Northwoods Sporting Journal,Feb. 2020

Joe Competes For Hogan Fry’s Hand Carved Trophy In Perch Paragon February 2020

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Hunting Winter Coyotes -Justin Merrill

* Bucktail Basics * The Voodoo Buck * Hunting “Big Dodge” * New Ice Fishing Regs Camps, Cottages & Land For Sale

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Maine Tails

By Jonah Paris, Scarborough, ME

November 7, 2019: I thought I heard a deer blow at me from somewhere off in a pine thicket.

I bleated three times. A few minutes passed before

The Curse of the Voodoo Buck

Page 3

my headlamp illuminated was stained a putrid green hunters have an odd fasciwhat appeared to be a tall color from the moss and the nation with antlers - even touched off a .30-06 round. stick poking up from the underside was nearly black if they are “spikes” - and After the adrenaline hit and the shaking subsided, I sent out a text message to my old college roommate, Sully: “I got him.” He

...crudely screwed to a board, the skull found its new home above the entryway to the kitchen back in Orono. We had no way of knowing what would ensue from our deed.

I heard leaves crunching.

Nose to the ground, and fresh shavings falling off his rack, he trotted out and stopped behind a large oak at forty yards. Fifteen seconds passed...thirty... forty-five. I was certain that he had winded me, but instead the buck took another two steps forward, and I

instantly responded: “The curse is broken!”. Let me explain how we arrived at this conclusion. …

During the first week of Maine’s 2017 firearms season, Sully and I were hunting out in the farm country west of Bangor.

Walking back to the trucks one evening, the beam of

The author with his 2019 buck.

(Photo courtesy of Jonah Paris)

base of a sickly-looking birch. Sully grabbed the “stick” and the moss gave way, the soil crumbled, and the skull of a spikehorn emerged. The top

Sully with his 2019 buck.

(Photo courtesy of Sullivan Tidd)

with soil residue. Cracked and heavily chewed upon by forest critters, the “deadhead” was certainly a homely-looking relic.

Yet, as we all know, deer

so, crudely screwed to a board, the skull found its new home above the entryway to the kitchen back in Orono. We had no way of (Voodoo cont. pg 26)

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Page 4

On The Cover

Joe Competes For Hogan Fry’s Hand Carved Trophy In Perch Paragon - Pg 6 Hunting Winter Coyotes - Pg 67 Bucktail Basics - Pg 61 The Voodoo Buck - Pg 3 Hunting Big Dodge - Pg 9 New Ice Regs - Pg 14

Contents

3. Maine Tails - Jonah Paris 6. The Adventures Of Me & Joe - Bob Cram 9. Outdoors In Maine - V. Paul Reynolds 11. “A Hiker’s Life” - Carey Kish 12. Northwoods Voyager - Gil Gilpatrick 13. South Of The Kennebec - Stu Bristol 14. The Allagash - Matt LaRoche 15. The Gun Cabinet - John Floyd 16. The Back Shelf - R. G. Bernier 17. The Singing Maine Guide - Randy Spencer 18. Outdoor Sporting Library - Jeremiah Wood 20. Women In The Woods - Erin Merrill 24. Question Of The Month - Al Cowperthwaite 28. Ramblings From T8 - R9 - Benjamin Rioux 29. Best Bassin’ - Bill Decoteau 32. The Buck Hunter - Hal Blood 33. Guns & Ammo: A Guide’s Perspective - Tom Kelly 34. Maine Outdoor Adventure - Rich Yvon 35. “Just Fishing” - Bob Leeman 38. Marsh Island Chronicles - Matthew Dunlap 39. Old Tales From The Maine Woods - Steve Pinkham 41. Blaine’s Outdoor Journal - Blaine Cardilli 41. The Bird Perch - Karen Holmes 42. Fishin’ Lake Ontario - Capt. Ernie Lantiegne 43.The Trail Rider - Rod Fraser 46. Flight Feathers - Brad Allen 47. Against The Current - Bob Romano 48. Post-Script From Pocasset - Josh Reynolds 49. Outdoors In Vermont - Gary Moore 50. Vermont Ramblings - Dennis Jensen 52. Green Mountain Report - Bradley Carleton 53. Kineo Currents - Suzanne AuClair 55. Salt Corner - Doug Jowett 56. Mass Wanderings - David Willette 57. The Tyer’s Corner - Hugh Kelly 58. Muzzleloading Afield - Al Raychard 59. Flight Of The Arrow - Jerome Richard 60. Cookin’ With New England’s WildCheff - Denny Corriveau 61. Fly Fishing - Joe Bertolaccini 62. Square Tail - V. Paul Reynolds 63. New Hampshire Outdoors - Peter St. James 64. New Hampshire Guide’s Journal - Tim Moore 66. Northwoods Sketchbook - Mark McCollough 67. On The Prowl - Justin Merrill 68. On Point - Paul Fuller

Other Great Stories & Information

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

The Sportin’ Journal The Outdoor Paper For “Maine Folks”

The Northwoods Sporting Journal is the Northeast’s most comprehensive and readable monthly outdoor publication. Published at the trailhead of Maine’s sprawling North Woods, the Sporting Journal prides itself on being an independent voice for the region’s outdoor community for more than 20 years.

Some of our writers are seasoned and specialized outdoors people who will share their know-how and insights; some of our contributors are simply lifelong outdoor people with interesting stories to tell.

Our aim every month is to capture the essence of Northern New England’s remarkable outdoor heritage by stirring memories, portraying outdoor humor, and sharing experiences and outdoor knowledge.

We also keep our readers up to date with late-breaking outdoor news and hard-hitting editorials about fish and wildlife issues.

Anyone who loves to hunt and fish, or simply finds the Great Outdoors a treasured place, is more than likely to find some special connections amid the pages of the Northwoods Sporting Journal.

www.sportingjournal.com

Main Office Phone: (207) 732-4880 E-mail: info@sportingjournal.com Fax: (207)732-4970 Vol 27 Issue 2 is published monthly by Northwoods Publications, 57 Old County Rd. North, W. Enfield, ME 04493 Periodical Postage Paid at W. Enfield, ME. and additional mailing offices.

The Northwoods Sporting Journal (ISSN#1548-193X) Postmaster: Send address changes to: Northwoods Sporting Journal, PO Box 195, W. Enfield, ME 04493 Northwoods Publishing Group Victor Morin - Susan Morin - Diane Reynolds - V. Paul Reynolds Publishers - Victor Morin Jr. - V. Paul Reynolds Editor - V. Paul Reynolds Director of Marketing - Victor Morin Assistant Editor - Josh Reynolds Associate Editor - Donna Veino Graphic Arts Manager - Gayleen Cummings Subscription/Distribution Manager - Alicia Cram Operations Manager - Annette Boobar Webmaster - Mike Morin General Sales Manager - Victor Morin Jr. Sales Department; Thomas Schmidt, Paul Hatin & Michael Georgia Regional Advertising Manager - Jim Thorne The Northwoods Sporting Journal invites submissions of photographs and articles about the Maine outdoors.

Manuscripts should be sent with a self-addressed envelope to: NORTHWOODS SPORTING JOURNAL P.O. BOX 195, W. ENFIELD, MAINE 04493 The Northwoods Sporting Journal accepts no responsibility for unsolicited photos or manuscripts. Photos submitted without a stamped, self-addressed envelope will not be returned.

All rights reserved, 2020. Written permission must be obtained from the Northwoods Sporting Journal to reprint any part of this publication. Any errors or omissions in ads or editorial matter will be corrected in the next issue of NWSJ. The views and opinions expressed by our monthly columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

Best Bassin’ - Pg 29

By Bill Decoteau Outdoors In Maine - Pg 9

By V. Paul Reynolds

8. Editorial/Letters 10. Outdoor News 25. Carroll’s Corner - Carroll Ware 37. Trading Post 62. Taxidermy 67. Real Estate

Cover Photo: Maine Coyote (Photo courtesy of IStock photos)

Flight Feathers - Pg 46

By Brad Allen

New Hampshire Guide’s Journal - Pg 64

By Tim Moore

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

The Adventures of Me and Joe

February 2020

The Eating Contest

by Bob Cram, (Alias T.J. Coongate) Medway, ME

The Mooseleuk County Fair was in its fifth and final day. The weather was hot and sunny, the crowds were large by northern Maine standards and the businesses and charities that stood to benefit from the fair’s largesse were all in fine fettle.

Me and Joe, together with Ajax Tremor and Laxton Vat, sat in my Uncle Arnold’s old canoe in Whitefish Cove on The Lake Where The Woman Drowned. We were all fat and happy, having downed mega doses of popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs and hamburgers at the Fair. All of us, that is, except for Laxton. He had abstained, saving himself to represent Mooseleuk High School at the annual eating contest that evening.

The great eating contest was the culmination of the Fair’s events. Every year students from Mooseleuk High competed with kids from archrival Musquacook High for the coveted title of Perch Paragon. Unlike run of the mill eating contests in tamer locals that featured pies or hot dogs as chosen cui-

sine, contestants in the Perch Paragon competition downed as many fried white perch fillets as they could manage in a 15-minute period.

Any student who wanted to try could participate in the contest but for the past three years Laxton Vat had won the competition going away. His capacity for food was immense, but his love of fried perch was even greater. Although he didn’t weigh 130 pounds soaking wet, Laxton appeared to have the metabolism of a hummingbird.

He burned up calories like an NFL running back on steroids and we were confident that he would bring home the Perch Paragon Trophy to Mooseleuk High for another year.

All four of us had lines in the water equipped with tiny gold spinners and hooks baited with chunks of night crawler picked off the Methodist church lawn in the dark of night.

We were doing our part to provide white perch for the eating contest and the fish were cooperating. As fast as we could take a fish off in the low light of evening,

The sudden arrival of heaping plates of golden fillets stopped all further conversation. When each contestant had a plate of fish before them the judge, Albert Clock, explained the rules.

Joe would plunk the creature on a hardwood board and swiftly fillet it. The gleaming fillets went into a colander that balanced on a block of ice inside a battered steel cooler.

“I dunno why they call this Whitefish Cove,” Ajax said, raising a trembling hand to brush long hair away from his eyes.

“I ain’t never caught no

If you just can’t get enough of reading our Me & Joe Adventures, check out the All Outdoor section of our new Northwoods Sporting Journal website:www.sportingjournal.com You’ll find an ample supply of Me & Joe stories to keep you checking for a long time.

whitefish here. Jist perch.”

“Boy, there’s plenty of perch,” I said, my old steel telescoping rod bending over. Cranking briskly on the level wind reel, I lifted a struggling fish into the boat.

“Let’s quit with that fish,” Joe said, peering down into the cooler. “We must have about three pounds of clear fillets here, an’ I bet they got all kinds of fillets already at the fair.

Don’t want none to go to waste.”

Ajax, who suffered from a nervous condition that caused trembling in his hands and an occasional nervous tick in his cheek, peeled the paper from a candy bar and offered it to Laxton.

“Here, Lax, have a bit of Baby Ruth. You ain’t et

nothin’ all day.”

Laxton waved a hand in disdain. “Cain’t be eatin’ any o’ that junk food,” he said scornfully. “Got to save my palate for them perch tonight.”

Ajax grinned and took a big bite from the candy bar. It was summer vacation, the Fair was on, and we were going to win the Perch Paragon Trophy one more time. Life was good.

As we walked along the fairway carrying the bag of perch fillets for delivery to the outdoor kitchen, we stopped to take an admiring look at the Perch Paragon Trophy.

Hogan Fry had carved the trophy back during the depression, when times were hard and money scarce.

(Me & Joe cont. pg 7)

February 2020

Me & Joe (Cont. from pg 6) The Perch Paragon contest had started then as a way for young people to Compete and enjoy themselves without anyone spending a great deal of money. Many of the surrounding waters were alive with white perch and everybody contributed to catching enough for the contest. Hogan Fry’s immaculate carving was that extra incentive that made the competition a success.

We gathered around the trophy where it sat on a pedestal in the center of the Fair midway. Carved from a single block of poplar, each scale, fin and eye was exquisitely formed and the light color of the wood itself caused the trophy to glow with a light of its own. The winning school was allowed to display the

Northwoods Sporting Journal trophy for one year and it had just been removed from the glass display case at Mooseleuk High the day before.

“Boy,” Ajax breathed, “I’ll be glad when we can put this back in the display case at school again.”

“I wouldn’t plan on puttin’ it there fore at least another year yet. “Prob’ly not even then,” a voice spoke up from behind us.

We turned to see a group of boys from Musquacook High standing there, grinning. At their front stood an immense figure, nearly as wide as he was high.

Short, thick legs held up a ponderous stomach and a completely round head sat on slopping shoulders without benefit of a neck.

The boy had lank, greasy hair that fell diagonally across his forehead and his thick lips were spread in a broad leer.

“ N a m e ’s R a l s t o n Gutt. But everybody calls me Poncho. Just transferred here from Holier Than Thou High School in Boston. Been in dozens of eatin’ contests. Ain’t never lost. You boys better just forget about that trophy.”

He stood smirking, fists on his flaring hips.

Joe scowled. “Guess you ain’t heard of Lax, here,” he said.

Gutt shook his head and spat on the ground.

“Don’t matter. Ain’t no skinny little ankle biter like him gonna ever eat as much as me. Your goose is cooked.” He turned toward the midway. “C’mon boys, lets go get an early seat by the kitchen. I can smell the fish from here.”

One of the other Musquacook students looked back over his shoulder as they headed off. “Better look at that trophy while

Page 7

you got the chance. In another couple hours it’ll be headed for the Musquacook High trophy case, an’ you ain’t invited to come an’ visit.”

Joe watched the rotund figure and his entourage waddling off down the midway and turned to Laxton with a worried look.

“I dunno, Lax. He looks like he kin hold a pile o’ perch.”

Laxton just smiled.

“It ain’t how much he kin hold, it’s how fast he kin git it down. Don’t you worry none, Joe. My own pappy says I got a gullet like a cormorant. I kin swaller them

fillets faster’n anybody you ever saw.”

Somewhat mollified we continued down the midway. I drew up in front of a booth that offered barbecued ribs. Thick pork ribs, lathered with barbecue sauce, lay in open display on the counter. I could feel my mouth water.

“I just gotta have a couple of those ribs,” I said hungrily.

“Me too,” Joe agreed reaching for his money.

Each of us, except for Laxton, bought an order of ribs and chewed at them happily as we continued (Me & Joe cont. pg 22)

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Year in Review

As the saying goes, change is the only constant, and 2019 was no exception. For the outdoor community in Maine, some of the change was good, some not so good.

Let’s check out our backtrack.

When it comes to state policymakers in Augusta, they do have the power to oversee changes that leave a mark.

Governor Mills created an ATV task force, long overdue. This group’s assignment is to recommend policy changes that will protect private land and preserve recreational opportunity. This is a tall order, but given the sky-rocketing increase in ATV use and vastly improved trail systems in our state, we need to be pro-active.

Recreational access, particularly for hunters, is still on the downswing. It is a nagging Albatross for the Augusta policymakers who deal with this issue. More and more land continues to be posted against hunting, in spite of efforts by IF&W to stem the tide. This is no doubt a big factor in the

To the Editor, Upon rereading my own column in the December issue, I unfortunately need to make a small correction. I incorrectly wrote that the Libby’s purchased the Atkins Camps in 1890 - this in fact did not happen until Will Atkins sold out to

decline of licensed hunters. Dealing with this access issue, IF&W commissioner Camuso has pledged that it will be on her front burner.

A special appropriation of $150,000 has been earmarked for landowner relations efforts. Cross your fingers.

This winter’s legislative agenda is loaded with proposed laws related to the outdoors: one bill would give retired Game Wardens a free hunting/fishing license, a couple of others would expand the 2020 November deer and muzzle loader seasons. One would guarantee a doe permit to anyone holding a lifetime license! And you will be able to hunt turkeys with a cross bow this fall. That law passed last spring.

Thanks to IF&W’s new, sophisticated game-harvest data system, we know already that this fall’s deer harvest was 28,317. This is 4,000 below the 2018 harvest.

Keep an eye on another issue that is

his neighbor Will Libby in 1910. The first paragraph should have read as follows: “When the historic Atkins Camps were founded in 1890, and twenty years before Ike, Will, and their father C.C. purchased them and founded Libby Camps, the world was a

vastly different place. 1890 was the year Yosemite was designated as a National Park, and the same year Wyoming and Idaho were admitted as 43rd and 44th states...”

The purpose of providing such a timeline was to give readers some historical perspective before

significant to sportsmen: coyote population management. Although commissioner Camuso pledged early in her appointment to maintain state-sanctioned coyote population reduction in the north woods, she will be getting heavy political pressure from the animal rights groups to suspend state-run coyote management. Public hearings are being conducted in various parts of the state.

Finally, backtracking kudos to the University of Maine extension service for opening its new tick-testing lab, and to the Veazie Salmon Club, not only from bringing itself back from the ashes, but for an amazing robust recovery to boot.

As we look to 2020, and all of the outdoor opportunities that are Maine’s good fortune, we take a moment to reflect on those outdoor friends who we lost in 2019.

painting a picture of all that has changed in the world during the 130 year history of the camps. While we are very proud of our history, I thought it important to recognize the correct purchase date and pay the appropriate respect to the contributions and legacy of Will Atkins, and the large

part he played in forming the very foundation of that history and the history of other sporting camps in the region.

Thank you, Benjamin J. Rioux Libby Sporting Camps

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Hunting ‘Big Dodge’

Page 9

Outdoors In Maine

by V. Paul Reynolds, Ellsworth, ME attempts he finally drew a Maine moose tag and hired Theriault to show him the ropes. Sawyer had no idea at the time, but he had an appointment with Big Dodge, and would be

at Big Dodge through a grid work of spruce trees but no shots were taken. On Wednesday the weather lifted. Theriault and his fellow guide and good friend, Ken Mayo, were

Suddenly 50 yards from Sawyer, a massive rack of antlers materializes from behind a bushy pine tree. Then, there he is! Big Dodge is black as night and standing broadside..

the second hunter to see double-teaming the rutting the County bull in his rifle bull with cow calls, bull scope. grunts and lot of tree rakDuring the hunt week ing. Then it got exciting.

