Jim Thornton

A Close Call With Rabies

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:53:50 -0400

At 9:30 on a sunny July morning, the screaming starts: a ragged, half-human keen that pierces the halcyon woods flanking our western Pennsylvania home. My wife, Debbie, our 11-year-old son, Jack, and I run outside to see what’s being murdered. There, beside a patch of Big Boy tomatoes, stand our two pugs, Lefty and Biscuit, with something scruffy and feral wedged between them. It takes a moment to realize what exactly is happening. A 20-pound raccoon has affixed its teeth to the jowly flesh of Biscuit’s muzzle and won’t let go.

Physical Fitness for the Whitetail Nut

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:16:48 -0400

Okay. Take off your clothes. Stand in front of a mirror, and let your gut go. Now take a good look at the horror show staring back at you and consider this: Couch spuds are 56 times more likely to have a heart attack during vigorous exertion—like scaling a ridge or dragging out a deer—than guys who are in reasonable shape. Even if you’re fairly thin and active, it pays to tune up before the season. We’re talking big bucks here, and you may have to hike farther or climb higher to score. Once you do, you’ll have more weight to haul.

The Anglers' Guide to Sun Protection

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:22:49 -0400

In 1992, Chuck Naiser of Rockport, Texas, decided to stop selling insurance and try to make his living as a flyfishing guide in the coastal bays near Corpus Christi. His wife gave him her blessing, provided that he’d make her two promises: (1) to religiously cover his skin with sun-protective clothing and slather sunscreen on when he went out on the water; and (2) to visit a dermatologist every six months.

The 10 Commandments of Eating for Endurance

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:27:02 -0400

If you’re planning a hunting or fishing trip that’s likely to be demanding, experts recommend you start eating for success today. “If you give this approach a fair trial,” says nutritionist Suzanne Girard Eberle, “it can make an incredible difference. I’ve had people tell me the days just flew by—they never got tired.” These 10 tips will help you eat in a way that increases your endurance so you don’t “bonk” during the hunt. —Jim Thornton

Eat like an athlete. In the weeks and months leading up to hunting season, embrace the performance approach proven to work for athletes. This means about 60 percent of your calories should come from carbohydrates, 25 percent from fat, and 15 percent from protein.

Think complex carbs. Simple sugars are not health demons, but they lack the vitamins and nutrients found in more complex carbohydrates such as fruits, vegetables, brown rice, and beans. The latter also take longer to digest, preventing rapid fluctuations of blood sugar levels and keeping you on a more even keel.

What Hunters Need to Know about Cholesterol

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Three years ago, the last time Jerry Robinson bagged a buck, he dragged the carcass a mile. Now 70, Robinson, who stands 5-foot-11 and weighs 190, is still in the kind of good health you'd expect from a guy who's led an outdoors life. He has never smoked and boasts the sort of blood pressure seen in athletes. He hikes, fishes, and has no symptoms of cardiovascular problems and no history of heart disease.Given all of this, you'd imagine Robinson's cholesterol—that much publicized villain in heart-health campaigns—would be exemplary. Not so.

Chronic Wasting Disease in Whitetail Deer

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:00:00 -0400

IN THE FALL OF 2004, a highway crew picked up the carcass of a road-killed buck near Slanesville, W.Va. The workers took the animal to a compost facility, where a wildlife manager arrived to pull tissue samples. He made an incision in the deer's neck and popped out a lymph node the size of a cocktail olive. He then cut through its neck vertebrae and removed a slightly larger brain structure called the obex. After being fixed in formaldehyde, these samples were sent to the University of Georgia, where preliminary test results were positive for CWD, or chronic wasting disease.

How to Treat (and Avoid) Poison Ivy and Other Toxic Plants

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 31 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Eager to startflyfishing New York's Croton River, Jay Cassell hiked a half mile to the wateron a cloudless spring day. Four hours and the same number of brown trout later,he trekked back to his car, reenergized by his midweek brush with nature. ButCassell, FIELD & STREAM deputy editor and a lifelong outdoorsman, had noidea how devastating this encounter would prove to be.

