunter. . . .

    On Tuesday afternoon, said WMUR/News 9, a hunter named Michael Grant was tramping through a wooded area not far from Milton, N.H., when he saw a familiar truck. Grant recognized both the make and license plate from television news reports. . . .

    "I walked up to [the truck] and told [the driver] that I knew he was the gentleman [authorities] were looking for," Grant told WMUR. "[I] pretty much told him he had one of two choices. He could turn himself in or I could turn him in."

    After a long, emotional conversation, Grant said, he persuaded [the man] to surrender to police.

  • November 13, 2009

    Minnesota Poacher Busted With World Record-Size 8-Point Buck

    From the Outdoor News:
    Minnesota conservation officers last week seized a record-book deer rack and on Thursday morning filed poaching charges against a man from Cannon Falls, Minn., in the case. . . .
    According to the complaint, Troy Alan Reinke, 32, admitted to conservation officers that he had shot a small doe and a small buck on separate dates in early October, and failed to tag or register either of the deer. Reinke said he shot the large 8-point buck, with a 185 net green score, on Halloween evening. . . .

    [According to the] Boone & Crockett Club . . . the rack likely could be a world-record rack for an 8-point deer.

  • November 3, 2009

    Texas Bowhunter Arrows Battling Buck

    From The Lufkin Daily News:
    "The fight was pretty intense — very violent," [Ben Bartlett] recalled. "Both of the bucks had their heads down and it was just a tangle of horns. I could see their muscles bulging as they pushed and braced for leverage against one another. It was a pretty awesome sight."

    Bartlett . . . inched closer each time the battle moved behind a palmetto clump, eventually moving to within 18 yards before he dropped to one knee on the soggy ground and brought his compound bow to a full draw. . . .

    “I was a little nervous about taking the shot, because their movements were so erratic. They stopped for a split second when one of the deer coiled to push back and it gave a me a clear shot, so I took it."

  • October 30, 2009

    Discussion Topic: NSSF Calls Out Paper On “Permits To Kill Hunters”

    We all know there isn’t much love lost between hunters and anti-hunters, but nobody wishes anybody any real harm—except when some crazy anti-hunter does wish us real harm and a newspaper has the poor taste to print his wish. Then it’s the hunters, in this case the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who take the high ground.

    From the NSSF website:
    Shameful is the word that comes to mind for the Burlington Free Press and its decision to print a reader's anti-hunting letter. . . . that was written in response to the Vermont paper's story about the opening of moose hunting season. . . .

    Here's the letter:
    Take a Few Hunters Along with the Moose
    On this beautiful day we learn that about 1,251 hunters are taking to the woods with legal permits to "pursue prized quarry." Certainly the members of various humane organizations do not approve. I suggest that before the next annual killing season, other residents be awarded legal permits to kill hunters who will be out to kill these beautiful, non-destructive animals. Or the government could just rule out all this primitive killing.

    The NSSF asked for an apology and got one, as well an Op-ed from Wayne LaRoche, commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

  • October 28, 2009

    Chad Love: The Zombie Plague

    Sometimes you read something that - to be perfectly honest - leaves you feeling hopeless and doomed. Something so depressing it makes you want to throw up your hands, shout "to hell with it all!" and head straight to the nearest bar. Something like this, from the LA Times.
     
    The latest figures from Nielsen have children's TV usage at an eight-year high. Children's health advocates warn of adverse effects.
     
    More than an entire day -- that's how long children sit in front of the television in an average week, according to new findings released Monday by Nielsen.

    The amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. The analysis, based on the fourth quarter of 2008, measured children's consumption of live and recorded TV, as well as VCR and game console usage.

    "They're using all the technology available in their households," said Patricia McDonough, Nielsen's senior vice president of insights, analysis and policy. "They're using the DVD, they're on the Internet. They're not giving up any media -- they're just picking up more."
     
    While this has obvious implications for the future of hunting and fishing, it also goes beyond that and straight to the core of our fundamental appreciation for nature itself. No one is born a hunter, an angler or a hiker. We all start life as a blank slate and what gets etched on that slate in our early childhood shapes who we will eventually become. You, I and everyone else who enjoys the outdoors, be they a hunter, an angler, a hiker, a birder or whatever, didn't get that way by mainlining 32 hours of high-definition methadone: we got that way by crawling around in the dirt catching bugs, climbing trees, building forts in the back yard and stomping around in creeks. You know, being kids. That childlike wonder, the curiosity, imagination and self-guided exploration of your surroundings. That's the base from which everything else rises. Lose that - as we most assuredly are - and you've lost an entire generation of children. And for what? So they can grow up to be the same mindless, self-absorbed zombie consumers their parents obviously are?
     
    Seriously, anyone who lets their small child watch 32 hours of television, video games and Internet a week should be smacked in the head with a rolled-up copy of Richard Louv's "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder."
     
    American parents, WTF are you thinking? Put down your go*****ed cellphone, get your fat a***s off Facebook, turn off the TV and pay some attention to your kids. Take them outside, let them get dirty. Let them think and explore for themselves without the help of corporate-sponsored storyline.
     
    Good gawd, didn't this used to be called common sense?

  • October 20, 2009

    Discussion Topic: Animal Rights Activist Shoots Down Deer Recovery

    Earlier this month, a Connecticut archer arrowed a spike buck in a suburban hunting area, and of all the places the deer could have gone to expire, it wound up in someone’s backyard—and of all the backyards, that of Lynn Gorfinkle, CEO of Animal Rights Alliance in Redding.

    The hunter knocked on the door, asked permission to recover the deer, and was promptly shot down.

    From The News-Times:

    If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators," [Gorfinkle] said. "Not some hunter. . . .

    "My husband told him to just go away, he couldn't have the deer. . . .”
    Gorfinkle. . . said she snapped photographs of the deer where it fell as it died, then flipped it over and took more to document the cause of death: a lethal lung puncture.

    "It was a crime scene, in my opinion, the minute that it was shot," she said.

    Check out the full story and tell us your reaction.

  • October 12, 2009

    11-Year-Old Boy Dies In Georgia Youth-Hunt Accident

    From the Dawson News & Advertiser:

    An 11-year-old Dawsonville boy who was shot in the head when his gun accidentally discharged in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area on Friday has died.



    John Wayne Corcoran was transported by air to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite following the incident, which occurred just before 6 p.m. He died at the hospital later that night.



    According to authorities, Corcoran was hunting with this grandfather, Bernard Corcoran of Dahlonega, during an adult-child hunt when the incident occurred.

     

  • October 7, 2009

    Discussion Topic: CWD Fears Could Lead To Deer-Urine Ban

    If you are hoping to draw a big buck to your stand with a urine-based lure, you better do it fast, before your favorite doe-in-estrous or dominant-buck scent disappears from the local outdoor-store shelf.

    Chronic Wasting Disease is carried by altered proteins, called prions, that are spread directly from deer to deer through saliva and other bodily fluids, as well as by food grown in soil contaminated with the feces and urine of infected deer. As deer and elk farms have been the hotbeds of infected deer, state officials have grown increasingly concerned that the commercial deer urine produced at such farm could be spreading the disease.

    Saskatchewan has already banned urine-based lures and nine states are now considering a ban.

    From the Allentown Morning Call:

    [Pennsylvania Game Commission] president Gregory J. Isabella of Philadelphia, who represents the Southeast Region, said that he is an archery hunter who has  used deer urine in the past, but will stop using it immediately.

    [State Wildlife Veterinarian Walt] Cottrell said he would recommend and support an immediate ban. . . .

    Your reaction?