Moose hunter Chris Sawyer with his moose, Big Dodge. the weather was not coop- About 10 a.m. the hunt (Photo courtesy OMM Outfitters at Eagle Lake) erating, according to The- crew began hearing grunts Aroostook County Lake, Theriault said that Then this fall, Mis- riault. He says they were 200 yards away. guide and outfitter Nathan if you hunt moose enough souri hunter Chris “Pos- forced to hunt in and around Theriault has an exTheriault had a pretty good you get to know one animal sum” Sawyer got lucky. weather “windows.” Early ceptional video of what idea where Big Dodge from another. When he After a number of futile in the week, they got a look (Dodge cont. pg 30) liked to hang out, espe- saw the moose below him 22 Peck Farm Road, Winthrop, ME cially when the rut was on. from his Husky bush plane, The season before one of there was no question. Big Nathan’s clients got a shot Dodge had survived!

Open 8-5:30 Monday-Saturday, 9-2 Sunday at the big bull, but failed to Later that winter, while flyMoose guide ing over the Nathan snow-covTheriault with ered area sheds of Big where he Dodge found last saw the in 2018. bull, Theriault spotted one of what he thought might be Big Dodge’s shedded antlers. On foot, the Aroostook guide located the antler and eventuput him down. Big Dodge ally found its match not far eluded the hunters and from the first shed. “I knew We Buy, Sell & Trade Theriault, wondering if the that it was Big Dodge’s moose survived, flew over head gear. There was no Big Dodge’s digs in early question,” he said with a December. The boss man at smile.

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Page 10

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Outdoor News - February 2020

Edited by V. Paul Reynolds

February. Not a bad month for outdoor types.

If you look closely, you’ll notice longer days. Cabin fever sufferers take heart.

There are sportsman shows and ice fishing derbies that make a relatively short winter month go even faster. On late afternoons toward the end of February, when the sun’s rays begin to hold promise and the wind stays down, it can be downright pleasant near those icefishing holes.

If you’re shopping for winter diversions beyond the bunny hunts or tying bench, don’t forget to check out the many sportsman shows, ice fishing derbies and bait dealers whose ads appear this month in the Sportin’ Journal.

As we said in this space last year at this time, the best part of the month is the perennial promise that helps Mainers endure the abbreviated days and prolonged nights: the coming of March, then the April thing, and then spring!

MDIFW Biologists Plan to Capture and Collar 130 Moose.

In early January,

Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists captured and collared 130 moose as Maine’s moose survival study enters its sixth year and focuses on a new study area.

Maine’s moose population fluctuates in response to many factors, including calf birth and adult survival rates. MDIFW, in cooperation and collaboration with the University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Fish and Game, Vermont Fish and Game, and the University of Maine-Animal Health Lab has been conducting a study that monitors calf and adult survival rates and closely examines causes of death for moose.

The study, which began in the winter of 2014, started in western Maine (WMD 8), and, in 2016, a second study area in northern Maine (WMD 2) was added. In those five years, 475 moose were captured by helicopter-launched nets and fitted with a GPS collar. These collars enable staff to remotely track moose locations and movements over time, and to be notified via text/email message if a moose dies.

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Adult cows are monitored each spring and summer to determine birth rates and survival rates of calves.

For each collared moose, biologists collect detailed health information, including a blood sample, parasite loads, body condition, and winter tick loads. This information is providing our researchers with an unprecedented, in-depth look at moose health, including the impact of parasites on survival and reproduction.

In the coming weeks, Maine’s moose biologist Lee Kantar, several other MDIFW staff members and Native Range Wildlife Capture Services will first be collaring 35 calves in northern Aroostook county (WMD 2), and collaring 35 calves in western Maine (WMD 8) and another 60 calves will be collared in WMD 4, which is located north of Moosehead Lake (northern Somerset and Piscataquis counties).

Expanding the study to WMD 4 will provide vital information documenting the impact of winter ticks on Maine moose. Winter ticks significantly impacts the survival of calves and may be impacting pregnant cows during the end of their pregnancy, causing extra stress on body condition due to blood loss. This increase in winter ticks is partially a consequence of the changing climate, resulting in milder winters and creating a greater opportunity for tick survival.

With parasites and disease, a larger moose population leads to greater chance of transfer, ultimately causing higher mortality rates. It is a high priority for MDIFW to find ways to diminish the

impacts of parasites and disease. For this reason, the agency is considering methods of selectively lowering the moose population in certain parts of the state to decrease the chance for parasite and disease transfer, eventually leading to a healthier population.

MDIFW also conducts aerial surveys to estimate moose abundance and the composition (bull, cow, and calf) across Maine’s core range of moose. This aerial survey data, combined with reproductive data from female moose (ovaries) and age data from moose teeth (removed at registration stations), is providing biologists with a more complete picture of Maine’s moose population size and composition than ever before.

M a i n e ’s m o o s e hunters also contribute to Maine’s moose study.

Successful hunters with a cow permit must provide the ovaries from their harvested cow moose so biologists can continue to evaluate ovulation and reproductive rates; two critical pieces of information to monitor population growth and decline.

MDIFW contracts with Native Range Capture Services out of Elko, Nevada to capture and collar the moose. The crew specializes in capturing and collaring large animals by helicopter and using net guns to capture and collar female moose and calves. Funding for the study comes from a federal Pittman-Robertson grant (funded by the sale of hunting equipment) and the state’s dedicated moose fund (funded through sale

of non-resident moose applications and permits).

Greenville Fish Report

Since we just celebrated the New Year, this is a good time to look at a couple new regulations that have gone into effect.

Last year I wrote about some of the changes we were seeing in the lake trout population at Allagash Lake. For example, we trapnetted the lake in the fall of 2018 and sampled over 200 lake trout. They were not very impressive. We didn’t get any really big fish in our nets like we had seen in the past, and they looked skinny overall. The Allagash Waterway Rangers collected data on angler use at Allagash Lake in 2019.

We estimated just over 200 angler days of fishing for the ice fishing season, which in this case was just the month of February. In the past, our angler estimates were generally in the 500-600 angler day range.

Unfortunately, this is a scenario we have seen play out on many waters recently.

There is a decline in angler use, therefore the number of fish removed is lower, and soon growth declines because there are more mouths to feed. We made a few regulation changes at Allagash Lake starting in 2020 in an effort to get ahead of the problem. First, we eliminated the special February only ice fishing season. The lake will open on January 1st and remain open under the General Law provisions for the ice fishing season. We also eliminated the two-line (News cont. pg 25)

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Preparing For The Appalachian Trail

Editor’s note: Carey Kish is a two-time AT through hiker and recently hiked the 2,650 miles Pacific Crest Trail on the West coast.

Planning and preparation for an Appalachian Trail thru-hike takes some time and effort, but it’s a manageable task if you don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the thought of the 5-6 months and 2,200 miles of hiking ahead of you. An undertaking like this is best taken one step at a time, both before and during the journey.

There’s a lot of information available today, mountains of it in fact compared to the dearth of planning resources when I first hiked the AT in 1977.

I’ve often told prospective thru-hikers that an AT trek can be planned on the back of a beer napkin. The reality, as I’ve rediscovered, is that it takes a little more doing than that, but is pretty straightforward for the average hiker with patience and determination.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the hike and what it takes to make it a success, so here is an overview of my plans and what I’ll be carrying on my back.

My first step was to buy a set of 20 strip maps

“A Hiker’s Life”

timeframe to enjoy the walk through some of all four seasons. I’ll walk 8-12 miles a day for the first couple hundred miles, then ramp it up to 12-15 miles for a while. The 15-20-mile days will probably begin in Virginia as the terrain moderates and I’m more physically fit.

My trusty Osprey backpack will serve as my home away from home

of the trail route and a companion guide with detailed mile-by-mile data. Using these, I developed a spreadsheet outlining where I’ll buy or mail food and other important items along the way, as well as find stove fuel, lodging, laundry, meals, shuttles to and from towns and such.

Of the 20 mail drops planned, 13 will include freeze-dried and non-perishable foods, while the other seven boxes will contain just maps and other small essentials. Where I’m not mailing food, I’ll purchase it from grocery stores.

I selected a midMarch to mid-September

Page 11

for six months. My base pack weight, as measured by a hanging scale out in the shed at home, is 21 pounds. Add three pounds

by Carey Kish, Bar Harbor, ME of electronic gear, then a week’s worth of food and two liters of water and the tally is 35 pounds. That’s more than I’d like but it can get darn cold in the Southern Appalachians in springtime, so extra warm gear is a necessity at first.

A lighter load will suffice in the summer months.

For clothes, I’m starting with a rain jacket and pants, zip-off pants, two T-shirts, long-sleeve shirt, hat and gloves, ball cap, insulated jacket, fleece vest, two undershorts and a bandana.

For shelter, I’ve got a one-person Eureka Spitfire tent, plastic ground sheet, down sleeping bag rated to 20 degrees and an inflatable mattress.

My cook kit includes an MSR Pocket Rocket stove, gas fuel canister, titanium pot and spoon, plastic mug and lighter.

For drinking water, I’m carrying a hydration bladder with hose and

chemical water treatment drops.

I’m not planning on any blisters, a bold statement but one I’ll probably be able to back up given my extraordinary Lowa Renegade boots, which fit wonderfully and provide incredible support. A backup pair will be waiting at home if needed. Three pairs of synthetic socks plus liner socks will go with me.

Odds and ends include a small first aid and repair kit, bag of personal items like sunscreen and lip balm, and toilet kit. An iPad Mini, Nikon camera and an iPhone plus remote charger and USB cords round out the gear.

Carey Kish is the author of “AMC’s Best Day Hikes Along the Maine Coast” and editor of the “AMC Maine Mountain Guide.” Follow more of his outdoor adventures on Facebook @Carey Kish.

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Page 12

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Northwoods Voyager

Diseased Deer

and gave themselves a thorough scrubbing. Further, they resolved to get tested for whatever the organism

by Gil Gilpatrick, was in due time.

Skowhegan, ME I decided to check in M y f r i e n d , D i c k truck a stranger looked at with the Department of InMosher and I have been it and immediately said: land Fisheries and Wildlife deer hunting just about all “tuberculosis,” (TB) then (MDIFW) to see if they of our lives. I cannot begin walked off. to estimate how many deer As you can imagine, we have bagged, but we Dick was alarmed by this are both 85 years old, have and decided to call a game hunted ever since it was warden. The warden took legal for us to do so, and the pail of remains and

came back said that the growths were the result of Salmonella organism infection. But, there’s more. I was also told that the specimen was being forwarded to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta for further confirmation. I

You can see it in the photo. The inside of the deer was covered with those small fatty-looking balls. have each scored for most of the years we have been active. You do the math!

This year, though we witnessed something that neither of us have ever seen before. You can see it in the photo. The inside of the deer was covered with those small fatty-looking balls. Dick was puzzled by this and contemplated what he should do. He went to our regular meat cutter to see if they had ever seen anything like it before. As he got the pail containing the entrails out of the

asked if Dick wanted to keep the deer. He said no, so the warden took the deer and the pail and told him he could go out and shoot another deer. Since his wife, Judy had already shot a deer, Dick said he guessed he was done for the season and let it go at that. In the meantime, he worried about his and Judy’s health as they had both handled the remains and had been inside the deer up to the elbows and beyond. For the time being they took a long shower

could shed any light on the subject. I emailed what I knew and soon got a call from Keel Kemper of the Department who informed me that the remains were sent to the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory for analysis.

The preliminary report that

have not yet heard the results from CDC, but Kemper assured me I would be informed as soon as they learned anything. By the way, his phone number is: 287-5369 in case anyone has anything similar they would like to report or ask about.

February 2020

I hold our MDIFW in high esteem. I know they all are dedicated pros who want what the best for our wildlife. I do think that sometimes they tend to be overly cautious. I still recall when coyotes first started appearing in Maine.

At first the department denied their existence, said they were dogs gone wild, even though we were hearing them and seeing them.

Eventually they reneged and said they were coydogs. This was their stance for quite a while until they finally admitted that coyotes had invaded Maine.

So, I understand why they are being cautious about things like the diseased deer, but I also understand that it is important for us all to be aware.

I know many of Journal readers know the importance of deer to our state and to our way of life. We look at the deer herd, not just as a valuable state resource, but as a way of life, and therefore we worry when something comes along that may threaten it. Maybe this is nothing unusual and is nothing to (Deer cont. pg 13)

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 13

Growing Up Wild

Cutting up three and four deer at a time on our kitchen table was common in the Bristol family home back in the 1940’s and 1950’s. A few cuts went straight to the cast iron fry pan as rewards while we cleaned, wrapped and canned all the meat we could carve from the animals. We had no freezers back then and what we packed away on cellar shelves got us through most of the lean springtime and

everyone whose lives we touched.

Besides the deer taken during Vermont’s short fall season, the male members of our family worked the apple orchards and as partial payment for our labor we were allowed to help cull the bud-eating deer when the first snows hit, all with the blessing of the local Game Warden. Some

has been in trouble with the law other than a speeding or parking ticket and each of us grew up to either own businesses or high level management jobs.

All but one of my brothers, who had a medical condition served proudly in the military.

Guns, and especially ammunition was scarce in our family and each

South Of the Kennebec

by Stu Bristol, Lyman, ME giving half our earnings to the family for food and clothing. When we wanted a new bicycle or other toy, we ganged up and made the purchase, then fought over who would use it first, and second.

Growing up the baby of such a large family is worthy of a book in itself, but for now I want to expand on how our outdoor lifestyle while growing up affected our lives. summer months. Despite the fact that our homestead was downtown Brattleboro, Vermont, all eleven brothers and six sisters grew up wild.

By “wild” I am referring to the fact that to sustain that large a family on modest incomes, we took to the woods and waters to supplement our food pantry. Looking back over my 74 years of hunting, fishing and outdoor activities, I see the influence growing up wild had, not only on members of our family but

say the close relationship we had with local Warden Wheatly Wheelock caused me to join the warden force years later.

Growing up the baby of such a large family is worthy of a book in itself, but for now I want to expand on how our outdoor lifestyle while growing up affected our lives.

Unlike the youth of today, we had no television, no cell phones, no video games and despite being more than a handful to our parents none of our family

hunting season we could only afford one box of .22 caliber ammo, three 30-30 shells, three OO buckshot rounds and three .45-70 cartridges. The older boys got to do the shooting and the rest of us helped with scouting, deer gutting, met packing, and, of course the eating.

In the family yard we grew vegetables and raised chickens, turkeys and one cow. Our father was born with major heart disease so each member of the family pitched in

is the first living recipient of the Legendary Maine Guide award. He is a life (Cont. from pg 12) worry about. I hope so, but member of the Maine Proit doesn’t hurt to check, fessional Guides Association, a founding member does it? of the Maine Wilderness Gil Gilpatrick is a Guides Organization, and Master Maine Guide, and served as a member of

the Advisory Board for the Licensing of Guides from 1996 to 2010. He is a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association and is the author of seven outdoorrelated books. Contact him at Gil@GilGilpatrick.com

Deer

In short, we had strict family discipline and by this I mean sitting in a chair for an hour when we misbehaved and an occasional slap on the back of the head; not hard, but hard enough to stop what we were doing.

Through the tutelage of my father and older brothers we learned to respect firearms and the rules

of hunting and fishing and adhered to a spiritual (not religious) admiration of the fish and game that gave up life to sustain us. Too often today, especially on social media I see gross disrespect for animals taken and worse, children being admired for displays of similar disrespect.

The walls above my computer are covered with awards and photos depicting my lifetime commitment to outdoor communication and volunteerism to conservation and teaching of outdoor ethics. Hopefully along the way I have set examples for others who strive to raise their children “wild.”

Stu Bristol is a Master Maine Hunting, Fishing and Tidewater Guide and outdoor writer. He operates Orion Guide Service out of southern Maine. His outdoor features have been published nationwide for more than 50 years. Stu was recently inducted into the National Wild Turkey Hunting Hall of Fame. Visit his website at www.deadlyimpostergamecalls.com

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Page 14

Northwoods Sporting Journal

The Allagash

AWW Superintendent, Matt LaRoche, ME

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has relaxed the ice fishing rules at Allagash Lake. For the first time in many years, the lake will be open to ice fishing for three months: January, February and March. Ice anglers will also be allowed to use five lines instead of the two-line restriction that has been in effect since as long as I can remember.

Fisheries biologists are hoping that ice fishermen will remove more lake trout- commonly called togue by Mainers, from Allagash Lake. The togue and brook trout at Allagash Lake have historically been fine looking specimens with many togue being caught over ten pounds and fat healthy brookies over 18-inches is common.

In recent years, the fish have run smaller. Most

notably the togue are skinny with large heads. This is a common consequence of an over population of predator fish and an under population of forage fish.

The primary forage fish at

February 2020

Allagash Lake Ice-Fishing Changes

size of fish will be a slow process. We do know that the lake has the capacity to grow huge fish given the right balance between game fish and forage fish.

Allagash Lake is arguably the most wild and scenic of all the Allagash

in the northwest corner of the lake.

Allagash Lake is a designated Maine Heritage Fish Water. Therefore, the

two friends were jigging in about 30-feet of water, a foot off bottom with a gold leadfish, we were hauling fish in one right after anoth-

It is hoped that anglers will remove more togue at Allagash Lake because of the increased months open to ice fishing and additional lines allowed.

Allagash Lake is the rainbow smelt.

It is hoped that anglers will remove more togue at Allagash Lake because of the increased months open to ice fishing and additional lines allowed. The theory is that fewer predator fish will allow the smelt population to increase and in-turn the remaining fish in the lake will grow larger at a faster rate. This all sounds good, but we need to be patient.

Noticeable changes in the

Wilderness Waterway headwater lakes. The waterway has special rules in effect at Allagash Lake to ensure that visitors have a wilderness experience.