How to Stay Awake

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

A perfect September day was about to dawn in Minnesota. Following a trail of ribbons he'd laid down on a scouting expedition, bowhunter Stuart Bestul silently made his way to the tree he'd chosen on the fringe of a dense forest. He set up his stand without a single clang or bang, pulled himself into position, tested his bow, and glanced at his watch: 5:30 A.M. All he had to do now was sit and wait.

"But no sooner had I settled in," Bestul recalls, "than my head started doing the old woodpecker." The cause of his somnolence: a newborn baby who'd kept him up much of the night before. He tried gouging his fingertips hard against his cheeks. When this failed to rouse him, he stood up in his stand-only to find himself swaying so much he was sure he'd fall. Figuring that a 10-minute catnap would help, Bestul lowered himself to the ground and was just about to nod off when it happened.

"It was the biggest buck I'd ever seen," he says, 14 years after the morning that still haunts him. "If only I'd stayed up there just five more minutes, the deer would have been walking down the trail exactly where I had predicted."

The buck shook its massive 10-point rack several times in Bestul's direction, trying to make him move. His heart beating wildly, the hunter remained frozen, unblinking, hoping the animal might wander off unspooked. It was not to be. In an instant, the deer spun around into the brush and was gone forever.

HUNTING SHEEP Bestul is clearly not the only hunter to suffer impaired performance due to a surfeit of grogginess. And in fact many Americans have some sort of difficulty getting enough rest-the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic says that 31 percent of us regularly suffer excessive daytime sleepiness, and the National Sleep Foundation says that 54 percent suffer insomnia. No one has collected such statistics on outdoorsmen, but stand hunting combines circumstances that hit sportsmen with a double whammy of sleep-related difficulties-hunters will suddenly reduce the amount of sleep they get at night, and they engage in a monotonous activity during the day.

Tom Roth, Ph.D., director of research at the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit, explains that as long as we're running around and staying hyper, adrenaline can usually override the sleepiness. But the moment we sit down, we'll start to nod off. "Feeling sleepy in a tree stand is not that much different from feeling sleepy in church or while watching TV. Inactivity doesn't make you fall asleep-it simply unmasks the sleepiness that you already have."

Missing a buck is one thing. But consider the real dangers that can result from sleep deprivation. It's no fluke that most tree stands today come with a safety harness to help protect against falls. But even with that precaution, Bestul's decision to climb down was the right one-better to ease yourself down on your own terms than to have gravity do it for you.

Expert Advice: Six Tips for Staying Awake
To stay awake when you need to, and maximize the sleep you manage to get during hunting season, here's what experts in sleep medicine recommend:

Catch up. Make up your "sleep debt" a week or two before you hunt. It takes an hour of sleep to provide two hours of daytime alertness. If you're getting less than eight hours on a regular basis, your sleep debt has been accumulating. Say you've slept only seven hours a day for the past week. You "owe" yourself seven hours more (1 hour x 7 days). Sleeping nine hours a day for the next week will get you caught up.

Take a nap. Of course, during hunting season, you're building up a debt as well. For sportsmen who hunt on weekends and work during the week, a good way to pay it back is through naps after work. For days in the field when yyou can't stay awake, Roth says that Bestul's catnap was a good idea, though its timing proved unfortunate. "When you get hungry, your body is giving you a biological signal to eat," says Roth. "When you get sleepy, what's the biological signal? It's not saying to slap yourself on the face. It's telling you to go to sleep." A short rest of 10 to 20 minutes can help clear your brain temporarily of a chemical called adenosine, which induces grogginess.

