March 2011 – The Outdoors Guy

March 24, 2011

Wild turkey hen sure sign of Spring

(Thanks to Mrs Outdoors Guy for snapping this great photo!)

This morning, a fine-looking wild turkey hen strolled through my backyard in all her feathered glory.

Ahh, God love her, I’ll take it as a sign!

Ok, let’s recap: The Sportsman Show has already come and gone, the sap has started to flow, all the snow is gone from the roof of my house and now a wild turkey hen appears in my back yard….hmmm

Is it just me, or has spring really arrived?

You gotta love this time of year. Next all the snow will melt away, winter tires will come off, ice will soften and break-up on the river and lakes, the trilliums and wild garlic will begin sprouting through the forest floor..

Followed closely by trout and turkey season, one mustn’t forget that..

Next to Fall, Spring has got to be the best season..and hey, it took just one lowly hen turkey to remind me of that.

Outdoorsguy

March 17, 2011

Texas to allow concealed handguns on campus

The state of Texas is ever-so-close to passing a Bill which would allow both students and faculty to carry concealed handguns on campus.

Sound hard to believe? Well, its true!

If the Bill passes, Texas would actually become the second US state – after Utah – to allow guns on University Campuses.

Colorado currently gives Colleges and Universities the option to carry concealed handguns, and several have chosen to do just that.

In 1995’s landmark decision, Texas made it legal for residents over 21 to carry concealed handguns, and the State now has nearly 1/2 million registered handgun owners, according to the Department of Public Safety.

According to author of House Bill 750 – Republican Joe Rider:

“The issue applies mostly to faculty, staff and parents because most students would be too young to qualify for a license. In 2010, only 7 percent of license holders in 2010 were between the ages of 21 and 25, Driver said.

We’re not talking about every student getting a gun,” Driver said. “I did not file this bill so (license holders) could be heroes in mass-shooting situations. I filed this bill to allow (them) to be able to protect themselves.”

Is it just me, or do these American-style ‘‘conceal and carry” laws seem way out in left field?

Can you imagine – if carrying a handgun was actually legal in Canada – what activist groups would think of Republican Bill 750?

And to think we hunters and concervationists here in the Great White North have been battling for years, with difficulty, just to ‘shoot down’ a needless little gun registry system.

Gun laws, in my opinion, are the single biggest cultural and societal difference between the US and Canada, but the question still remains…

Who’s approach is better?

Outdoorsguy

March 16, 2011

Sugar bush better late than never

I was speaking with my father last night who lives in the Quebec Laurentians – the heart of sugar bush country – and it looks like syrup producers are poised and ready for take-off this week!

My Dad and good friend John tapped about 800 trees yesterday and have another 200, or so, to do today before they finish up.

From what I can tell, the season is at least 2 weeks later than last year, but hey, better late than never right?

Ah, there is nothing like the maple syrup time of year, if you ask me, and I have spent more years than I can recall working in the sugar bush. Times I will never forget..

What a blast it used to be – running lines, repairing breaks, tapping, watching the evaporater, taking the syrup off and even canning. The whole operation is a joy right down to the moment when that first batch of maple syrup comes off…man it tastes great when its warm!

There is a certain amount of science involved in a maple syrup operation; from understanding the sugar content in sap at various times of the year, knowing the colour and taste of grade ‘A’ syrup, to ‘old-school’ skills like knowing how to build and maintain the perfect fire for your evaporator.

Then it is moment(many hours later) when the ‘webbing starts’ at precisely 7 degrees above the boiling point of water, and your pure maple syrup is ripe for the picking!

Old school syrup producers have never used these modern gauges and I’m sure never worried about it either. They can read more in the webbing off their ladle than a thousand sophisticated gauges could ever read..now that is pure science.

The final product, well, it is simply a thing of beauty and there is really nothing in the world that compares to the taste of fresh maple syrup, or taffy on snow.

Canada produces 90% of the world’s supply of maple syrup(mostly from QC) – a statistic we should be very proud of. It is a big part of our heritage like hunting, fishing or the fur industry.

Outdoorsguy

March 7, 2011

Dan Grant trophy muzzleloader buck

Here is one fine trophy whitetail muzzleloader hunt, as told by hunter Dan Grant:

I have been an avid hunter since the age of 16. My parents let me take one day off from school and that day I shot my first buck, an eight point 202 lb beauty by 1978 standards.