No motors of any kind are allowed on Allagash Lake or Allagash Stream (winter or summer). That means no snowmobiles, power augers or chainsaws.

However, you are allowed to drive a snowmobile to the shore of the lake at three locations: The Islands in the southeast corner of the lake, the ranger station in the southwest corner and Ledge Point Campsite

The author and his brother Mark LaRoche with a nice togue from Allagash Lake.

(Photo by Jay Young) no live fish as bait restric- er. We caught 32-togue in a tion is in place on this lake. matter of a couple hours. It I had some of the best was a bright sunny, windtogue fishing in my life less February day - one of between the island and those days when everything shore across from Ledge worked out “just right”.

Point Campsite. Me and So, strap on those snowshoes and head to Allagash Lake for an authentic wilderness ice fishing adventure. You won’t be disappointed!

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

The Sporting Journal Experience

February is Super Bowl month, and while I look forward to watching football with a warm fire glowing, this month is very special to me if for altogether different reasons.

Three years ago this month, my very first Gun Cabinet column appeared

in New England. For me, writing for the Journal was higher on my career to-do list than being published in any other publication – the national ones included.

Paul and I exchanged a few emails and after reading my work at BDN, Paul offered me a column in the Journal,

When Journal editor Paul Reynolds put out a call for a writer in late 2016, I jumped at the chance. I’d been reading the Journal for years and it lay on the end tables and in magazine racks of every hunting camp I ever visited in New England. in the Northwoods Sporting Journal. I remember the anticipation of waiting for that issue and fretting somewhat of how well, or not, my new column would be received by the legion of Journal readers. I had been writing an outdoors column titled “Life on the Ridge” for the Bangor Daily News website for a couple of years so I wasn’t exactly a rookie, but Journal readers were my people; hunters, anglers and outdoors folks – my peers, friends and acquaintances in the outdoors community. The BDN readership was markedly different and while I did have the opportunity to meet some talented writers and editors, the overall environment was just… different.

When Journal editor Paul Reynolds put out a call for a writer in late 2016, I jumped at the chance. I’d been reading the Journal for years and it lay on the end tables and in magazine racks of every hunting camp I ever visited

and a check mark on my writing career bucket list.

“AR15: America’s Next Iconic Firearm?” was published in February 2017. I think I rewrote it a couple of hundred times before submitting it. Over the next few months, the rewrites lessened and I felt I had hit my stride. My first cover for the Journal was “Gunning for Grouse” in the October 2017 issue. It was a humbling experience for me. There are a pile of great columnists writing for the Journal and to be selected as the top feature for a cover is special. It also indicated to me that my instincts on what readers wanted to see were proving out. My second cover for the Journal was no less special. “Coyote Country” appeared on the cover of the February 2018 issue.

The third cover to date was a collaborative effort put together by Paul as a special deer season issue in November 2019. “A Promise Kept” shared the “Memorable Deer Rifles”

special feature with four other hand-picked columnists – although my name was accidentally left off the cover! All kidding aside, being featured on covers, as well as several regular highlight features over the past three years were professionally rewarding, the interaction with readers is what keeps me motivated and is my favorite aspect of writing for you every month.

I read and respond to every email I receive regarding my columns – most are positive comments, some ask for advice on the topic and a few are neither.

But that’s the way it goes when you voice opinions and take stands on issues folks hold dear. And you know what? I value every single one of them. You never know who you’ll reach and how your ideas and topics relate to folks.

Some I’ll never forget.

During the Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument debate, I wrote about the feeling on the ground here among guides, locals and residents of the region. I was contacted by the press secretary for the Department of the Interior for comment. I wrote about how to clean guns with used dental picks and tools, then received an email Let us know your opinion send letters to the Editor to: NWSJ P.O. Box 195 W. Enfield, ME 04493

Page 15

The Gun Cabinet

by John Floyd, Webster Plantation from a dentist who was an avid hunter and shooter.

He followed up his email with a package in the mail containing a full set of used dental implements for my gun cleaning kit. A column I wrote about predator hunting got the interest of a regular reader who offered me his property to hunt coyotes on – it turns out we are practically neighbors.

Thanks Harley, maybe this year!

I think that’s the best way to describe how I feel about writing for the Northwoods Sporting Journal.

I’m talking to neighbors about the things I love

to do and what I think is important in the outdoors community. Who better to converse with? Thank you readers for the past three years; it’s been my sincere pleasure. I hope you’ll peek inside my Gun Cabinet for many years to come.

John is a Registered Maine Guide, an NRA Certified Instructor and is the owner of Tucker Ridge Outdoors in Webster Plantation, Maine. He also works as a freelance outdoors writer and can be reached at john@tuckerridge.me or on Facebook @writerjohnfloyd

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 16

the Back Shelf

From the files of the Northwoods Sporting Journal.

February 2020

Maine’s Record Buck: The Whole Story

by R.G. Bernier

The best hunting and fishing columns going back 25 years.

For unexplainable reasons even to Horace, he never moved or made a sound. Something within (a gut feeling most successful hunters have learned to trust) told him there was more action to come. No sooner had that thought passed when the buck of any hunter’s dream was sneaking directly towards Horace.

By the time your eyes light upon November’s column, this buck hunter will have already buried himself deep into the wilderness of Maine. Hopefully, an oversized set of tracks will be laid out before me yearning to be followed.

My expectation is to be hunting the giant buck that eluded us last fall. He undoubtedly will rival the state record in regards to weight. The Berniers’ goal is to catch up to this behemoth and end his career by the only fitting way we know - a projectile fired

from a Bernier-held rifle.

Each fall, the annual gathering of the red coats brings on a renewed enthusiasm and expectation. As groups of hunters find their way to their traditional hunting camps, talk of big deer abounds. The anticipation of meeting up with the buck of your dreams fuels the desire as you encroach upon his domain.

One such buck in Maine’s rich deer-hunting history met and surpassed even the wildest dreams of a 59-year-old hunter back in 1955. Horace R. Hinckley did what no other hunter has been able to match since, by shooting the heaviest whitetail buck on record within the state of Maine. In fact, Hinckley’s buck places second in all of North America, only to a Minnesota buck shot in 1926 by Carl Lenandor. Carl’s buck topped the scales at 402 pounds dressed.

The events surrounding the taking of this enormous animal are Horace’s own words, excerpted from the August 1969 issue of Outdoor Life. I certainly would not want you to think I had any first hand knowledge, seeing as I was nothing more than a mere twinkle in Pop’s eye when this momentous occasion occurred.

Little did Horace know as he struck off that morning that he was about to embark on a whitetail record that would stand for forty-three years. Days off for a lumber worker came only on holidays and during inclement weather.

Vacations were out of the question, especially to go deer hunting. The Hinckleys hunted when they could, and because of expected rain on the first Saturday of deer season, they jumped at the opportunity to hunt.

Trophy hunting as we view it today had no bearing on the Hinckley mindset. They hunted deer out of enjoyment and to lay up sweet tasting venison for the coming winter.

Horace, his wife Ol-

ive, their son Philip and his wife Madeline traveled 60 miles from their Augusta home to hunt Northwest Bingham. The area is located on the western side of Fletcher Mountain. Once reaching the desired loca-

tion, the elder Hinckleys hunted an old tote road for the first hour. Due to the lack of fresh deer sign, they stopped to ponder their next move.

While talking it over, (Back Shelf cont. pg 44)

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Hardwater Surprises

What was it about last winter that made the ice fishing season more interesting than any in recent memory? It wasn’t the mounds of deep snow, since that didn’t really happen. There was certainly good ice, mainly from those cold snaps early in 2019. In some cases, anglers were attaching their extensions to their augers to get down through the ice before drowning the carburetor. Even so, that’s not so unusual for West Grand Lake, not in late February.

From the initial outings, our little group began to notice something that was significant enough to rate an entry in the camp log. After the first few days of fishing, a powwow in camp revealed that everyone was having the same experience. They’d set out their five lines to cover a variety of depths and bottomscapes. There would of course be salmon lines with baits (either shiners or smelts) swimming freely from a barrel swivel just under the ice. These would mostly be placed close to shore, sometimes within twenty feet! When you drilled out these holes, you’d find less than sixteen inches of water under the ice, then you were on bottom.

Some of the salmon lines would be placed in deeper water, perhaps near a rock outcropping, an island or shoal where there was a good drop off. Then, there were togue lines set with suckers or large shiners on or near bottom in water 25 to 50 feet deep.

The trick of leaving several loops of line lying on bottom has been effective in giving the togue time to

ingest the bait before the flag goes up and the angler responds with a hook jab.

In other words, everybody did what they usually do, providing good coverage and hoping for the best.

The best came in a surprising way in 2019. It wasn’t the usual smattering of action on all different types of sets, some deep,

for a feast.

That meant cleaning the specimen that evening, which in turn meant checking the GI tract to see what this fish had been eating.

The answer would have been hard to miss. Scoring the large intestine caused an eruption of pin smelts to come flooding out onto the newspaper. There were

Page 17

The Singing Maine Guide

by Randy Spencer, Grand Lake Stream, ME repast of broiled salmon cooked in front of the wood stove coals in a broiler basket, and the togue chowder that followed. But if that was a good start, the next day was not going to dis-

The first morning of the first day, the first fish I had flopping on the ice was a legal 5 lb togue. That’s always a cause for celebration, but on the first night in camp, it’s also a cause for a feast.

some shallow, the various species being in all the places they’re “supposed to be.” The deep lines, togue, salmon, and whitefish flags hung limp all day. But not the shallow sets. Our tracks beat down a highway getting to those lines where there was more ice than water because those were the flags going up all day. That might not have been so remarkable if we’d found only salmon on those lines. Instead, all different species were up against shore, and we wouldn’t find out why until that evening.

The first morning of the first day, the first fish I had flopping on the ice was a legal 5 lb togue. That’s always a cause for celebration, but on the first night in camp, it’s also a cause

more in the stomach, gullet, and even the mouth. OK. Interesting, but not totally unexpected or unusual.

Smelts are, after all, the preferred forage of togue and landlocked salmon. A whitefish won’t turn up its nose at one either.

One of the other guys brought in another legal togue as well as a beautiful 18” salmon. I stood over his shoulder while he cleaned them, and–you guessed it–same thing.

These fish were engorged with smelts too, but like mine, they were taken from the shallow lines he had up against shore. His deep lines, like mine, had remained dormant all day.

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appoint.

A chilly northwest wind lifted the flags already set out by 8 a.m. It wasn’t high wind, but it doesn’t take much when it’s already 15 degrees outside. Was that first flag a wind flag?

Maybe. But twenty seconds after it was reset, it went up again. I watched the reel under the ice screaming and lurching for another twenty seconds, then responded with one fast jerk of the wrist. That was only the beginning of the fight.

When it was over, the blood on the ice was mine, not

the pickerel’s who’d left some payback when I tried to humanely remove the hook. No good deed goes unpunished. I wasn’t paying close enough attention because I was looking at the smelts halfway down the pickerel’s throat, and the others falling out of its mouth. Once again, this line had been set within twenty feet of shore.

So began the theme of last winter. Every species we were fishing for were in close, after these smelts. But why were the smelts there? It was a firstof-its-kind event in our camp, making for lots of theorizing, speculation, and guessing. And what’s better than that?

Randy Spencer is an author and working guide.

Reach him at randy31@ earthlink.net or via www. randyspencer.com

HELP US FIND

The elusive Northwoods Sporting Journal’s moose Marty.

He has wandered into the northwoods.

Find Marty somewhere in the Northwoods Sporting Marty Journal (Hint: he will be located in one of our ads) Send us the page number he’s on and you could be a WINNER! Win a FREE Northwoods Sporting Journal Marty Hat. We will draw one winner from all correct entries submitted each month. We will announce the winner in the next issue.

Shown actual size December winner was

PLEASE MAIL THIS FORM TO: Northwoods Sporting Journal P.O. Box 195, West Enfield, ME 04493

William Mulcahy (Marty was found on pg 56)

Name

Barry Robertson

Address City

State

Phone I found Marty on page

Zip

(Marty was found on pg 44)

Entries must be postmarked by 2/9/19 to be eligible for this issue.

Page 18 Northwoods Sporting Journal

Outdoor Sporting Library

by Jeremiah Wood, Ashland, ME

When we think of human progress on the landscape, images of housing developments, shopping centers and skyscrapers come to mind.

Disappearance of human

Life and Times of a Big River

the homesteaders featured in John McPhee’s book “Coming into the Country” packing, and resulted in a very different river when Dan O’Neill floated it decades later and wrote the

From Peter Marchand’s perspective, and that of McPhee, O’Neill, myself, and many others, they went too far. occupation on the land altogether? That wouldn’t seem a likely scenario, but it’s exactly what happened along Alaska’s upper Yukon River 40 years ago.

Progress came in the way of the Federal Government’s designation of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, which sent

February 2020

aptly titled book, “A Land Gone Lonesome”.

The river wasn’t abandoned, it was just different.

The year-round residents were kicked out when the Feds moved in, but the river was as active as ever, with Park Service jet boats patrolling up and down its corridor, and a new follow-

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ing of recreationists seemingly attracted to anything with the word “National” in front of it. Did this make it more wild? Less wild? Did either group have any sort of impact on the landscape?

In the middle of all this, summer of 1975, a small group of scientists descended on the river in an attempt to better understand the area’s soil and its plant and animal life, and inform decisions about its designation. Dr. Steve Young, founder of the Center for Northern Studies, had assembled a small team to work the Yukon River bottom and highlands around the Charley, Kandik and Nation rivers.

Peter Marchand studied trees and vegetation.

Garrett’s specialty was small mammals. Bruce was a geologist, Eduardo an entomologist. The men spent the summer at various tent camps up and down the river, and in the high country where they were transported by helicopter. They collected reams of valuable data and numerous specimens that led to some pretty groundbreaking discoveries at the time.

One of the more interesting subjects of the scientists’ work was the Kathul Mountain area, near the mouth of the Kandik River. The mountainside supported a unique sagebrush/steppe microbiome that contained some of the rarest species in Alaska, and was believed to be a remnant of the Ice Age and Bering Land Bridge era.

Cool stuff.

(River cont.pg 19)

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

River (Cont. from pg 18) Scientific field work doesn’t come without risk, and the men nearly perished when their helicopter pilot ditched them during poor weather, going five days without food or communication with the outside world. But once resupplied and relocated, they got right back into data collection mode.

The research crew helped politicians in D.C. better understand what they voted to protect, but whether or not they made the right decision depends on your perspective. From Peter Marchand’s perspective, and that of McPhee, O’Neill, myself, and many others, they went too far.

Removing the long term habitat destruction from large scale mining in wild places is one thing, but removing the human element that was light on the land - the homesteaders who hunted, fished and trapped, took some from the land and left little trace, that was another thing altogether.

When those people left, we lost a good part of what that

land was, and how humans interacted with it.

The Yukon-Charley is still wilderness, but it’s managed wilderness. In Marchand’s words, you can still get out, get lost in its vastness, and maybe find yourself. But you may need a permit.

“Life and Times of a Big River” is Peter Marchand’s 2015 recounting of the 1975 expedition on the

upper Yukon. Full of reflection, excitement and some great pictures, it tells the story of a special group at a unique time in Alaska’s history. Marchand is a heck of a story teller, and I’m glad he finally decided to tell this one.

J e re m i a h c a n b e reached at jrodwood@ gmail.com

Page 19

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Igniting A Passion For The Outdoors

Women In The Woods

by Erin Merrill, Portland, ME

George Smith always talks about going to school with a gun in your vehicle because you were coming out of the woods after a morning of hunting, to go to school and were headed back when the day was done. We are in a very different world now, but that passion for the outdoors is beginning to come back.

Waterville Maine’s Mid-Maine Technical Center is home to one of four Outdoor Leadership programs in the State. With almost 30 high school ju-

February 2020

instructor in and get the rest ahead to graduation, the of the class trained” said students in Jason’s class niors and seniors, instruc- Jason, “we really want to have another goal that they tor Jason Cyr is excited to give them a solid founda- want to accomplish before see where the brand new tion as they get ready to that. “They want to get float program will lead. “This program is four months Waterville Maine’s Mid-Maine Technical old, “Jason said, “but the Center is home to one of four Outdoor kids are so excited about Leadership programs in the State. not only what we are doing With almost 30 high school juniors but what they will be able and seniors, instructor Jason Cyr is to do as they go through the class.” Each student excited to see where the brand will leave the class with new program will lead. hunter’s safety in rifle and archery as well as ATV, graduate high school and bags for their canoes and snowmobile and boating move on to something in kayaks and they plan to paddle in the Kenduskeag safety. “I have two students the outdoor field.”

W h i l e m o s t h i g h Stream Race this spring” who are avid trappers so school seniors are looking Jason smiled. “It is great they want to help bring an

to watch each of them find their niche and be willing to push themselves to learn more and become proficient enough to teach others.”

As a brand new program, Jason knows that in order to be sustainable, he must cultivate interest in younger students. “We have a mentor program here,” he explained, “8th graders are being partnered with my students and twice a month, they come to class and go through a training that the juniors and seniors run.” What a great way to (Passion cont. pg 31)

Aroostook County WANTED: OUTDOOR COLUMNIST FOR AROOSTOOK COUNTY

The Northwoods Sporting Journal has an immediate opening for a monthly outdoor columnist. If you hunt and fish and spend time in the outdoors in the County, enjoy talking to other sportsmen and women and have some outdoor savvy, we’d like to hear from you. This is a part-time position and, while basic writing skills are required, the successful applicant will be mainly someone who would enjoy keeping County sportsmen informed and be able to write on a computer.

This is a paid position. Interested applicants should email writing samples and/or questions to the editor, V. Paul Reynolds, at: vpaulrtds.net The Northwoods Sporting Journal is an equal opportunity employer.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

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February 2020

Me & Joe

(Cont. from pg 7) through the Fair.

I noticed that Laxton was watching me eat with a hungry look in his eye. I held out one of the ribs.

“Here, Lax, have a rib. One won’t dull your appetite any.”