Go easy on the alcohol. A couple of beers after dinner doesn't seem like a big deal, but as alcohol wears off, it causes subtle withdrawal effects that trigger repetitive awakenings throughout the night. Most of these are too short for you to consciously notice, but they greatly erode the restorative value of your sleep.

Get comfortable. If you'll be sleeping on the ground, it's worth the additional weight and space in your pack to bring whatever you need to get comfortable: a sleeping pad and a bag that's rated for the weather, earplugs, and maybe a blindfold. It's also helpful to simulate as much as possible anything you're used to doing at home, maybe wearing a familiar pair of pajamas or bringing a book if you're accustomed to reading in bed.

Consider medication. If you know you'll be too excited to sleep well the night before, ask your doctor about one of the new-generation "hypnotics," i.e., sleeping pills, which have been proved safe and effective when used on a short-term basis. Fast-acting prescription medicines like Sonata and Ambien would be best suited for a hunter because they induce sleep quickly and do not cause the "hangover" effect common with other sleep drugs.

Be aware of potential problems. Sleep disorders, especially sleep apnea (characterized by loud snoring and brief breathing cessation), are extremely common among middle-aged men. Other medical conditions, from heart failure to Parkinson's disease, can also trigger excessive daytime sleepiness. Your doctor can help diagnose any of these root causes and, if necessary, refer you to a sleep lab for specialized treatment.

Get a Good Night's Sleep for a Good Day in the Field

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:00:00 -0500

A perfect september day was about to dawn in Minnesota. Following a trail of ribbons he'd laid down on a scouting expedition, bowhunter Stuart Bestul silently made his way to the tree he'd chosen on the fringe of a dense forest. He set up his stand without a single clang or bang, pulled himself into position, tested his bow, and glanced at his watch: 5:30 A.M. All he had to do now was sit and wait.

"But no sooner had I settled in," Bestul recalls, "than my head started doing the old woodpecker." The cause of his somnolence: a newborn baby who'd kept him up much of the night before. He tried gouging his fingertips hard against his cheeks. When this failed to rouse him, he stood up in his stand—only to find himself swaying so much he was sure he'd fall. Figuring that a 10-minute catnap would help, Bestul lowered himself to the ground and was just about to nod off when it happened.

"It was the biggest buck I'd ever seen," he says, 14 years after the morning that still haunts him. "If only I'd stayed up there just five more minutes, the deer would have been walking down the trail exactly where I had predicted."

The buck shook its massive 10-point rack several times in Bestul's direction, trying to make him move. His heart beating wildly, the hunter remained frozen, unblinking, hoping the animal might wander off unspooked. It was not to be. In an instant, the deer spun around into the brush and was gone forever.

HUNTING SHEEP Bestul is clearly not the only hunter to suffer impaired performance due to a surfeit of grogginess. And in fact many Americans have some sort of difficulty getting enough rest—the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic says that 31 percent of us regularly suffer excessive daytime sleepiness, and the National Sleep Foundation says that 54 percent suffer insomnia. No one has collected such statistics on outdoorsmen, but stand hunting combines circumstances that hit sportsmen with a double whammy of sleep-related difficulties—hunters will suddenly reduce the amount of sleep they get at night, and they engage in a monotonous activity during the day.

Tom Roth, Ph.D., director of research at the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit, explains that as long as we're running around and staying hyper, adrenaline can usually override the sleepiness. But the moment we sit down, we'll start to nod off. "Feeling sleepy in a tree stand is not that much different from feeling sleepy in church or while watching TV. Inactivity doesn't make you fall asleep—it simply unmasks the sleepiness that you already have."

THE MAX FOR THE MINIMUM To stay awake when you need to, and maximize the sleep you manage to get during hunting season, here's what experts in sleep medicine recommend:

• Catch up. Make up your "sleep debt" a week or two before you hunt. It takes an hour of sleep to provide two hours of daytime alertness. If you're getting less than eight hours on a regular basis, your sleep debt has been accumulating. Say you've slept only seven hours a day for the past week. You "owe" yourself seven hours more (1 hour x 7 days). Sleeping nine hours a day for the next week will get you caught up.

