For anyone needing another good reason to bolster salmon populations along the Pacific coast, here’s a good one: Salmon carcasses makes your wine taste better. A new study led by California’s East Bay Municipal Utility District biologist Joseph Merz and UC Davis’ Peter Moyle shows that turkey vultures, raccoons, river otters, rats, coyotes, and even deer that eat salmon carcasses spread nitrogen-rich waste that is beneficial to grapes. “No doubt some of the best California wine has salmon in it,” says Merz.
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2006/08/08/news/1_fish-wine_060808.txt [ Read Full Post ]

The news regarding Klamath River salmon fishing has been virtually all bad this year. Finally, though, there seems to be some good. One of several serious obstacles confronting the river’s salmon is a series of power-generating dams owned by PacifiCorp. Now, the company says it’s open to removing the dams as long as its customers are not harmed and its property rights are respected. PacifiCorp’s exact intentions may yet be a bit cloudy. But in the story below, the Oregonian sees the company’s statement as “an opening for Klamath salmon, and an invitation for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to join the negotiations, and to bring with them some bold ideas.”   
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1154651153229060.xml&coll=7 [ Read Full Post ]

Historically, East Texas was always bear country, and it may be so again. A growing numbers of bruins in neighboring states has led to increased sightings and renewed interest in re-establishing the bears in the Lone Star State. If there’s enough support, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department may move ahead with a proposal to repopulate parts of East Texas with 30 female bears. Here’s the latest from HeraldToday.com.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/15208651.htm [ Read Full Post ]

If you dream of bagging a bison, your chances of drawing a permit just got considerably better. Last Thursday, Montana’s wildlife commissioners decided to increase the number of licenses to hunt bison that wander into Montana from Yellowstone National Park to 140, almost triple the number allowed last year. While hunters applaud the move, at least one group opposed to the hunt is making threats: “If you want a public relations nightmare, I think you’re moving in the right direction,” said Dan Brister of the Buffalo Field Campaign. The 2006-2007 season will run from Nov. 15 to Feb. 15, and licenses will cost $75 for Montana residents and $750 for nonresidents.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4893417,00.html [ Read Full Post ]

If you want a nonresident hunting license or tag in Idaho, odds are you’ll have to wade through some red tape, which takes time. But time is the one thing some hunters just don’t have much of. New legislation, however, now allows the Idaho Fish & Game Department to issue hunting licenses free of charge directly to youth with life-threatening illnesses. This Times-News article tells the moving story of how this law came to pass.
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2538580 [ Read Full Post ]

I’m on the e-mail list for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and what I get is always interesting, even if I don’t agree with it. The most recent arrival is a statement of Joshua Horwitz, who is Executive Director of the Coalition. Mr. Horwitz is exercised over the Senate’s vote on July 13 to prohibit law enforcement officials from using federal funds to confiscate private firearms during future emergencies and major disasters.

What is particularly interesting about this e-mail is not so much Mr. Horwitz position, but the basic assumptions on which it rests, which are common to many anti-gunners.

Assumption Number One:  Anyone who owns a firearm is a likely psychotic, because normal, law-abiding people do not need firearms and would not be allowed to own them in the best of all possible Americas.

The fact is that the people who were doing the shooting in New Orleans were the usual thugs, felons, and hoodlums of which the city has a plentiful supply. Most people—legal gun owners included—were too busy trying to stay alive to bother with shooting at the police and National Guard.