Laxton took the rib gratefully. “Guess yore right. One o’ these won’t even git me started.” He took to the rib with gusto.

As we walked along I noticed a display of antique fishing rods. I started to point them out to Joe when I noticed that he was looking back over my shoulder, on his face a look of shocked surprise.

Turning around, I was dismayed to see Laxton holding onto his throat with both hands. The halfchewed rib lay in the dust at his feet and his face was contorted in pain and turning blue.

“Cuck!” he rasped.

“Cuck!...’roat!”

“Got somethin’ stuck in his throat!” Ajax cried as we gathered around him.

Both Ajax and I began to pound Laxton on the back but he only turned bluer, his attempts to suck in air becoming feebler.

I saw a look of determination on Joe’s face.

(Me & Joe cont. pg 23)

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Me & Joe (Cont. from pg 22) Drawing back his right arm, he drove a fist sharply into Laxton’s exposed stomach. All the air gushed from the boy’s lungs and with it a piece of meat flew from his mouth and landed on the ground. From the gobbet of meat, the sharp white shard of a bone protruded.

An hour later we met with the young doctor who ran the little Mooseleuk Clinic.

“He’s going to be all right,” the doctor assured us. “That sharp piece of bone cut his throat inside and it’s pretty swollen. But I expect the swelling to go down in a few days. In the meantime, he won’t be eating any solids.”

“But he’s got to eat!”

Ajax cried, wringing his trembling hands. “He’s our only hope to win the Perch Paragon Trophy!”

“Sorry, boys. He’s on a liquid diet for at least two days. Anything else could cause more damage.”

We headed dejectedly back toward the fair.

“Well, Joe,” I said finally. “I guess it’s up to you. After Laxton, you’re the biggest eater we’ve got.”

Joe looked at us with a panic stricken gaze. “But I can’t eat like that Poncho Gutt! Besides, I been eatin’ all day. I don’t think I kin even look at a perch fillet!”

“You got it to do, Joe,” Ajax said, looking at him solemnly. “Yer our only hope.”

As the time of the eating contest drew near, students and spectators gathered around the picnic tables outside the portable kitchen where the perch

Northwoods Sporting Journal fillets were being cooked.

The tantalizing odor of fried perch filled the air.

The two cooks, Emma Bottomly and Esther Crone, stood in the doorway of the kitchen talking.

“I got to go home for a while and get Joe’s supper,” Emma said. “I already got the whole first platter cooked. Only thing is, I ran out of my special batter.” “ T h a t ’s a l l r i g h t Emma,” Esther replied. “I brung my own, all decked out in them special spices I like to add. You get along home and I’ll take care of cookin’ the rest.”

Twelve students from the two schools sat down at the tables to take part in the contest. Poncho Gutt leered across the table at Joe. “Where’s your champeen? Have him a case of the shakes?”

“Had him an accident,” Joe said quietly. “I’ll be takin’ his place.”

“You?” Poncho snorted. “You couldn’t lug fish to me! I may let you lick my plate.”

The sudden arrival of heaping plates of golden fillets stopped all further conversation. When each contestant had a plat of fish before them the judge, Albert Clock, explained the rules.

“Each of you has 10 fillets on his or her plate.

When those are gone another plate of 10 will be set before you. My helpers will keep an accurate count.

You have 15 minutes to eat as many fillets as possible. Any unfinished fillets, including those in your mouths at the time the 15 minutes ends do not count.

Good luck to you all.” He held up a stop watch with one hand.

“Ready, set, Go!” The contestants fell to the fillets

with a vengeance.

It became readily apparent that Poncho Gutt was in a class by himself.

Joe had six fillets down when Poncho finished his first plate. Nobody else had eaten more than four.

Poncho yawned and patted his mouth daintily with a napkin as another heaping plate was set before him.

“This is gonna be just too easy,” he said as he popped another whole fillet into his gaping maw.

Things went downhill from there.

By the ten minute mark Poncho was well ahead with Joe trailing a very poor second. Ester Crone set another plate down on the table.

“These ones look different,” Poncho said curiously.

“Oh, these ones are cooked usin’ my special batter recipe,” Ester said.

“Try one.”

Poncho took a bite and a look of pleasure crossed his bloated features.

“Excellent!” He pushed two more fillets into his mouth.

Joe sat back, a bleak look on his face.

“Done the best I kin,” he whispered over his shoulder to me. “He’s at least a plate ahead o’ me an’ I don’t think I kin eat another bite.”

“But you’ve got to at least…what’s wrong with him?” I asked looking across at Poncho.

The fat boy’s jaws had stopped working and he sat slumped, a worried look on his face.

“I can’t…it’s not…I don’t feel so good.”

Ester Crone was delivering another plate. She looked at Poncho with some concern.

Page 23

“Why young man.. what seems to be wrong?”

“I don’t know…I…” he stared suddenly at the half-eaten fillet in his hand.

“What are these little green specks?”

“Them? Oh that’s sweet basil,” Ester said proudly. “That’s just one of the secret ingredients in my special batter.”

“Sweet basil?” Poncho said in a hoarse, congested voice. “I’m allergic to sweet basil!” The piece of fillet fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

Red blotches appeared like magic on his broad face and on the backs of his hands.

Standing suddenly, he tipped over his plate of fish.

Holding his stomach and groaning pitifully, Poncho lurched away into a patch of alders that bordered the midway. From inside the stand of trees came the sound of violent retching.

Everybody stared for a few moments. Then Joe reached down to his plate and delicately picked up a perch fillet. “Seems like my appetite might of come back,” he said softly.

“B’lieve I jist might be able to eat a few more.”

Later that evening a group of students stood before the glass display case in Mooseleuk High School.

Inside the case, the Perch

Paragon Trophy stood outlined against a background of green velvet.

“That was a close thing, Joe,” I said as the rest of the students began to drift off. “It’s a good thing you were able to stuff down another plate or so. I thought you’d about had it when Poncho got sick.”

“Aw, it’ll surprise yer what I kin do when I put my mind to it…or my stumick.” He looked down at his visibly swollen midsection.

“Fact is, I could prob’ly have et a bunch more, comes right down to it.”

“That so?” Ajax asked through a full mouth. He held a paper plate laden with some of the fillets left over from the contest.

Scooping a thick layer of tartar sauce onto one of the fillets, he shoved it under Joe’s nose.

“Here! Have one o’ mine!”

Joe’s eyes bulged. His cheeks ballooned out, and with a strangled cry, he staggered away toward the bathroom.

Ajax lowered the dripping fillet. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked perplexed.

“I guess,” I said thoughtfully, “he just doesn’t care for tartar sauce.”

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 24

February 2020

Question Of The Month February 2020

by Al Cowperthwaite In December there was a meeting of the MWCC Board of Directors. Attending: PresidentSteve Michaud, Vice President- Frank Short, Treasurer -Don Kleiner, Bert Goodman, Bob Parker, Erin Merrill and Al Cowperthwaite.

As many of you may know, the MWCC consists of many people involved with the defeat of the 2014 bear referendum. They have remained organized and engaged with an expectation that the Humane Society will return again to challenge Maine sportsmen on our hunting and trapping

What is the Maine Wildlife Conservation Council? heritage. The members represent the Maine Trappers Association, Maine Sporting Dog Association, North Maine Woods, Grand Lake Stream Guides Association, Maine Professional Guides Association, Sportsmen’s Alliance and countless individual guides and outfitters.

When Maine was last challenged by HSUS, it took over six months to get organized and raise the initial $100,000 to pay the costs of defending ourselves before major fundraising got underway. This time we’re determined to be prepared on day one

COME SEE US AT THE SPORTSMAN’S SHOW SPRINGFIELD SPORTSMAN’S SHOW February 21-23, 2020 West Sprinfield, Mass ORONO SPORTSMAN’S SHOW March 13-15, 2020 Orono, ME PRESQUE ISLE FISH & GAME CLUB March 21-22, 2020 Presque Isle, ME

when the challenge arriveswe’ll have an organization in place, people who are experienced to conduct a campaign and at least $500,000 already available to support a defensive effort. In 2014, $2.4 million was spent to defend our means of hunting, so once we meet our goal, we’ll already be one fifth the way there.

As we reported a year ago, the MWCC held $30,000 in a dedicated account and four other organizations jointly held similar accounts totaling $130,000. Our joint goal one year ago was to bring the total to one third of our $500,000 goal ($166,000).

As reported last night,

the total in the MWCC account doubled over the last year, and when combined with accounts held in the Maine Professional Guide’s Association SOS Fund, by Maine Trappers Association, Maine Sporting Dog Association and by North Maine Woods, the total now exceeds $235,000!

We are almost half way to our goal!

Members of the MWCC are limited in our fundraising mechanisms.

We are not a membership organization looking for individual memberships, because we do not want to negatively impact organizations that are. We do have a business membership program, but we do not

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ask for sponsorships from businesses that support other sportsmen’s organizations, because we do not want to be in competition with them. Last year we conducted an on-line raffle as well as held raffles at the sportsmen’s shows in Orono and Presque Isle.

MWCC will be staffing booths at both the Presque Isle and Orono shows in March so please feel welcome to stop by. If you are interested in really getting involved, the next meeting of the MWCC is scheduled for February 25th, 6 to 8 pm at the Penobscot County Conservation Association Clubhouse in Brewer.

If you would like more information, or if you’d like to consider helping in some way, please contact me or one of the other board members. Al Cowperthwaite al@northmainewoods.org or 207227-2851.

The Sporting Journal is the gift that Keeps on giving!

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

News

(Cont. from pg 10) limit. Most anglers that travel to Allagash Lake are looking for brook trout. It is a great place to fish for brookies. We hope that by increasing the number of lines allowed and keeping the same two trout limit, it will encourage anglers to put a few lines out deeper for lake trout. We really want anglers to take a few lakers home with them.

One important word of caution: The no live fish as bait (NLFAB) regulation is still in effect at Allagash Lake (and also Lobster Lake). This year we made all waters in the northern zone NLFAB as part of the General Law. Therefore, you will not see an S-code that specifies NLFAB on these waters. Don’t get confused. We will apply an S-code to the waters that allow the use of live fish as bait.

We also made a regulation change this year at Big Houston Pond just outside of Brownville. After getting a number of complaints/comments from anglers over the past few years, we checked anglers coming off the ice on Big Houston Pond last winter.

We implemented a 23inch minimum length limit on lake trout on the pond many years ago in an attempt to maintain the quality fishery. It didn’t really work out quite the way we hoped. Last winter, anglers

reported handling 73 lake trout and only 2 were legal fish. Most of the 71 sublegal fish were in the 18-21 inch range but that is not really a high-quality fishery and anglers were a little frustrated. Rightly so. It appears the smelt population is waning as well. Sunfish are the predominant for-

ville Fisheries Biologist

Governor Honors Two MDIFW Employees At Blaine House Ceremony

Page 25

customers,” said MDIFW the R3 technical committee Commissioner Judy Ca- meeting. muso. “These honors are well deserved.”

Governor Janet Mills honored two Department of Inland Fisheries and WildRyan Robicheau was life employees late last fall. lauded for his leadership MDIFW online license Angela Vo, in addition skills as he oversees staff in supervisor Angela Vo and to her regular duties, was 7 regional offices scattered wildlife management sec- praised for going above across the state, each with tion supervisor Ryan Robi- and beyond her job respon- its own unique wildlife cheau, were recognized for sibilities in assisting with management challenges. their outstanding service to MDIFW’s Recruitment, Ryan’s work and style has the State, its citizens and Retention and Reactiva- earned the support and the department. tion program (R3). R3 is a trust of his staff and oth“Both Angela and nationwide initiative with ers across the Department Ryan are exemplary in a focus on hunters and an- through his dedication, their work and attitude, glers. Angela helped with integrity and professionalthey lead by example, have the implementation, plan- ism. It also was noted that age fish found in the lake earned the respect of many, ning, and follow-up of two he constantly identifies trout stomachs. Starting in and have been an asset to new hunting workshops development and growth 2020, the minimum length the department and our and was an integral part of opportunities for his staff. limit on lake trout will be 18 inches. The bag limit will remain at one fish and the pond is still open only in the month of February.

Big Houston Pond is just under 700 acres. It’s not a large water by lake trout standards, so the populaSnowshoeing is a wonderful pastime that makes for memorable family outings.

Walking on snow shoe’s takes a little getting used to, particularly if you happen to be tion is not large. The lake in a hurry.

Running towards an ice trap with the flag waving usually results in a spill in the is tough to access in both snow on the way. the summer and winter; Snow shoes come in different styles, which are intended for different activities. For therefore, we don’t see a lot example, if your plan was to use shoes while you rabbit hunted, then the choice might be of skinny lake trout from what is called bear paw shoes. This style is designed for walking in thicker woods where fall 2018 trapnet operation turning around may be required, as they are a shorter, rounder shoe. Cross-country hiking might suggest that a longer, narrower shoe, sometimes referred to as pickerel shoes will at Allagash Lake. work better as you can take a longer, smoother stride, and can keep your feet a bit closer A l l o w i n g t h e r e - together as you walk. A third choice can be a mix of the above, called the Maine Guide shoe. moval of fish in the 18-22 They incorporate the features of both of the others, while providing good support on the inch range could improve snow. Originally snow shoes were made from ash, with the webbing made from rawhide. growth, and at a minimum, Properly weaving and lacing the webbing is an art in itself. The part that attaches your foot make for a better fishing to the shoe is called the binding. Bindings come in different designs, from being made from tanned leather (my choice) to nylon. Many shoes sold today are made from aluminum or trip for those that do make other metal, and feature crampon spikes on the bottom to grip the ice and hard crust to the effort. prevent slippage. My choice is always the traditional, hand-made, ash shoe.

- Tim Obrey, GreenThe best part of snow shoeing is that you travel very quietly through the woods and

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Snowshoeing

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consequently are more apt to see wildlife as opposed to roaring though the woods on a snow sled. The silence is amazing and the animals and birds are much less disturbed, and easier to observe. One of my favorite treks is to sneak quietly into the woods and watch the deer as they go about their daily business.

Snow shoes have been in use since our Native American predecessors roamed the woods. This is fantastic exercise and wonderful way to observe Mother Nature up close and personal. Bringing the “fixin’s” and cooking a lunch in the woods over an open fire makes for a wonderful family experience. Don’t forget the marshmallows.

March….get the tackle ready!

Carroll M. Ware is a Master Maine Guide, holder of forty-eight world fly-fishing records and a two-time Maine Professional fly-casting champion.

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 26

Voodoo

against a blowdown, I spotted a wide 8 pointer lurking along an old rock wall (Cont. from pg 3) down in a ravine. Since knowing what would ensue I could only see his head from our deed. from where I sat, I shifted One crisp morning to a kneeling position and during the second week of stretched my neck until I the 2017 season, I found could make out his body. myself atop a ridge in the I pulled up my Winchester Kennebec Valley. Sitting 94, placed the sight behind

his shoulder, and clicked off the safety. The next part happened quickly; I squeezed the trigger sending off a .30-30 round and lost my balance simultaneously. The butt of the rifle found its way off of my shoulder and into my jaw.

While the buck bounded away unscathed, I wasn’t

so lucky. The impact of the butt had sliced my lip open, and I discovered that I could push my left front tooth back towards the roof of my mouth. I was soon headed to the dentist’s office for emergency x-rays.

After leaving the dentist’s office, my wallet suddenly much lighter,

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February 2020 I received a phone call from my roommate. That very morning, Sully had been paddling a stream a few miles to my east and snuck up on a monster buck bedded down among the cattails. He shot at the deer and missed. Neither of us saw another buck in the remaining weeks, and we both ate tag soup that year.

Despite a successful October of upland hunting, the 2018 deer season was a different story; neither my roommate nor I saw a single buck in four weeks.

However, to call the season uneventful wouldn’t be accurate - I did manage to spill a bottle of Tinks 69 estrous urine in my pants pocket, and share my new Muck boots with a family of mice. As one who frequently indulges in long naps in the woods, unfilled tags have become the norm for me. However, for a hunter like Sully, coming up empty two seasons in a row was curious. After a brief analysis of events, we came to the same conclusion: The “deadhead” was cursed.

After graduating from UMaine in the spring of 2019, we moved out of the Orono house. To the delight of the incoming tenants, and the disgust of the landlord, we had unanimously decided to leave behind what was then being called the “Voodoo Buck”. Only then did things suddenly turn around for us. Midway through the first week of the 2019 season, I tagged out with a handsome 8 pointer downstate. I shot the deer with my Remington 700 - a gun that had replaced my Winchester 94 following the aforementioned dentist visit. Sully, too, filled his tag with a (Voodoo cont. pg 27)

February 2020

Voodoo

(Cont. from pg 26) nice 12 pointer, which he shot from his canoe during the third week.

I have no doubt that on that fateful November evening in 2017, we upset some delicate and mysterious process of nature.

The forest had been in the midst of reclaiming one of its own, and though I would like to recount the clap of thunder, the bolt of lightning, and the sudden gust of wind that occurred during the exhumation, no such warning ever came.

However, all is well now: my freezer is currently quite full, and lucky for the forest critters, I now gladly abstain from disturbing any more “deadheads”.

Jonah Paris is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Teaching from the University of Maine.

When not in class, he can be found wandering the DownEast Region with a fishing rod or shotgun in hand.

Northwoods Sporting Journal

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 28

Ramblings From T8-R9

by Benjamin Rioux, Millinocket Lake Several years ago, the state of Maine modified the fishing laws in Aroostook County to allow for a year-round catch-and release, artificial-only fishery below the Fish River Falls extending down to the Saint John River along the Canadian border. This stretch of river is traditionally very popular as a spring fishery, but those brave enough to venture out for a jaunt during the fall and winter months can also find some great fishing if the conditions are right.

This column will be a twopart series about winter fly fishing in Maine. Part one will focus on clothing and safety, while part two will highlight flies, techniques, and reading the water to find wintering fish.