• Take a nap. Of course, during hunting season, you're building up a debt as well. For sportsmen who hunt on weekends and work during the week, a good way to pay it back is through naps after work. For days in the field when you can't stay awake, Roth says that Bestul's catnap was a good idea, though its timing proved unfortunate. "When you get hungry, your body is giving you a biological signal to eat," says Roth. "When you get sleepy, what's the biological signal? It's not saying to slap yourself on the face. It's telling you to go to sleep." A short rest of 10 to 20 minutes can help clear your brain temporarily of a chemical called adenosine, which induces grogginess.

• Go easy on the alcohol. A couple of beers after dinner doesn't seem like a big deal, but as alcohol wears off, it causes subtle withdrawal effects that trigger repetitive awakenings throughout the night. Most of these are too short for you to consciously notice, but they greatly erode the restorative value of your sleep.

• Get comfortable. If you'll be sleeping on the ground, it's worth the additional weight and space in your pack to bring whatever you need to get comfortable: a sleeping pad and a bag that's rated for the weather, earplugs, and maybe a blindfold. It's also helpful to simulate as much as possible anything you're used to doing at home, maybe wearing a familiar pair of pajamas or bringing a book if you're accustomed to reading in bed.

• Consider medication. If you know you'll be too excited to sleep well the night before, ask your doctor about one of the new-generation "hypnotics," i.e., sleeping pills, which have been proved safe and effective when used on a short-term basis. Fast-acting prescription medicines like Sonata and Ambien would be best suited for a hunter because they induce sleep quickly and do not cause the "hangover" effect common with other sleep drugs.

• Be aware of potential problems. Sleep disorders, especially sleep apnea (characterized by loud snoring and brief breathing cessation), are extremely common among middle-aged men. Other medical conditions, from heart failure to Parkinson's disease, can also trigger excessive daytime sleepiness. Your doctor can help diagnose any of these root causes and, if necessary, refer you to a sleep lab for specialized treatment.

THE CAFFEINE NAP

If you want to optimize your alertness during any monotonous activity, sleep researchers at Britain's University of Loughborough may have an answer. They put volunteers on a driving simulator and tested the effectiveness of blasting the radio, opening the window, slapping yourself, etc. Such measures worked dismally at best

A much better solution: Drink a cup of coffee, and immediately take a 15-minute nap. Both caffeine and naps are antidotes to adenosine, a natural sleepiness-inducing chemical. By the time your catnap is done, the caffeine has kicked in. This one-two punch clears gobs of adenosine, buying the sleep-deprived a couple of hours of additional alertness.

Keep Your Cool

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 05:05:00 -0400

John Kirwin, a paramedic in Grand Isle, Louisiana, got the call from the U.S. Coast Guard at 10:15 on a sweltering summer morning. A boat captain was racing a sick tuna fisherman back to shore. The victim, a 42-year-old attorney from Baton Rouge, was suffering from some form of heat illness. He'd vomited twice and was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The heat index that day was already hovering near 105 degrees. By the time Kirwin and his team met the boat at the marina, the victim was conscious but was suffering such severe leg cramps that he couldn't stand. The paramedics took him by stretcher to the air-conditioned ambulance, and Kirwin began checking his vital signs on the way to the closest emergency room. The man's breathing was fast and shallow. He was pale, sweating profusely, and his body temperature was 99.2. With the patient lying flat on his back, his feet slightly elevated, Kirwin did an EKG, then placed bags of ice under the victim's arms and groin and started two IV lines to pump in fluids and electrolytes.

Out trolling with his buddies since early that morning, the fisherman had neglected to drink water to replace the fluids lost by sweat. He then hooked a large tuna and exhausted himself fighting it. His symptoms began with a sudden onset of weakness and a bad headache, followed by vomiting and leg cramps.