Assumption Number Two:  If the citizenry is an armed mob, then the forces of government, the police, etc.,... [ Read Full Post ]

Josh Bryant got a brand new fishing rod for his 11th birthday. So he and his mother went to the local fishing pond to try it out—all of which is very sweet. But when, to their shock and horror, they saw alligator rear its head above the water, the celebration suddenly turned a little scary. And when other anglers and onlooker showed up, it got considerably worse. According to this Daily Inter Lake story, instead of just calling the authorities, they wanted to get the gator out of the water “so someone could come take care of it.” So these people proceeded to shoot the animal with an arrow and slit its throat. Nice. Little Josh should remember this birthday (in his nightmares) for a long time.
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2006/08/02/news/news01.txt [ Read Full Post ]

In May, after a controversial sting operation, New York City Mayor  Michael Bloomberg announced a lawsuit against gun dealers accused of making illegal sales. Now, with a proposed settlement on the table for two of the targeted dealers, the National Shooting Sports Foundation is taking aim at Bloomberg, calling the potential agreement “redundant to existing federal regulatory oversight and joint educational programs between the firearms industry and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).” In plainer language, they’d prefer that the mayor remove his nose from where it doesn’t belong. “We call upon Mayor Bloomberg to support ATF rather than continually insulting the agency and interfering with its ability to do its job,” said Lawrence G. Keane with the NSSF. “Regrettably, Mayor Bloomberg seems more interested in making headlines than real progress.”
http://www.nssf.org/news/PR_idx.cfm?AoI=generic&PRloc=common/PR/&PR=080106.cfm [ Read Full Post ]

As Montana restricts fishing hours on some of the country’s most celebrated trout streams (see http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/recreation_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_85_4884860,00.html), it’s too late to save thousands of fish from fatally high water temperatures and low dissolved-oxygen levels in Wisconsin. On Chapman and Long Lakes, several popular gamefish species are washing up on the shores, including bass, blue gills, and northern pike.
http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=5230833 [ Read Full Post ]

By Brian Janosch

The powers that be in Virginia made their first move yesterday toward implementing a cap on the number of commercially caught menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay. One month after allowing a deadline to pass that would have capped this year’s catch, Governor Tim Kaine and the Omega Protein company announced yesterday that they’ve agreed upon a ceiling of 109 thousand metric tons for the next five years.

That number is more than three thousand metric tons higher than last year’s proposal from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission of 105.8 thousand. But despite the jump, Todd Keller, of the grassroots conservation group Menhaden Matter, called it a benchmark day for their organization after five years of petitioning for a cap.

“When we started five years ago we proposed a cap of 110 thousand,” Keller said. “Now we’ve done a lot more studies, and there should be no problem going forward from here.”

During the course of the debate, menhaden have often been called “The Most Important Fish in the Sea” due to its role as a food source for countless other species including sport fish like striped bass and bluefish. But as studies continued to show the health benefits of... [ Read Full Post ]

You may want to reschedule that Montana fishing trip for now. High water temperatures caused by sizzling summer weather has prompted state officials to close fishing from noon to midnight on some of the West’s most celebrated trout streams. The current closures stretch over 538 miles of water on the Bitterroot, lower Gallatin, east Gallatin, lower Madison, Sun, Dearborn, Smith, and Yellowstone River, downstream from Big Timber. Other waters approaching the restricted-fishing threshold, according to this Rocky Mountain News article, are the Missouri River below Holter Dam, the Boulder River tributary to the Yellowstone River, portions of the Big Hole River, Rock Creek, and the Thompson and Blackfoot rivers.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/recreation_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_85_4884860,00.html [ Read Full Post ]

I’m indebted to my friend John Thomas for this one. John is a retiree who teaches rich people how to shoot a shotgun, and we were talking the other day about a client of his who couldn’t hit a crossing target.

“His problem,” said John, “is he thinks about it. It’s a clear case of analysis paralysis.”

Truer words were never spoken. If you want to miss with a shotgun, or a rifle in most cases, just think about what you’re doing. Gene Hill used to say that the ideal trapshooter would be a gorilla who knew how to handle a gun; he’d be too dumb to analyze, and recoil wouldn’t bother him.

A classic case; I’ve been shooting in a summer trap league, and when I stand on Station 5 I stand almost square to the target to give myself a better swing at the hard right angle bird. As I called pull during one shoot, I realized that my feets were in the wrong position, and was thinking about that instead of thinking about nothing. Did I miss? Is a pig’s ass pork? I felt a little better because one of the geezers on the squad completely lost track of what... [ Read Full Post ]