Fishing moving water during the winter months is not for the faint of heart, and extra precautions must be taken in the name of safety. Hypothermia is no joke, and taking a dip in

February 2020

Winter Fishing Duds

wool long underwear – tops and bottoms. Wool is essential because it keeps you warm even in the event that it gets wet – which does happen occasionally no matter how prepared and cautious you are. Avoid cotton at all costs – socks or otherwise. Cotton when wet loses nearly all of its insulating properties. In

ers away from your skin. I recently purchased a pair of under-wader pants from Orvis that are designed specifically with this purpose in mind. They feature a high pile fleece interior and a water-resistant outer

will press your waders against your legs.

Over my wool top I opt for an insulated hoodie or light jacket – preferably something with Primaloft or Thinsulate insulation.

Quality lightweight in-

shell, with a tapered leg and a stirrup that goes around your foot to keep them from sliding up. Covering any exposed skin with multiple, quality insulating layers is especially important from the waist down because you’ll be standing in near-freezing water that

sulations like Primaloft Gold provide a wealth of warmth without the bulk, and compliment the insulating properties of wool base layers well. Being lightweight, they also allow for a good range of motion which makes casting and maneuvering around in the river much easier.

Finally, I wear waders a half-size larger than I do in the warmer months to allow for a comfortable fit over the above-mentioned layers. Having the extra space also allows the air to move more freely, which in turn keeps you warm.

Waders like the Simms G4 or Orvis Pro waders are built with a thicker material to prevent leaks, but they also act as an extra barrier against the cold water.

Wading belts are an essential piece of safety gear as well in the event that you slip and fall in. Wearing one properly- which means nice and tight, can literally save your life by keeping water from filling your waders and weighing you down as you work to get to the (Duds cont. pg 37)

Over the wool I put a pair of thicker pants – traditionally sweatpants or something similar. The key here is to add a bulky layer that keeps your waders away from your skin.

January is a quick way to experience it firsthand. It took me several years to fine tune my winter fly fishing wardrobe, and as you might expect, layers are the name of the game.

Quality wool socks go on first, one or two pair depending on the weather.

I like to wear a light pair, then add a thicker pair over the top. Next, I add merino

the event that you slip and top your waders with water even briefly, your wool layers will buy you enough time to get to someplace warm where you can dry off.

Over the wool I put a pair of thicker pants – traditionally sweatpants or something similar. The key here is to add a bulky layer that keeps your wad-

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Classic Ice Fishing Tactics Best Bassin’

I keep promising myself I’m going to learn how to Ice-Fish every year as my New Year’s Resolution. Unfortunately, I also keep neglecting to keep this resolution! That is until I finally hooked up with

wood Lake in Danbury Connecticut is an excellent example. However, the key factor is having access to deeper water. Remember the water temperature will be warmer the deeper you go during the ice fishing

Mueller also suggest it is time to target and catch ‘jumbo size yellow perch’!

Realizing many IceAnglers utilize sonar units designed specifically for transferring sonar signals through the ice as well as incorporating the use of underwater cameras lowered into their holes. I questioned Mueller on how

by Bill Decoteau, Hampden, MA equipment Professional Guide Paul Mueller is adamant about his balanced tackle! “It’s imperative to have a fast action rod to secure solid hook-ups with the ultra-light line. My rods range in length from 32-40

However, the key factor is having access to deeper water. Remember the water temperature will be warmer the deeper you go during the ice fishing season.

Bassmaster Elite Champion and 3-Time Bassmaster Classic Qualifier Paul Mueller. In my humble opinion Mueller is one of the very best multi-species anglers I know. When Paul isn’t competing on the B.A.S.S. Elite Series Trail, he is on the water with his clients operating his freshwater guide service located in Connecticut. And that includes ‘Ice Fishing’! www.PaulMuellerFishing. com Wanting to know as much as possible on the techniques of ice fishing I inquired, “So, how do you know where to drill your holes in the ice?” Without hesitation, Paul replied, “I always look at a lake map first, and take into consideration the species I’m targeting. Then I look for specific areas such as bends within a river channel, including deeper contours on man-made lakes and reservoirs. Large flat main lake basins connected to old river channels can be very productive. Candle-

season.”

Professional Guide Paul Mueller divides the ice fishing season into three separate stages, referring to each stage as: 1. First Ice Period. 2. Mid-Winter Period and 3. Last Ice Period.

“The smaller shallower ponds and natural lakes will be the first to freeze,” says Mueller. This is when Paul Mueller targets outside weed lines with green vegetation. Adding, “It’s imperative that these areas are located close to deepwater.” As the ice fishing season progresses Mueller’s Mid-Winter Period transitions into what he calls ‘The Better or Best Period’. “By now the manmade reservoirs and lakes are frozen increasing your target areas and the number of multi-species available, informs Mueller. During the third stage and Last Ice Period Paul Mueller warns Ice-Anglers, “This is when the fish begin to start moving and concentrate on staging areas in preparation for ice-out conditions.”

he knows when and where to go when schools of fish start to move during the Last Ice-Period? “This is where my Garmin electronics become my underwater eyes! Once I have decided where I’m going to start from my map survey, my next step is to drill my first ice-hole, and then I lower my Garmin sonar equipped with Panoptic and LiveScope imaging. With my imaging range distance set at 100-feet, I rotate around the circle mapping and scanning 360-degrees.

This in turn will locate any fish within 100-feet, 360-degree detailing the exact location and distance from my first ice-hole! I then move to this waypoint location drill another icehole, and scan this area for accuracy before starting to fish the area.”

While the most common way to fish through the ice is with Tip-Ups. Mueller prefers to target Northern Pike with his Tip-Ups and utilize vertical jigging techniques with his homemade Do-It-Mold ‘Free Style Jigheads’ for most other species. When it comes to his ice fishing

Page 29

inches; the 32-36 inch rods are my multi-species rods.

However, when targeting larger fish I prefer the parabolic action of the longer 38-40 inch rods.”

Mueller saddles all his rods with Lews 1000

Custom Pro Speed reels, spooled with 4-5lb Gamma Touch Fluorocarbon Line, Gamma Ice Line or Gamma Torque Braid with an Ice Fluorocarbon leader.

Mueller completes his IceFishing arsenal by tying on one of his homemade Free Style Jigheads. Depending upon the depth and the species Mueller’s jigheads range in size with the most common sizes 1/16, 3/32, 5/32 and 1/8 oz. “I like to rig reins 3-inch Bubbling Shaker or reins Rockvibe Shaker as my go-to baits,” says Mueller. As for colors This Professional B.A.S.S. Angler/Guide suggests you match the color to the (Tactics cont. pg 37)

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 30

Dodge (Cont. from pg 9) happened after that. The tension and anticipation among the hunters is clearly evident in the video.

Sawyer is at the ready, standing near an opening with his scope-mounted .338 to his shoulder. Theriault is raking the bushes with a moose bone for all his worth and making bull grunts, and Mayo, about 50 yards to their left, is trying

to convince Big Dodge that he is a cow in serious heat.

The bull is headed their way, and he is not happy.

He plans on showing his competition who is boss before visiting his receptive cow.

Suddenly 50 yards from Sawyer, a massive rack of antlers materializes from behind a bushy pine tree. Then, there he is! Big Dodge is black as night and standing broadside, but his powerful neck is twisted toward the sounds and the

hunters. Theriault speaks in a whisper to his client and a second later, Sawyer’s .338 barks. It takes two more shots to put the big critter down for good.

Hooping like a banshee, Ken Mayo comes bounding from the fir thicket and can hardly contain himself. Then Sawyer hoops and hollers and three of them hug and jump up and down like the Red Sox infield at the World Series.

Theriault estimates the dressed weight of the moose to be 850 lbs. The

February 2020

rack has a 52.5 inch spread.

One side scored 69 and the other 66. What is interesting is that Theriault was able to compare Big Dodge’s 2018 shed antlers with the moose’s 2019 rack. He says that the previous year’s antlers would have scored higher for whatever reason, and, yes, he is positive it is the same moose.

Although OMM outfitters also guide’s bear and deer hunters, Theriault confesses that guiding moose hunters is “his thing.”

Like most of us who hunt, the 36-year-old guide, who started OMM Outfitters in 2003, is not immune to the so-called “hunter’s paradox.” Theriault says that for him taking an animal prompts its introspective moments long after the hooping is over. For Theriault, and no doubt the man from Missouri, Big Dodge will not be soon forgotten.

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The author is editor of the “Northwoods Sporting Journal.” He is also a Maine guide and host of a weekly radio program — “Maine Outdoors” — heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on “The Voice of Maine News - Talk Network.” He has authored three books; online purchase information is available at www. maineoutdoorpublications. com. or at www.sportingjournal.com

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Passion

Page 31

Central Maine Region

(Cont. from pg 20) build interest in the outdoors and demonstrate the importance of relationships and working together to accomplish a task!

“My dream,” said Jason, ‘would be to have a camp with some waterfront that we could use as a hands-on classroom.

I would love to have the students be able to launch kayaks, hold water safety classes and go fishing or step into the woods and do some hands on work with forestry management and different types of hunting.

Then they could put their skills to the test and build their confidence and comfort in the outdoors.”

Programs like these are desperately needed as more kids are struggling with nature-deficit disorder (it’s a real thing, look it up!) and adults and parents are not comfortable in the woods and waters to teach their children like they were when George was growing up. Hopefully as programs like Jason’s take off, more schools can adapt and bring on an Outdoor Leadership program.

Erin is a member of the OWAA and the New England Outdoor Writers Association. She is a senior writer for Drury Outdoors’ DeerCast and is the President and co-Founder of the non-profit group Women of the Maine Outdoors.

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Page 32

Northwoods Sporting Journal

So Far, So Good For Deer Herd

The Buck Hunter

by Hal Blood, Moose River, ME By the time the new year rang in, December went out as one of the mildest ones that I can remember in the Moose River Valley. The snow that had piled up during the deer season had settled down to about six inches in most areas and there was bare ground showing on southern exposures and under the thick softwood. There was more rain than snow in December making a hard crust that the deer could walk on. The temperature never went below zero and there were very few nights that dropped to near zero.

It was a break that really helped the deer. They were able to travel anywhere to feed which kept a lot of

Of that 21 of them dressed out over 200 pounds. That them out of the deer yards figures out to one out of where the coyotes have a every five tagged weighed better chance of praying over 200 pounds. That is on them. As I write this in about the average ratio over early January, there is still the years for this area. I did no real cold or snow in the note that about half of them forecast. With a start to dressed out between 225 winter like this, the deer to 245 pounds. There were

With a start to winter like this, the deer should get by fine even it takes a turn for the worse later on. should get by fine even it takes a turn for the worse later on. The downside has been that conditions for running hounds on coyotes has been poor so far. It’s bound to get good though, and we’ll be on a mission to keep them thinned out.

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also a lot of bucks with very nice antlers taken.

The report from Pittston was that the tagging was down but a high percentage of the bucks that were tagged dressed out over 200 pounds. Hopefully this winter is kind to the deer and the bucks grow bigger for next season.

Winter is the time for ice fishing, rabbit and coyote hunting, but it is also a time when us deer hunters like to share our deer hunting stories and attend sportsman shows.

The shows are a great break

from winter and there are plenty of things to see and do. I have been giving seminars at various shows for over ten years now. I really enjoy sharing my knowledge and stories with other hunters. I relate it to

swapping stories in hunting camp with my buddies, where everyone can learn something from someone else’s experiences. I particularly enjoy seeing the new hunters and kids. As we all know, they are the future of hunting as a lot of us are reaching the golden years. I had a 15-yearold boy attend one of my deer clinics last spring and he was the star student of the weekend. He had thoughtful questions and was quick to remember the lessons of that day. By the time you read this, I would have already attended the Yankee classic show in Essex Vermont, but the last weekend in March I’ll be at the Maine Sportsman show in Augusta with my Big Woods Bucks crew. Stop by and swap your stories with us.

(Herd cont. pg 36)

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal Guns & Ammo:

This Winter’s Project

Most of us, this time of year, are thinking more about ice fishing and sportsman’s shows. I admit, those things are still on the top of my “to do” list. I really enjoy meeting and talking to people at the outdoor shows. I also really like having ice fishermen at the lake. The fishing is excellent at East Grand Lake on the hard water. However, this winter, I have another project. I have been talking with a couple of old friends and we have decided to go on an elk hunt in Idaho.

There is a good deal of planning and preparation that goes into a major hunting trip, as I am sure you are aware. I will not bore you with the many details involved, but if anyone has questions about planning a big game hunt, please feel free to contact me. I can also recommend some topnotch guides and outfitters for most big game animals if you are looking for some help.

The purpose of this column, however, will be choosing and setting up a rifle for a western elk hunt. This will be my third elk hunt, but my first with a rifle. I have shot two excellent Idaho elk with a handgun. One in .454 Casul and one chambered in .500 S&W. It occurred to me that my rifles were set up for eastern hunting of moose, bears and whitetails. I looked in the safe

and found three candidates.

The criteria I used to pick the three finalists were based on the nature of the hunt. I know that elk are large, tough animals. They can soak up a lot of lead and give no indication of an injury. They also live in some of the most beautiful territory in the western United States. The shots can sometimes be relatively short. We hunt during the

into the specifics of each caliber in another column.

I am going to focus on the rifles this month. This elk hunt is a combination of a horseback and hiking hunt.

Half of the time is spent riding a horse to an area, the other half is walking, glassing and calling. Rifle scabbards and shoulder slings are the norm.

The first rifle mentioned, The Remington

rut. The guides are experts at calling the bulls out of hiding sometimes. There are also occasions where you can glass a bull with a harem of cows across a valley. The chosen rifle needs to be capable for both possibilities. Here are the contenders. The first being a Remington Mod 700 with a 24” barrel chambered in 7 mm Remington Magnum, a very accurate, flat shooting rifle. The second choice is a Ruger American rifle chambered in .30/06.

This rifle is brand new and untried on game. It is very accurate and a joy to shoot. Last, but not least, is a Ruger Mod 77 in .300 RCM. This caliber produces ballistics comparable to a .300 Win. Mag in a compact cartridge and rifle.

All three of these calibers meet the ballistic requirements. I will go deeper

Mod 700 in 7 mm Rem. Mag. has a 24” barrel and is topped with a Leupold 3x9x variable scope. It has a high gloss, black walnut stock. It is a beautiful rifle.

I have shot many whitetails, mostly in New York State, and one moose in Newfoundland with this rifle. It weighs in at around 8.5 lbs when fully loaded.

It has an overall length of 44.5 inches.

The second rifle is yet untried on anything but pa-

The purpose of this column, however, will be choosing and setting up a rifle for a western elk hunt. This will be my third elk hunt, but my first with a rifle.

Page 33

A Guide’s Perspective

by Tom Kelly, Orient, ME

per. It is a Ruger American in .30/06 caliber. It sports a composite stock impervious to weather and an adjustable trigger. The barrel is 22”. The optics also Leupold in 3x9x. The weight fully loaded is around 7.8 lbs. The overall length is 42.5”.

The third rifle is a Ruger Mod 77 in .300 RCM. It has a very compact 16” barrel with a Bushnell Elite 3x9 variable scope. The whole package weighs 6.5 lbs. fully loaded and has an overall length of 35.5 inches.

So, those are the contenders. Next month, we will discuss the handling qualities and range performance of each of these rifles.

On another note, I would like to congratulate a couple of young hunters within my circle of family.

The first is Evan Cruz, age

16. He has taken his second deer, a large doe with a crossbow in Connecticut.

The second, is Zane Harrington, age 15. He has taken his first deer. He took a big doe with a muzzle loader in Massachusetts.

Great going guys! See you at the lake.

Tom is a Registered Maine Guide. He is the owner/operator of Shamrock Outfitters in Orient Maine with his wife Ellie.

He is a retired police officer as well as a retired manager from two major firearms manufacturers. He is an NRA Certified Instructor as well as a Hunter Safety Instructor in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. You can reach Tom at Shamrock Outfitters (207) 694-2473. Please visit our Facebook Page: Shamrock Outfitters and Properties and come visit us on East Grand Lake.

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Page 34

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Maine Outdoor Adventure

“Invasive”

Informational signs – Maine is extremely unique to have fish such as

by Rich Yvon, brook trout, arctic char, and salters to name a few! The Bradford, ME What does “Invasive” all that is needed is aware- signs are put up to make ness and education to help folks aware of the special mean to you? prevent further extinction fishery before them and also to reiterate the current Invasive Fish is a of what we have left. law on that particular body fish that is not historically What’s being done? of water. found in that body of water.

An invasive fish can even A grass roots, non-profit Seminars – Sportsbe a fish like a Land Locked organization called “Native man’s shows, Fairs, and Salmon when stocked over Fish Coalition”, is playing a native or indigenous Lake an active role in a very vi- community events are some Trout, which has lived in tal mission. Its members, venues that the awareness that water since the glacial sponsors and supporters of native fish and their period. Also, a smallmouth are now trying to keep habitats exist and what we bass introduced in a white our native fish and their need to do to preserve it for perch lake, which in most environments from further future generations. cases had been planted il- destruction. These likeWorking with the legally. Some of the fish get minded individuals and introduced by ignorance, organizations are working people – Maine is a very accident, and sometimes hard to create the aware- diverse state of peoples, on purpose. In any case, ness and education through habitat, animals and fish. learning, understanding campaigns, seminars and Working with everyone combined with caring for working with instrumen- from the general public to our native fish, is our only tal organizations that di- government for the long hope to keeping what wa- rectly affect our resources. term benefit for the fish and ters we have protected and Through volunteers, some habitat is foremost. special for future genera- of the efforts that are being What can you do? tions. I believe that most carried out by “Native Fish Be a great sportspeople do care and maybe Coalition” are... man and mentor – Take the time to thoroughly understand and obey state laws. Pass your experience and knowledge on to our younger generation.

is certainly strength in numbers. Join a group of like-minded folks like the Native Fish Coalition and help get things done!