The ER doctor would later tell Kirwin that if the patient had spent another hour or two in the heat, he could have died.

Two days later, the fully recovered attorney returned to Grand Isle to thank Kirwin. "He brought me a couple of tuna steaks," Kirwin says. "He said, Â¿Â¿Â¿This is for saving my life.'"

Mercury Rising
The name for what ailed Kirwin's patient is heat exhaustion. "The main symptom is that you just can't sustain the activity you're doing," explains Howard Backer, M.D., past president of the Wilderness Medical Society and an expert on environmental heat illnesses. "In this regard, heat exhaustion is a healthy adaptation. It forces you to stop before you get yourself into even worse trouble."

Worse trouble means heatstroke, which can be lethal. Even victims who receive timely treatment die in up to a third of cases, and 17 percent of survivors suffer neurologic damage.

[NEXT "Story continued here..."] "Heatstroke," says Backer, "is on the far end of a spectrum that usually starts out as heat exhaustion. What's a mystery, however, is the triggering event that tips a person over to the point where adaptive temperature regulation fails." In the direst cases, body temperatures have been known to soar as high as 108 degrees in minutes. This leads to a metabolic cascade of events that can cause liver and kidney failure, simultaneously denaturing the protein in your brain like egg whites in a hot skillet.

The body is not without its defenses. When the brain detects a dramatically rising body temperature, it triggers processes that transfer heat away from the core by pumping blood to the skin where the heat can radiate away, abetted by the evaporation of sweat.

Unfortunately, many factors can impair this natural mechanism for heat dissipation. Alcohol (Kirwin found out that his patient had been drinking) and certain prescription medications impair the body's capacity to regulate temperature. The same holds true for circulatory problems, from heart disease to high blood pressure, excess body fat, and aging.

Stay Out of Trouble
Heatstroke is virtually always avoidable if you're smart. Here are a few tips from the experts:

See the doctor. If you have special risks, including obesity, heart problems, medical restrictions on your fluid intake, a low-salt diet, or prescription drug usage, or if you are over 65, talk with your physician before you go out.

Get in shape and acclimate. Almost all of us can improve our ability to toolerate high temperatures by acclimating to the heat. But just sitting in a sauna won't do it. You have to actually exercise for an hour a day in the heat for five to 10 days in order to improve your tolerance.

Take cover. Wear a wide-brimmed hat and light-colored, loose, breathable clothing, and try to stay in the shade as much as possible. Also limit outdoor exercise on hot days to the morning and evening hours.

[NEXT "Story continued here..."] Stay hydrated. Drink nonalcoholic beverages, like water and sports drinks. Beer doesn't count because alcohol dehydrates your system and interferes with heat regulation. (Kirwin says that he frequently responds to calls involving fishermen who drink beer on a hot day and don't understand why they end up dehydrated.) Excessive water drinking, however, can sometimes cause the body to flush out too much sodium, leading to a potentially fatal condition called hyponatremia. Your best bet is to drink enough water to stay a little ahead of your thirst and supplement it with salty snacks.

Buddy up. Heat illness can cause confusion and loss of consciousness. Keep an eye on your buddy, and have him do the same for you.

Don't downplay symptoms. If you start feeling sick in the heat, stop exercising and head for the shade or air-conditioning. Drink water, eat a salty snack, and take it easy. If you see someone collapse in the heat, summon paramedics.

Watch your best friend. Dogs are more vulnerable to heatstroke than humans, due to their coats and inability to sweat. In the fall of 2003, an estimated 100 hunting dogs died in South Dakota when pheasant season coincided with an autumn heat wave. "Most guys are very conscious of their dogs' health now," says David Smith, a dove-hunting outfitter and owner of Texas Wild. "Many of them won't bring a dog on a hot day. When they do, they bring a dish and plenty of water. If only they'd take as good care of themselves as they do of their dogs."