Fast forward 32 yrs later…being self employed it doesn’t leave me with much time to hunt during deer season. I managed to take 1 day off during the regular rifle season and shot a nice little 5 point opening morning 10 minutes into the hunt. As muzzle season approached, the plan was to hunt the final Saturday back at our hunt camp. I arrived Friday night looking forward to the next day’s hunt and was the first to find the feathers in bed that night, as it had been a long and busy week at work.

The next morning, those who got up out of bed headed out to their respective stands and watches. I decided I would poke my way around the perimeter of our area and see what, if any, tracks could be found in the fresh snow. The wind was in my favour and I approached the back fence line. Fifty feet from the corner I heard the crashing through the bush inside the fence row. Busted! I thought, but I pulled out my grunt call anyway, blew 4 times, made my way to the turn on the trail, crouched down and waited. The deer had stopped, turned and began to make its way out of the bush onto the trail 25-yards in front of me. My first sighting of this buck was of his head and rack stretching out of the brush, and turning to look at me. In a cloud of smoke the deer disappeared, crashing again through the brush to my left as I quickly reloaded and ran back down the trail in case he tried to cross behind me.

Did I miss this deer? I wondered

The silence was deafening, my heart pounding, as I went back to where he had crossed. No tracks in the snow on the trail, no blood at all then I saw the snow off of some branches and a track where he had landed inside the bush. One drop of blood on the snow was all I could find, so decided to look a little further.

I didn’t have to go far, 100 feet from that spot lay my first deer ever taken with a muzzle loader, and what a deer it was!

There is a sign on the wall in our camp which reads “Tailspin Hunt Camp: where the legend grows”…I can vouch for that now! (Dan Grant – March , 2011)

Thanks so much to Dan for sharing his story.

Footnote: Dan Grant’s impressive muzzleloader buck was scored recently for the Boone & Crockett Club, to the tune of 169 6/8” B&C. As one can imagine with a buck measuring so close to the benchmark 170”, the numbers were calculated and recalculated several times.

March 3, 2011

Cormorant coming soon to a waterway near you

If you have never heard of the double-crested cormorant, you had better start Googling!

For those of us in Eastern Ontario, you will not need to travel far to find one of these birds during the summertime. For residents of southern and south-western Ontario, the cormorant has virtual taken over the landscape! They are like a roving swarm of locusts which have descended on the Great Lakes and any other lake or river in their path.

And boy can they devour fish like their going out of style!

According to the OFAH:

“Cormorant numbers are 250-times historic population records. Each cormorant eats a minimum of one-pound of fish per day; in other words, it takes about three yellow perch to feed the cormorants’ voracious daily appetite.”

And what are the effects of these mangy birds on a provincial scale?

“In Ontario, the net effect is over 42 million pounds of fish consumed by cormorants each year. Worse than what cormorants take is what they leave behind – that is, only the skeletons of mature shoreline trees. Cormorant droppings are so toxic they have destroyed thousands of miles of precious shoreline habitat.”

So, after receiving the below photographs from no less than 12 people over the past two weeks, I figured it was about time I post them here at the Outdoors Guy.

The images are as plain as the nose on your face and speak a thousand words as to the devastation these homely black birds are causing:

Please be warned the images you are about to see are graphic in nature (and just imagine how the fish feel) These pics originate from the US, however, the effect on Canadian fish remains the same:

These fish-eating machines make short work of anything in their path. Even a good-sized walleye is no match for the cormorant’s powerful bite:

The damage caused by double-crested cormorant predation is equivalent to black death for our fish populations and something needs to be done.

Sure, the zebra mussels filtered out the zooplankton and cleared up our waters, but these marauding birds are quickly cleaning-out every baitfish and finned-creature they can fit in their greedy grasp.

What can be done, you ask?

Well, you could sign the petition to support Bill 156 for starters. This is a private members Bill to remove cormorant protection and hopefully get the wheels in motion to control these pesky fish-eaters once and for all.

Click on the OFAH link below to sign the petition:

http://www.ofah.org/cormorants/bill156.cfm

Outdoorsguy

March 2, 2011

Cross Border Turkeys

These inquisitive wild turkeys created quite a stir this week at the Canada Border Services Port of Entry (POE) in Cascade.

The Cascade POE is located in Southern British Columbia, and of course the images immediately bring a couple of questions to mind:

1) What are these gobblers looking at inside the POE office?

2) Are these actually American turkeys already checked through customs, or are they Canadian gobblers wanting to do some ‘cross-border’ shopping?

Thanks to Serge for sending-in the photos and for providing the theory that the big Tom is in full strut, not because there’s a pretty CBSA employee inside, but because he sees his reflection in the window.

Outdoorsguy