Working as a guide in Maine, I’m always asked why the Maine fishing laws so are complicated. I hear this on a regular basis from both residents and nonresidents. I can understand their point of view but there are some things to consider in order to understand the why. Maine is unique with a very diversified landscape of habitat for fish. To manage, as you can imagine is a huge task at hand. The general laws is a great place to start, but to address all the water individually, we need a very specified method to manage the many fishing water types we have in Maine. In my opinion, the s-codes is a great way to accomplish this.

New Laws – Maine as of January 12, 2020 has passed a new law for the Northern Zone. It states as follows...

Use or possession of live fish as bait is now PROHIBITED under the General Fishing Law in the North Zone. The use Join an Organiza- of all other legal forms tion – You are an important of bait (including worms part of the future but there and dead baitfish/smelts),

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artificial lures, and artificial flies is PERMITTED under General Law. All waters in the North Zone where the use of live bait is permitted now have the special law code “S-11” in the 2020 Open Water and Ice Fishing Laws.

This change reinforces the importance of the region’s native and wild brook trout populations, and stresses the potential damage to those fisheries when bait fish are introduced where they don’t belong.

As stated by the Maine Inland, Fisheries and Wildlife Dept.

Invasive Plants is a growing problem! Maine is no exception when it comes to invasive plants and vegetation. If you have ever fished in the Belgrade lakes in Maine, you have most likely run into milfoil. The plant can destroy ecosystems, and inhibit recreational water activities making boating or swimming impossible. The vegetation also enhances breeding of mosquitoes which are an entirely whole other issue and subject matter. Eurasian watermilfoil is native to Europe and Asia.

It was discovered in the eastern United States in the early 1900s. The species was likely introduced and spread through the movement of watercraft and water-related equipment.

The cut fragments of the plant can be transported very easily by watercraft and then can propagate easily into another watershed. I guide both central and northern Maine waters so I’m very mindful of the problem at hand. To avoid (Invasive cont. pg 39)

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Page 35

How To Fly Ties (well, maybe)

It’s just about this time of year-February/ March—when some of us get the urge to fashion imitation fishing flies. And, you MUST have the urge.

Well, maybe it will pass— if you wait long enough.

The following are some tips on “to dos” when and if you begin.

No. 1 – Drop a few hooks on the floor for Fido to find and pick up in his nose or paws.

No. 2 – Always use an elbow to poke over the head cement onto your prized neck.

No. 3 – Never use mothballs to deter sneaky moths and larvae from your supplies.

No. 4 – Always hide the whip finisher and hackle pliers under the tying table ruffle.

No. 5 – Always make

a list of needed items “after” you sit down to tie.

No. 6 – Always tell the wife you’re really busy right now. (And good luck with that one!)

No. 7 – Never lift your feet when the vacuum goes through. Tell the wife “there’s some prized stuff down there.”

No. 8 – When storing costly dry fly necks, never use plastic bags or deterrent. Too much time involved.

No. 9 – Always keep your thumb in place when you make muddler heads on flies – so you may give it a few unforgettable pricks!

No. 10 – When the above happens, make sure everybody hears about it – loud and clear!

No. 11 – Always use full strength bleach on feathers when dyeing. Re-

“Just Fishing”

ally?

No. 12 – When tying flies in the living room, always watch football at the same time. Also, let the trash feathers fall where they may. Same goes for threads, tinsel, and fur snips.

No. 13 – Always eat lunch at the tying table, where spills, drips, and crumbs may mix with expensive goods.

No. 14 – Tell “the household boss” those hardened cement drips and gouges on the mahogany end table really don’t look that bad!

No. 15 – Be sure to hang finished products on the lamp shade.

No. 16 – Always be a self-learner.

No. 17 – No need to use the correct hook size when tying classics.

by Bob Leeman, Bangor, ME No. 18 – When purchasing fly tying merchandise, it pays to buy the cheapest quality you can find. Close enough is good enough, as they say – and saves money too.

No. 19 – Rusted hooks? Not a problem.

Use ‘em up. They’ll get wet anyway.

No. 20 – If you don’t have the correct materials for tying a classic fly – substitute!

No. 21 – Spin-off fly patterns never work.

No. 22 – Never – repeat never – create a fly pattern of your own.

They’ve all been tried and none work.

No. 23 – Never put away your tying stuff right

off, or when you’re done for the day. Then, you see, you won’t have to go through all that labor tomorrow, right?

No. 24 – Forget cleaning up! Wait for the wife to finish. If you wait long enough, she will do it eventually.

Bob Leeman is a Master Maine Guide, outdoor writer, naturalist, book author, and co-host of the “MAINE OUTDOORS” radio program on Sunday evenings from 7-8 p.m. His three books are all available at several bookstores and fly shops, or directly from him. For information on his books, please call 207-989-7696.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

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(Cont. from pg 32) My New Years resolution is to make more improvements to the Big Woods Bucks business. We have started a campaign to improve our YouTube channel with more teaching and entertainment videos.

Go to YouTube and subscribe and get notifications of any new releases. I am also going to work to improve the Big Woods Hunting Club. The club is a paid side of the website where I post articles and short film and tips. There is also a forum where members can communicate with each other and meet new friends.

You can check it out at www.bigwoodsbucks.com.

We are just over a year into our podcast and I am blown

February 2020 away by the response to it.

When we first started it, I didn’t even know what a podcast was. I now can’t believe that people around the world are listening. You can get the podcasts on the website or download them from ITunes, Stitcher etc. If you are interested in joining the Big Woods Team for deer season next fall, you can contact me to book a hunt. We offer guided as well as American plan hunts.

Well, get outside and enjoy winter and until next month, good luck on the trail!

Hal is a Master Maine Guide and Author. He lives in Moose River Maine with his wife Deb. He can be contacted at hal@bigwoodsbucks.com

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February 2020

Duds

(Cont. from pg 28) riverbank.

Perhaps most importantly, a quality pair of studded felt wading boots are your best bet for maneuvering around the riverbed during the winter months.

Rubber soles tend to get hard and slippery in cold water, and I’ve had more than one close call because I opted for rubber over felt for a winter outing. Be sure to lace your boots up tight

Northwoods Sporting Journal enough so they are secure, but not so tight that you don’t allow enough space for the warm air to circulate inside. Keeping your feet warm in wading boots will be your most difficult task every time you step in the water during the winter, so experiment with different sock combinations until you find something that works for you!

Finally, waterproof gloves are a must for winter fishing. Companies like Kast and Simms have

worked hard testing insulated gloves that keep the water out and the heat in, and options from both have kept my fingers warm and dry over the years. Nitrile gloves a size larger than what you would normally wear work wonders when pulled over a pair of wool fingerless gloves as well.

While not as warm as the above options, these allow you to tie on flies and handle leaders without removing your gloves.

Check back next

Page 37

month for part two of my Best Bassin’ winter fishing series!

Billy “Hawkeye” Ben is an avid fly fish- Decoteau is an outdoor erman, registered Maine journalist with a strong Guide, and the Marketing passion for pursuing the director for Libby Sport- Black Bass. His activities ing Camps. When he’s not include; emceeing The exploring T8-R9 in search Bass University weekend of new water, he can be educational seminar proreached at ben@libbyc- grams, as well as emceeing amps.com benefit tournaments such as Maine’s Annual May Special Olympics Team (Cont. from pg 29) Tournament, Fishing For dominant forage!

Freedom, and working with God Bless and the USO.

Tactics

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 38

Marsh Island Chronicles

by Matthew Dunlap, Old Town, ME Ice fishing in Maine is terribly underrated. There aren’t many activities that force you to either enjoy a good time fishing or create a fun distraction from the boredom of a slow bite, and to offer a lot of creative vectors for the active imagination. Honestly, people who sit in ice shacks, staring out the little windows and marking time with a beer are missing most of the fun.

Weather, of course, is a big factor. No matter how passionate you are about the outdoors, sub-zero temperatures and high winds make for a long day on the ice. When Mother Nature cooperates and gives us sheet ice and light to calm winds, the gates of adventure truly open.

If the flags are flying, a group of fishermen has plenty to keep them busy. There are those days, though, when the action is excruciatingly slow.

For a group of prepared sportsmen, the action that a pickup hockey game can provide will make the day fly by. Again, clear ice (and suitable equipment) is needed for this. If you have snowpack on the ice, some younger kids, and a snowmobile and sleds, a slow tour around the ice is a load of fun, too.

On Mount Desert Island, where I grew up, we had a number of long, glacier-carved finger lakes that, when cleared of snow, offered the rollicking opportunity to fly across the ice on an ice-boat. You

Hard Water Flying

can build one yourself, although there are plenty of commercial opportunities to part with your money.

But if you have a pair of ice skates and an old sheet, you can do it yourself without any gear.

I found this illustrated in Daniel Carter Beard’s American Boy’s Handy Book. Published in 1882 and reprinted many times, the Handy Book is a treasure trove of both harmless diversions and downright dangerous adventures. Before you buy one and give it to a young person who has impish ideas about chemistry sets, you may want to limit the exposure to excerpts, if only just to keep your name out of the newspaper.

Growing up on a farm outside of Bar Harbor that was supported by the work of five children and a summer stoneware business, we didn’t have money for

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fancy gear, and we didn’t get to do a lot of fishing. But we did have a little farm pond that froze quickly every winter, and even though I couldn’t really ice skate very well, I decided to try out the idea of becoming a ‘winged skater’.

I think if I had been better schooled in the use of tools, I might have explored the more sophisticated rigs that Carter described—the “Bat Wings”, the Danish, Norwegian, and English rigs, all versions of sails— but to this day, assembling a few old studs and a sheet of plywood together for a rifle target with a cordless power drill strains the limits of my mechanical abilities. But tying the corners of an old sheet to my ankles and spreading my arms out with the wind at my back produced a thrilling result—and after a few

ignoble crashes into the snow-covered shoreline, and the developed skill to fold my ‘wings’ and stop, I found many days’ worth of fun.

When you change out the old bedding, then, save aside the sheets. Then, when those days come when you’re on the clear ice and the fish aren’t biting, set up your wings and fly—and if you practice enough, you can even learn to tack against the wind, and still chase those flying flags. The outdoors, after all, are about doing—not waiting.

Matt Dunlap is a sportsman from Old Town and is a periodic co-host on Maine Outdoors, heard statewide every Sunday night at 7:00 pm on WVOM 103.9 FM, WVQM 101.3 FM, and WRKLD 1450 AM.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Midwinter Perils

This treacherous winter tale was printed in Forest and Stream on Feb. 4, 1886.

“Chas. A. Allison, a young law student of New York City, had since last summer been camping out by himself at Brassua Lake, having a real good time fishing and shooting.

He had sent his traps in advance to the Kineo House, with the intent of returning home, and on Saturday he started on snowshoes to walk to the hotel, a distance of ten miles, there to take the stage for the railroad at West Cove. He trudged along toward the Moose River for a while all right, but the drifts became of such a nature that he cast the snowshoes aside and started on moccasins.

When he reached the mouth of the river, where

he intended to cross, he found, to his dismay, that there was a stretch of open water before him. He started to follow up the river for a crossing, but had not gone far, when the ice broke, and he went into the water to his shoulders, barely saving himself by stretching out his arms. He then kept along the shore for a distance, but the snow was four feet deep, and he was again obliged to take to the ice.

Soon again he broke through, and this time went so deep, that he got a drink of water, which his parched mouth sadly needed. By great exertions he managed to crawl out, and then sat down on a spot of sound ice to rest and try on one of his moccasins, which had fallen off. So slowly was he tying the knot with

his benumbed fingers that when he finished he found that the shoe had frozen to the ice, and he was obliged to cut it off and proceed barefooted.

He half walked, half crawled along the ice, breaking through every few rods, and getting out— how, he knew not. His wet clothing had by this time frozen stiff, and he only kept from freezing to death by rolling in the deep snow on the banks. This gave him the appearance of a veritable ghost of winter, the snow having clung like a feathery mantle about his dripping, icy form. Once he was almost buried by falling over the crest of a wing dam into a huge drift.

There is one habitation only on Moose River, the cabin of Tom Willer, and this Allison knew, but

Invasive

living plant is dead.

An even better choice is to have a dedicated boat for milfoil and a dedicated boat for unspoiled waters.

This of course, is great if you are fortunate to have this luxury. Other states have adopted this protocol such as Quabbin Reservoir, which requires a boat seal. All boats launched at Quabbin Reservoir must have an intact Quabbin Boat Seal upon arrival.

The boat is resealed to the trailer by the Boat Launch Attendant upon removal

from the reservoir. This mandated regime greatly reduces the risk of invasive plants contaminating water shed.

Fishing and Boating Tips*: Take a vested interest in the sport you enjoy and be a good steward of the environment.

Use state INFW abstracts and pay close attention to S-codes as it

(Cont. from pg 34) any chance of water contamination and spreading the dreaded plant, here is what I do...

Upon taking any craft from the water visually check for any grass, weeds or matter left on the craft and trailer.

Bleaching with sprayer on both craft, motor and trailer in cavities and crevices. Then leaving it to dry thoroughly ensuring every

Page 39

Old Tales from the Maine Woods

by Steve Pinkham Quincy, MA

he did not know how near he was to it. At length, wearied out, he was about to lie down in a snowy grave, when, almost without hope, he shouted for help. There was no answer. It seemed like shouting to the winds.

He called again, and there was a faint echo. He was near Tom Willer’s. Willer came out on the bank, but the ice between him and the freezing sportsman was thin, and had not two Bangor woodsmen bravely exposed their lives by going out through the thin ice to their necks in water, pushing an old flatboat before them, young Allison would never have seen New York again. He was kindly cared

for at the cabin, and was soon in Bangor, healthy and well, having, thanks to his snow baths, suffered no serious injury from freezing.

‘Do you see that hat?’ he asked, pointing to an old derby on the table. ‘Well I probably fell into the water fifty times, but every time I clung to the old hat, and once in my despair found myself talking to it, as a madman, and asking it not to desert me.’”

pertains to each individual water.

Do not illegally transport fish and do not use live wells.

Use legal artificial baits as much as possible.

Be religious on re-

moving plants and vegetation from your equipment and thoroughly wash and dry before using in water.

“By taking care of the Fish and their habitats, The Fishing will take care of itself.”

Steve is an avid hiker, paddler and historian, having collected over 25,000 Maine Woods articles to date.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 40

February 2020

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal Page 41 Blaine’s enough to have an old family I was thrilled to see masses to its song. It was a lot of fun, Outdoor friend named Parker Spear, of birds continually crossing (and extremely satisfying), (a lifetime birding enthusiast in front of the moon’s face. when I was able to make that Journal connection! and photographer), who took Truly amazing.

Life Is For The Birds

Blaine Cardilli, Winthrop, ME One of my favorite pastimes is bird watching; I can’t help it. It’s just something I really enjoy. It began around 1969 when my folks decided to put some bird feeders in the yard of our old farm house, right in front of the living room window. On the inside, we had a big cast iron, hot water radiator with a flat grate resting on top of it and I sat right up against it, bird book in hand.

The passion really developed when the first winter hit because the yard literally exploded with bird life. My mother had gotten me a small pocket guide to bird identification, and I’d get up at the crack of dawn, (unlike many kids today, by the way), and plant myself in a chair, nestled

up to that cozy, warm radiator.

Mom would bring me a cup of hot cocoa topped with a big gob of marshmallow Fluff and I’d just sit in awe, watching these feathered visitors.

We did have our “regulars,” which pretty much hung around all year, such as the Blue Jays, woodpeckers, chickdees and nuthatches, but the winter visitors varied. These included Redpolls, Pine Siskins, Goldfinches, Evening Grosbeaks, and “Slate-Colored” Juncos.

It was in spring, when the incoming migrants started showing up, that excited me the most because that’s when the Redwinged Blackbirds, Robins, assorted sparrows, and all the warblers returned.

We w e r e f o r t u n a t e

the time and effort to nurture my passion for birds and he taught me a lot. For example, in spring, (when the migra-

tions began), Parker taught me about the night-time travel of birds. On night when the moon was full, he took me outside and told me to focus my binoculars on it and just watch and wait. Sure enough,

Winter Song Birds

I am walking two miles every day when weather allows. My dog buddy and I walk a road which is not used by people too often. So I and the dog are getting exercise and I can perhaps see some interesting wildlife, especially birds.

This winter has not had many visitors from the north.

I hope to see Horned Larks, Pipits, Snow Buntings feeding on weed seeds in the fields. White-winged Crossbills are eating seeds of spruce and hemlock cones at the tree tops. Flocks of American Goldfinches in much more subdued winter plumage fly over. An occasional Gold-

en-crowned Kinglet flashes its shiny yellow crown while searching under tree bark for insect larvae with a flock of equally hungry Black-capped Chickadees.

There are many quaking and big-tooth aspen trees growing next to the road. These are also called poplars here in Maine. They are a very important winter food source for the Ruffed Grouse. Indeed I see them on the top of the trees feeding on the flower buds. These are diocecious trees because the male and female flowers grow on separate trees. The Ruffed Grouse especially like the buds on the male quaking aspen. They can sense these buds have higher amounts of proteins, fats and minerals. Male flower buds are also bigger. The Grouse usually linger as long as possible to feed and my dog always gets excited when they

fly off with thundering wings.

The bare-leafed winterberry bushes are so prominent with their bright crimson berries.

They add color to the winter landscape because many birds do not consume them until much other fruit is no longer available.

Now I am seeing American Robins feeding on them.

These Robins will soon be traveling north while the ones that nest here in Down East Maine will be arriving.

I have noticed during my walks a bird perched on top of the trees which seems to scare off the Robins. They have reason to react and flee the scene because this bird is nicknamed “the butcher bird”. It is a Northern Shrike, a predatory songbird. It has a strong hooked bill for killing and dismembering small mammals and birds. Its habit of impaling the corpses from thorns or fence barbed wire resembles hanging meat from hooks in a freezer. Hence its

I was nine-years-old when I first began bird watching and by the time I was 15, I had grown in my ability to identify them by also putting in the foot work as well as time at the window.

Parker had told me that in order to become really good at identifying birds, I needed to also learn them through sound as well as sight, if I ever wanted to be a good birder. Many a spring day was spent listening to all the bird songs around our farm and ponds, and then trying to sneak close enough to them to make an identification that would finally link the bird

Throughout the years I’ve joined local birding clubs, gone on many nature and migration walks, and have participated in countless “Christmas Bird Counts”, as well as other counts. It just never gets old, and like hunting, it’s another adventure that requires its own type of gear, so I get to go shopping on the “off season” to fill that need, as well! If you want a past time that’s fun for the whole family, rewarding, and keeps you outdoors, I recommend bird watching!

Blaine Cardilli is a freelance outdoor writer & columnist from Maine; A lifetime bird & wildlife enthusiast, Blaine is also known as “The Woodland Counselor”; He can be reached via email at ‘indianwd@gmail.com’

The Bird Perch

by Karen Holmes, Cooper, ME nickname “butcher bird”.

Mostly immature Northern Shrikes visit here in the winter. Mature birds are light gray above and ashy gray below with light barring.

Their wings are black and they have a black facial mask.

An immature will lack a very prominent mask and their plumage seems browner. I think people will see Northern Shrikes and mistake them for Northern Mockingbirds. Both species will fly off and flash white patches in their long wings and tails. I feel lucky for the opportunity to see this immature Northern Shrike on my walks as it does not happen every winter.

From February 14 February 17, 2020 is the time frame for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count/GBBC. Volunteer participants can

count species and numbers of birds within species over just one day or during the other days from their backyards or anywhere else. The counts are entered at <BirdCount.org>.

The website ebird powers it and the results are studied by scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon, and Bird Studies Canada. This count enables a worldwide idea of numbers and locations of birds during a same time frame.

Karen Holmes is a retired teacher living and enjoying her new home in Cooper, Down East Maine. She writes for various publications sharing her love of nature and especially birds. She is an Associate member of New England Outdoor Writers.

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 42

Fishin’ Lake Ontario

by Capt. Ernie Lantiegne, N.Y.

I don’t remember his name, but I do remember his fish. The young man standing in the back of my charter boat that late April day had been hooked up with it on an ultralight 9’ noodle rod and 10 lb. test line for about 5 minute and we had yet to see the fish.

There were no head shakes like those of a heavy lake trout, no short runs like those of a big brown.

Just a heavy pull like a monstrous walleye.

We w e r e f i s h i n g browns that morning in the warm, plume of the Oswego River where it entered clear, frigid Lake Ontario just outside the harbor walls.

Minutes more passed with the noodle rod doubled over and still no fish.

I was scratching my head wondering if we had foul hooked a fish.

Then the huge brown surfaced. But why the lethargic fight?

As I netted it, the an-

February 2020

To Release or Not to Release

swer was clear. It was a huge female brown trout that had spawned in the fall, spent the winter in the Oswego River, most likely, and had just dropped back into the lake. It was the longest female brown I had seen in 42 years fishing in Lake Ontario, but

obvious the big female would not make a good mount with scrape marks on its sides and a tail frayed from digging a gravel bed.

When I explained the flesh in spent fish like this is nowhere near as good eating as that of smaller browns which had yet to spawn, the young man made his decision… “Release her”!

Before we did, a quick measurement showed she

the fish are near the surface, they are fishing with artificial lures instead of bait, and the browns they catch can be released unharmed.

I m p o r t a n t l y, t h e smaller 2-year old, 2-4 lb. browns they catch will grow to be 6-12 lbs. by

water temperature is in the mid-70s, making it tough to release them unharmed.

Dan and his crew keep every legal king they catch, most of which are smoked.

The bottom line, after complying with existing regulations is this: To

With the big female brown trout still in the water and swimming upright in my oversized landing net, it was time for a decision… to release or not to release. thin, with a huge head and frayed tail from spawning.

With barely enough energy left to swim and feed, it had not put up much of a battle.

With the big female brown trout still in the water and swimming upright in my oversized landing net, it was time for a decision… to release or not to release.

The young angler was excited. This was the biggest brown he had ever landed. But, our cooler was already half full of good eating browns. And, it was

was 38” long, and I guessed about 18 lbs. By the end of the season, after feeding heavily on alewives it might reach close to 30 lbs.

The decision to release or not release a fish isn’t always an easy one, but for one of the crews who fish with me twice a year, once in early spring and again in midsummer, it’s no problem. In the spring when Dan Barry and his buds fish with me, they released every brown trout. Why, because when they fish, the water is cold,

At long last, revived from the archives of the once-authoritative books on New England streamer flies and how to use them: Trolling Flies for Trout & Salmon, by Dick Stewart and Bob Leeman.

Trolling Flies for Trout and Salmon was first published in 1982 and again in 1992. There were 350 signed Limited Edition hardcover copies and several thousand hard and soft cover copies sold out with the two printings. Many fly tyers view this book as an up-to-date version of new and available streamer fly patterns and crave to have it in their library. Used copies have been selling on AmazonBooks.com for the last few years with a price tag up to $300.00 for each copy! There are 125 pages with 32 color plates of more than 90 classic streamer flies and tying recipes from a Winnipesaukee Smelt to a Barney Google and a Rangeley Centennial. Leeman and Stewart also share with readers many tips and tactics for trolling streamer flies for trout and salmon throughout New England.

Captain Jeff Lantiegne carefully releasing an early spring brown off the Oswego Harbor lighthouse. the next spring. The older, release or not to release larger browns they release a fish depends on what is have the potential to live good for the fishery, the fish several years longer reach- population, and, in the end, ing world class size, and your personal choice. thrill another angler another day.

But, in late August, Capt. Ernie Lantiegne it’s a different story. The has operated Fish Doctor 3-year old king salmon Charters on Lake Ontario we target will die in 2-3 for 39 years and worked months after spawning in as a fishery biologist/manOctober and November. ager for the New York State Most kings they catch are Dept. of Environmental usually deep and surface Conservation for 22 years.

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Katahdin Iron Works Revisited

If you have not ridden to visit the Katahdin Iron works, I recommend you put it on your list of places to ride to if you are in the greater Katahdin Region of Maine. Situated on the banks of the Pleasant River just 5 miles outside of the small town of Brownville, Maine sits the Katahdin

to avoid the weekend rush of riders. For most of the day’s ride, we saw no other riders on the trails and the ride was so enjoyable that it seemed we arrived there in no time.

The Iron works is maintained by the Maine Department of Conservation, Bureau of Parks and

The old blast furnace used to produce Pig Iron at Katahdin Iron Works in the late 1800s.

Iron Works Historic site.

Since the beginning of the sport of snowmobiling in Maine, the Katahdin Iron Works, or “K-I” as the locals refer to it, has been a popular site for snowmobilers seeking interesting and fun destinations for a ride.

The site is easily accessible from numerous starting points in the region and is 11 Miles from Dover-Foxcroft, 20 miles from Milo, 30 miles from Greenville and 40 miles from Millinocket. Prior to leaving on any trip, make sure and check in with the local snowmobile club for any changes such as trail closures.

We rode out of Millinocket on a beautiful day with temperatures climbing to the upper 20’s around mid day. Perfect conditions for a ride. The region had received 3-4 inches of snow the day before and the trail groomers had the trails in awesome condition. We rode in the middle of the week and were fortunate

located just across the Pleasant River about a mile from the site where a 4 foot thick deposit of iron ore was discovered just below the surface of the earth. A dam was built across the outlet of the river from Silver Lake, just a short distance from the blast furnace. The power of the river was used to turn a water wheel which drove the air

Page 43

The Trail Rider

by Rod Fraser, Hyde Park, MA

molten iron. At the bottom of the furnace was a clay plug. When the molten iron was accumulated in the bottom of the furnace, the plug would be broken to allow the molten iron to run out into the molds

bring your camera! For more info about the Katahdin Iron Works, visit the Maine Department of Conservation website. Please email me at rjfraserjrusn@ yahoo.com with any good riding stories. I would love

made in the sand of the casting room floor to form “pig iron.”

Vi s i t i n g t h e i r o n works and experiencing this snapshot of American history by snowmobile is something few people will experience. Being able to share the experience with family and friends builds memories that will last a lifetime. Don’t forget to

to hear them. Have a great riding destination? Let me know, I might like to check it out! Ride safe, ride right!

A dam was built across the outlet of the river from Silver Lake, just a short distance from the blast furnace. The power of the river was used to turn a water wheel which drove the air pump that blasted air into the furnace.

Lands and is an interesting place to visit both summer and winter. The last remaining charcoal kiln and the blast furnace were restored in 1966 and provide a glimpse into iron making in the late 1800s.

The iron making industry started to develop in this area in 1836 but construction on the Iron Works began in 1841 with the incorporation of the Maine Iron Company at this site.

In 1845, the Iron works was purchased by David Pingree for $100,000.00. In June of 1846, the Katahdin Iron Works was incorporated and Pingree named it in honor of Maine’s highest mountain. The Iron Works remained in operation at this location until 1890.

The original blast furnace was built in 1846 however the current blast furnace in place now was built in 1885 and was capable of producing 6,000 tons of iron. Of the 19 charcoal kilns, only one remains.

The Iron ore was mined on Ore Mountain,

pump that blasted air into the furnace. Charcoal and iron ore was measured and deposited into the furnace along with limestone which acted to remove contaminants from the molted iron.

As the charcoal burned and air was “blasted” in, the high temperatures melted the ore. Carbon from the charcoal combined with the ore to form a high carbon

Rod Fraser is an avid outdoorsman and twenty year Navy veteran. Originally from Maine and living in Massachusetts, Rod’s book “Confessions of a Snowmobile Enthusiast” is available on Amazon.com.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 44

February 2020

road where they had each taken a stand Fortunately for him, he made a sound. Something Back Shelf undriveable he had seen lots of fresh a few yards apart, in what completely missed. Within within (a gut feeling most sign two days prior. At the end of this two track, the Hinkleys made their way up through a winter beech valley encompassed on both sides by rising mountainous terrain. By 9 a.m.

(Cont. from pg 16)

a jeep approached. The driver was the foreman of a local logging operation who offered to take them to the end of a remote, almost

appeared to be a great spot.

They didn’t have to wait long before the action started. Twenty minutes after taking his position, Horace heard a twig snap, spotted a buck and fired.

five minutes his wife’s rifle echoed, only to be followed by her excited voice yelling for Horace to come see her nice buck. For unexplainable reasons even to Horace, he never moved or

successful hunters have learned to trust) told him there was more action to come. No sooner had that thought passed when the buck of any hunter’s dream (Back Shelf cont. pg 45)

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 45

of easing the burden, hauled out, but it doesn’t. sheer weight of his buck af- culty, it took Horace over Back Shelf stead It was three days be- ter six days of hanging col- a year to have his buck Ralph only added to it

(Cont. from pg 44) was sneaking directly towards Horace. It only required one shot from his .30-06 to put this monster down for the count.

As astounding a morning as it was, there would be much more excitement to come before darkness fell on this day. Quickly realizing the two deer lying before them were more than they could handle, the couple started back to retrieve help. Not finding his son at the vehicle, they drove to his brother Ralph’s house a short distance away.

Approaching the kill site with Ralph to help in the dragging chores, a six pointer was jumped and taken by Horace’s brother with one quick shot. In-

with the third Hinckley buck. Once the two men had finished getting the six pointer and Olive’s big buck out, they jubilantly spotted Philip making his way toward them.

By now, the events thus far would have been more excitement than any hunting family could have expected in several lifetimes, but there was more good news. Philip’s wife had shot a spikehorn, and during the dragging process to get her buck out, a big 200-pound plus ten pointer materialized. Philip made the shot count, and thus gave the Hinckley family five bucks in the space of one hunting morning. The story should end here once Horace’s mammoth buck was laboriously

fore a scale large enough to handle a buck of this proportion could be found.

Once this great buck was hoisted up in front of several witnesses, including state sealer of weights, Forrest Brown, the giant deer pulled the scales to a whopping 355 pounds. It was calculated that Hinckley’s buck had an approximate live weight of 488 pounds.

Several measurements were then taken which included: neck girth - 28 inches, body girth behind forelegs - 47 inches, greatest girth - 56 inches, and a total length from antler tip to rear hoof of 9 1/2 feet.

Because of the constant influx of inquisitive viewers, Horace was unable to butcher his buck.

To add to his dilemma, the

lapsed the barn roof. When the animal finally reached the freezer plant the next day, it weighed almost 100 pounds less. A cloud of doubt now hung because of the unsuspecting discrepancy to the original weight. Due to the length of hanging time and the amount of trimming Horace had to perform since shooting his now famous deer, it was determined that shrinkage could easily have diminished the weight of the buck.

Unfortunately, and not without much diffi-

validated as the heaviest ever recorded in the state.

To you who think a buck of Hinckley’s status is a thing of the past, and a record that may never be broken, I need only to remind you of Mark Maguire and his 70 homeruns. I, for one, know that a buck of that caliber not only exists, but I am also in hopes of dethroning the reigning king with the taking of him.

I can visually see him in the recesses of my mind, and perhaps this buck will become - the buck of my dreams.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 46

February 2020

Common Eider Populations

Flight Feathers

by Brad Allen, Bangor, ME Many of us in the waterfowl management world are scratching our heads to understand the relatively recent decline in sea duck numbers, especially common eiders, along the coast of Maine. To discuss the potential causes of recent declines about 25 biologists met last month in New Brunswick to discuss what we believe are the primary causes for change. Since the turn of the century and over a relatively brief 20-year period the eider population has likely declined by 50% in the Gulf of Maine. Somewhat surprisingly this decline has not occurred over the entire range of the eider we normally see along our coast.

For the rest of this article I

will direct my comments towards the common eider nesting population in the north Atlantic that nests on islands between southern Labrador, Newfoundland, Quebec (along the St. Lawrence River), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine and Massachusetts.

Maine now has a robust resident eider population that was once nearly extirpated by year-round shooting, egg collecting and a general use of their nesting habitat on many of Maine’s offshore islands.

Eiders reached an all time low of perhaps only two nesting pairs in the early years of the 20th century.

Protective laws that prevented market hunting, year-round shooting and

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A drake eider by Kirk Rogers egg collecting, coupled with a general exodus of people off Maine’s islands led to a fantastic eider duck population that reached a contemporary peak about 20 years ago. Maine’s nesting population, as well as Nova Scotia’s and New Brunswick’s appears to be in a decline while populations in Quebec and Newfoundland appear to be stable or improving. Some causes of the declines have been listed as predation of hens by a burgeoning bald eagle population, more mink and river otters on the nesting islands that also take nesting birds, and predation by Great blackbacked gulls on ducklings affecting overall recruitment of young birds into

the population. But how could these changes occur so rapidly?

What do we share with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that could suggest some of the causes for the declines? The most obvious connection is the Gulf of Maine, the waters where these birds live most of their lives. This general lack of birds could potentially be caused by large scale climate conditions that have profoundly affected the Gulf of Maine.

If there is a smoking gun, I’m afraid it’s the warming temperatures of our ocean.

Increased water temperatures appear to have profoundly changed the invertebrate communities (primarily blue mussels) that

the eiders consider their favorite and most important food item. Reductions in size and complete losses of some wild mussel beds have been documented along the entire length of the Maine coast. Losses of this magnitude puzzle me and the causes must be complex yet holistic. Some of these mussel losses have likely been influenced by increasing populations of invasive species in the Gulf of Maine, most notably the green crab. Perhaps there are disease issues, harvest issues, or ocean acidification. Abundant blue mussel populations were the reason our eider populations (both resident nesters and wintering birds (Eider cont. pg 48)

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 47

Fishing Gear Tune Up

The holidays are behind me, the fly-fishing shows have come and gone.

Outside, the snow is as high as the proverbial elephant’s eye while inside that case of the brook trout blues has developed into one of the winter blahs!

I tell myself that it won’t be long until the trilliums once again adorn the sides of the trail beside my favorite stream. I know it may take a while, but the ice will inevitably leave the lakes as it has done each spring throughout the millennia, smelts will get frisky, once again looking toward the streams to spawn, and the big fish will soon follow.

That is all well and good, but I’m staring out the window, watching snow fall from a grey sky, and there’s not a single trillium, smelt, or trout to be seen. This is about the time when I begin to gather my rods, reels, and lines from the four corners of our house.

I’ve collected a fair amount of fly rods, but I

still look fondly upon my first two—a six-foot, sixinch, fiberglass model built

by Cortland and one that is seven-foot, six-inches, built by Fenwick. Now and again, they’ll accompany me to some out-of-the-way headwater to play tag with brook trout as small as they are bright and as colorful as they are tenacious.

M y graphite rods—strong, fast, and confident—wait for the rivers where they’ll gladly take on trout and salmon measured in pounds rather than inches.

It doesn’t take much to maintain fiberglass or graphite. I check guides to be sure they are secure while going over the length of the rods for dings. A few wipes with a clean cloth, and each is back in its sleeve.

Over the last twenty years, I’ve developed a romance with cane. I own two rods built by the late Pennsylvania rod maker, George Mauer that I purchased second-hand and often write about in my blog: forgottentrout.com.

There is also an eightfoot Leonard and a six-foot, six-inch Orvis Superfine, also bought after another angler had the pleasure of casting them. Then there is

the rod my wife purchased for me on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday—a Scottie Featherweight sold

by Sharpe’s of Aberdeen.

It’s a solid rod that casts a dry fly with accuracy on medium-sized streams.

Using a soft cloth, I wipe down the cane, once again checking the guides and cleaning the ferrules.

While doing so, I wonder about each rods’ previous

Against The Current

by Bob Romano, Columbia, NJ to accommodate up to sixteen reels of varying sizes.

A narrow section along the length of the box allows me to store a few tools, rags, and other sundry items to keep the reels and lines running clean and smooth.

I usually start by

My graphite rods—strong, fast, and confident—wait for the rivers where they’ll gladly take on trout and salmon measured in pounds rather than inches.

owners as much as their makers—where and when did they fish, what the river meant to them. I’m thankful to be a part of this sporting tradition that extends well beyond my short time on the water.

I’ll admit, I’ve never put much money into my fly reels, preferring Orvis’ Battenkill as an economic alternative to more expensive models. I do own a fine reel built by Marryat that I found at the bottom of a river. After much rehabilitation it has served me well.

Years ago, my fatherin-law, a man of many talents, helped me construct a simple pine box that measures twentyand-a-half-inches long by thirteen-and-a-half-inches wide, with a depth of fourand-a-half inches. Inside we created three-by-fourinch compartments, adding foam squares along the sides of each compartment

removing each reel and matching it up to my rods.

After checking the reels to be sure they’re functioning properly, I soak each one in warm, soapy water.

I use a toothbrush to scrub any excess grit while lubricating the few moving parts as may be necessary.

I finish off by wiping down each reel with a cloth that contains mineral spirits. I purchased this cloth, whose brand name is: TACKLEKEEPER tuf-cloth, from

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 48

February 2020

Post-Script Getting the Lead Out From Pocasset the recent spate of bald is not true. There are per- fish are eating the lead, or

by Josh Reynolds, Wayne, ME

I spend way too much time in front of screens; computer, phone, et cetera.

It comes with the territory of being a writer and with my other job as a nonprofit fundraiser. Along with too much screen time is too much time on Facebook. Over the past couple of weeks, my Facebook feed has been cluttered up with multiple, recent examples of bald eagles being brought into avian rescue centers with lead poisoning. The responses I read got me thinking about wildlife lead poisoning, the causes, the myths, the truths and what can be done.

Small lead sinkers – those small enough to be ingested by birds have been banned in Maine since

2013. LD 730 was enacted to protect loons, and ostensibly other birds as well.

This was a good law, lead is poisonous to all living things and there are plenty

Perhaps all those wounded turkeys are to blame, their carcasses peppered with bird shot. I don’t think that’s it either. of other heavy, non-toxic alternatives. Being and knowing what it is to be a thrifty Mainer, it seems wasteful to throw out all that old lead split shot and sinkers you have hanging around, but you need to.

1. It’s not legal to use any more 2. It’s poison.

Many readers of the journal may differ from my opinion above, but most should agree with the following thoughts. The comments on Facebook around

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eagle poisonings tend to lay the blame on wounded game, primarily deer, that finally succumb to their wounds from the past hunting season. People think that the eagles are getting the lead poisoning from eating the deer. I assume they believe that the eagles

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came across the spent lead bullet while picking apart the carcass and ingested the lead. Perhaps, but I can’t see this as a wide spread problem. I think these folks also think that the lead of a bullet, embedded in a dead animal somehow poisons the whole animal, which

Eider (Cont. from pg 46) from Canada) thrived off our coast. Reduced food means there is much less to support sea ducks along our coast which has resulted in significant shifts in wintering birds beyond Cape Cod where apparently food is more abundant. Evidence for general population shifts can be seen in the USFWS’s waterfowl harvest statistics that now show eiders being taken by hunters as far south as New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.

These harvests are generally considered beyond the traditional eider harvest areas.

From a management standpoint, what can be done? While most wildlife biologists believe harvest has little impact on overall eider populations, it’s the one factor we can influ-

fectly healthy deer walking around in the woods that have recovered from a wound and most certainly still have the bullet or fragments still embedded in their flesh. Perhaps all those wounded turkeys are to blame, their carcasses peppered with bird shot. I don’t think that’s it either.

While the following is complete speculation on my part, having no foundation in wildlife science or research, the answer seems to make sense to me. I think the eagle poisonings are still the result of lead sinkers used for fishing. Even though they have been banned for a while, people are still using the lead sinkers. The

did, and the sinker is still in their gut, the eagle eats the fish – guts and all and eats the lead. If I’m correct, the answer is to stop using lead sinkers already, protect the birds and help discourage the wild accusations of the ill-informed masses on social media who think hunters are poisoning deer by wounding them with lead bullets.

If I’m all wet on this topic, and you know more about it than I do, shoot me an email and tell me what you think.

ence. This most important tool in our toolbox is management over the legal take via adjustments in hunting season length and bag limits. During my career we have made changes in daily bag limits in Maine twice.

Working with biologists from all the Atlantic flyway states we further reduced the hunting season with a significant shortening of the season and a reducing in the overall sea duck daily bag limit. Our goal at the time was to follow this management effort for five years and evaluate potential changes to sea duck harvest at that time. We are now in year 4 of that 5-year planning window.

We can also try to improve nesting conditions on certain Maine islands through various predator control activities but this may be a difficult action to put into place.

Maine waterfowlers often ask what our Cana-

dian partners are doing to arrest this shared population decline. I have just learned recently that where their waterfowl biologists have documented a decline in the population similar to Maine’s, (specifically New Brunswick and Nova Scotia), a significant shortening of the season and a daily bag limit reductions to 2/day, of which only one can be a hen, is currently being considered. My colleagues to our north are similarly concerned about the status of the common eider in the Gulf of Maine.

Let’s hope conditions get better for this species in the future.

Josh Reynolds is the assistant editor of The Journal. He can be reached at jreyn207@gmail.com

Brad Allen is a wildlife biologist with MDIF&W. He is also an avid bird hunter and gun dog man.

He would be pleased to receive feedback on his articles. E-mail him at brad. allen@maine.gov

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

An Amazing Encounter with Grizzlies and Wolves

Sex, maternal instinct, deadly predators, the photo tells it all. When my friend and accomplished photographer Frank Easton of Corinth, Vermont showed me the photos of his trip to Yellowstone National Park last year, one caught my

of how competing instincts in nature can collide.

One day while exploring the park in search of photo opportunities, Frank said, “We saw a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road with lots of very expensive camera gear all

A sow grizzly bear stands between her cub and a big male while a wolf watches

attention. Once Frank explained the story behind the photo and showed me several more of the series of events surrounding it I had to record it as an example

aimed up toward the side of the hill, a sure sign that something special was going on. There was a grizzly bear with a year and a half old cub and they were din-

ing on what a Ranger told us he thought was an elk carcass.”

That evening Frank and his friend decided to drive back to the site where they’d seen the grizzlies.

They were back. Frank said, “This time, the mother bear seemed much more alert or nervous. At first, I

Before long a big male grizzly showed up and stood on his hind legs surveying the area. thought it was because of the Bison moving through but what was amazing to see, was the bison wandered through seemingly disregarding the grizzlies that were there. I’m guessing the bison are too tough,

Page 49

Outdoors In Vermont particularly when they are in a group. The bears were again very watchful and still seemed a bit uneasy.”

Soon two gray wolves showed up. “At first, I thought maybe the wolves made the grizzly uneasy but as we watched, it was clear the wolves were waiting their turn at the carcass while the bears kept looking up the hill. Before long a big male grizzly showed up and stood on his hind legs surveying the area.

“As soon as he came over the top of the hill, the mother grizzly and her cub hightailed it out of there and up onto another hill.

According to a fellow who was tracking the grizzlies in the Park, the female also ran off with her cub when he came in the night before.

by Gary W. Moore, Bradford, VT

We were told in The Grand Tetons, that the female grizzlies there brought their cubs down near the road where the male grizzlies wouldn’t come. Why? Because the males will kill the cubs to induce the female to come into heat so he can breed her. Mother Nature is not a kind Master.

“At one point, there appeared to be something of a stand-off between one of the wolves and the male grizzly but the latter tired of it and charged the wolf, who wisely gave ground and ran off a short distance.

You can see in this shot just how close they were to one another.

“Like the night before, the female grizzly had run off with her cub when (Wolves cont. pg 51)

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 50

Vermont Ramblings

by Dennis Jensen, Vermont Looking back on the deer seasons in Vermont 2019, if I were to get a grade for accomplishments, I would have to give myself, at best, at C-.

Not that it was a normal season. We were in Texas for 10 days of the archery season and never went afield with the crossbow. Still recovering from surgery on the left rotater cuff, we decided not to even think about loading that crossbow.

The rifle season ar-

rived and we had high hopes for success. Except for a couple of outings that went about a half-mile on relatively flat terrain, we avoided any real climbing, knowing that a fall on that bad shoulder might put an end to deer hunting for good.

It wasn’t until the 12th day of the buck season that I even saw my first deer.

That is how bad it was. I hunted in a few different locations but only saw deer on two out of 14 days

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If there was to be any venison stored away in the Jensen freezer, it would have to come during the nine-day muzzleloader season in early December.

With the exception of two days laid up with a devastating stomach virus (you do not want to know the details), I was up and out every day.

But day after day went by and I could not even lay my eyes on a deer off in the distance. So the last day of the season comes up and, before I set out I decided to shut the season down at noon because my beloved Green Bay Packers were

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hosting their century-old rivals, the Chicago Bears, at 1 p.m. that Sunday.

We set out on the warmest morning of the season with the temperature at 33 degrees. We had

level was not all that high.

Still, I was out there and ready, situated in a ground blind erected a season earlier.

With a valley just off to my right, where deer

With only a few hours left in the Vermont muzzleloader season, the author shot this doe, the only deer he took in 2019. She dressed out at 114 pounds.

(Photo by MatthewJensen)

an all-day rain the day before and the snow that covered my woods, snow that had been around since the opening day, Nov. 16, was gone.

So, let’s be honest.

With the disappointment of the rifle season and the knowledge that I would be out of the woods after the noon hour, my confidence

sometimes make their way, there are open hardwoods to my right and a swamp that comes to its end right in front of me. It is pretty thick here but the real attraction to this place is a slight ridge that rises up about 40 yards in front of me. Just below that little ridge in some good cover is (Doe cont. pg 51)

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February 2020

Doe (Cont. from pg 50) a deer run that is pounded down. It is in that place where I focus almost all of my attention.

A shot rings out, somewhere up on the second ridge behind me, at about 8:30 a.m. With the blast, my focus is sharpened. Often, early on in the morning, a series of shots tells you that, yes, the deer are now on the move so get ready for anything.

But that turns out to be a solitary shot. I know, by a good guess, that it is now around 9 a.m. and that my chances for success have grown even slimmer.

Then, movement, brown movement, off to my left. A doe, a goodsized doe is coming down that hard-packed trail in front of me. I can’t even remember pulling the hammer back on the rifle. I do recall letting go with a vocal grunt to stop the deer and she does, but the front of her body is blocked by cover. She takes a few steps and I grunt again and she stops once more.

At the shot, everything in front is blocked by a huge plume of smoke and I have no way to determine how the deer reacted.

I know I was right on the center of her chest, just behind the shoulder and decide against reloading.

I go to the place where I fired and what I find is clear evidence that this deer will not go far: hair blown against the trunk of a hemlock and, on the trail, several big clots of lung.

Forty yards away I find her, and confirming her death, I drop to one knee and give thanks to both her creator and mine.

I guess you could say

Northwoods Sporting Journal that I got lucky. I don’t think I’d argue with that but I would also point out one other big factor: I did not give up.

Dennis Jensen is the outdoor editor of the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times Argus and a freelance writer.

Wolves

(Cont. from pg 49) the male grizzly came over the hill but this evening she stood watching the big male before walking toward it.

The cub, apparently knowing the encounter

was not a good place for him or her, chose not to get too close. In the photo you can see the male up the hill above the female.

She stayed between the male and her cub the whole time. At the same time, the wolves were watching all this and you can see one of them in this photo.

I think the most interesting thing for me, was the nervousness of the mother and cub grizzly, yet she was clearly in estrous and came right back to be bred.”

Frank told me, “I’m not an authority on mating behavior of grizzlies by any means, however the male and female got very close.

It appeared they were bit-

ing and swatting one another with their paws, but while rough, it wasn’t violent. Although somewhat obscured by brush, they subsequently actually mated before eventually parting peacefully, with the big male paying no attention to the cub.”

Syndicated columnist Gary W. Moore is a life long resident of Vermont and a former Commissioner of Fish and Game.

He may be reached by email at gwmoore1946@ myfairpoint.net or at Box 454, Bradford, VT 05033. copyright 2020 Gary W. Moore

Page 51

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Green Mountain Report

by Bradley Carleton, Charlotte, VT The Big Chill is on!

February is typically one of the coldest months in the Green Mountain State and that means one thing to outdoorsmen; ice fishing in its prime! The fat yellowbelly sows start to move into the shallows to spawn and the smelt are plentiful in the deeper lakes. The night before we make phone calls and catch up on our mobile scouting. During the week we drive all around the Northwest and central section of the state glassing ponds and lakes for fishermen who do not move from their spots. We spend a little time in bait shops where the anecdotal opin-

Northwoods Sporting Journal

The Big Chill

distance several trucks and a few ATVs about a mile out. We unload the ATVs, shanties and sleds and tie them together. In minutes ions are taken with a grain we are in the middle of St. of salt. Two of the shops Albans Bay, where my oldthat we frequent that are est fishing buddy, Ozzie, the most helpful are George from Williston, purchased LeClair’s Big River Tackle a camp this past summer.

“Son of a gun! That guy is relentless!” I say to Ozzie.

Within seconds Ozzie is locked up on a nice fish as well. We can tell by the way it fights – this one is a white perch. And indeed, it is. We are now all sitting on our pickle buckets laughing and hauling in one slabber

Sunday Feb. 8-9 is the 40th Annual Islands Derby, promising over $7500 in cash and prizes. To register call 802-372-5600 or email islander@vermontislander.com. in Hinesburgh and Dustin at the Tackle Box Market & Deli in Colchester. These two gentlemen are in it to help people catch fish and they willingly share their information – maybe not the honey holes – but they do want to see you catch fish. As we step out onto the ice in the Champlain Islands, we can see in the

All we could talk about was how it would become the “fishing camp” once the ice moved in. Now here we are! Chris Thayer of Charlotte pops a few quick 6” holes near Lazy Lady island and before we can even get our rods set up, he is down the hole with his rod bent down to the water and proclaiming “One!”

after another. Yes, February is cold, but the fishing is terrific! Come pull up a pickle bucket and join us!

We’ll be the ones laughing loudly as if there is no better place on earth than right here, right now.

Typically, this wonderful publication hits the stands by the 22nd of each month – which, if you pick

February 2020

it up right away will notify you that the Free Ice Fishing Festival is scheduled for Saturday, January 25 on Lake Elmore. Events will run from 11:00am – 3:00pm and include: Ice Fishing Gear Explained, Hole Drilling Demos, Tipup Techniques, using a Rod and Jig, Ice Safety, Fish Identification and Regulations Explained and Knottying Know-how and tackle craft. Plus enjoy a fish fry and cocoa (bring your own mug if you can)! Bring your own ice fishing equipment or you can borrow ours. Be sure to dress warmly (in layers is the best) and wear winter boots. Ice cleats (also known as “creepers”) are also a great idea for traction.

For the more expe(Chill cont. pg 53)

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Moosehead Canoe Builders

Once upon a time, if you were an outdoorsman, out of need and curiosity, you might build your own canoe. Up here on Moosehead Lake there were a number of men who thought it was a good idea.

One thing led to another and, next thing you knew, someone would ask to buy the one just finished.

Blanchard in Greenville became well known for his and, at one time, taught canoe building at the school.

My husband Roger build two off of the Blanchard forms, a 15-footer and a 20-footer. The 15-footer is a good size for short trips, but the 20-footer, with its wide, steady beam, worked best for loading in long

For those who sold canoes, all hand-built, you were lucky if you could keep one for yourself.

A small following grew.

Then orders were being taken, and a very individual business was born. For those who sold canoes, all hand-built, you were lucky if you could keep one for yourself.

Just here in Rockwood three canoe builders come to mind: Fred Templeton, Merton Comstock, and Fred Reckards. There were other builders, too, but not for a business. Leon Ayer, a game warden, built his own. Harold “Doc”

trips. This was a given for the annual fall trip into the West Branch of the Penobscot. One time we were camped along the West Branch and guide Alexandra (Connover) Bennett paddled up in the most beautiful birch bark canoe.

There are some outdoorsmen and women who like to refurbish old ones. Just for fun, someday I’d like to rebuild our 15-footer.

The forms weigh a ton and if you have a mind to build a canoe, you’ll have

Chill

Fisheries in St Albans.

Champlain Valley Hardwater Tournaments will also be hosting an event on February 6 in Malletts Bay in Colchester known as the Hydro Glow Night Tournament from 4-8pm with a cash payout. To register for this Clam sponsored event contact them through their Facebook page www. facebook.com/pg/champlainvalleyhardwatertournamentsseries.

And most importantly, please review the new Baitfish Regulations on the VT F&W website; https:// vtfishandwildlife.com/ using-baitfish-in-vermont.

There are a few regulations that are important to understand. Fines and points

(Cont. from pg 52) rienced fishermen and women – or simply those with a competitive spirit, February brings a couple of hardwater tournaments.

Sunday Feb. 8-9 is the 40th Annual Islands Derby, promising over $7500 in cash and prizes. To register call 802-372-5600 or email islander@vermontislander.com. Scoreboards will be displayed at Martin’s General store in Highgate, Harbor Harvest Market in North Hero, Bibens Ace Hardware in Colchester, Hog Island Market in West Swanton, Keelers Bay Variety in So. Hero and J&S

Page 53

Kineo Currents

to have workspace with room enough to hold only it. In later years, Doc used the second floor of his garage just for this. But, once the canoe was finished, it had to be carefully lifted out of the loft door. Roger used the first floor of the garage, but nothing else fit in there during the project.

One of the bestknown forms came from Fred Templeton. This form was passed down from canoe builder to canoe builder through the years.

Fred was born in Willimantic in 1876. He moved to Moosehead in 1898 and guided from Mt. Kineo until 1945. Like others, he worked a number of ways in order to make ends meet. During the winters, he wrote that many guides could about break even by trapping beaver and collecting spruce gum, which was purchased by drug firms out of Boston for what was, at the time, considered pretty good

by Suzanne AuClair, Rockwood, ME

on your license can be significant. If you're unsure of your interpretation – don’t gamble on it! Call a game warden!

Bradley Carleton is

money. His 20-footer eventually became known as “the Moose River Taxi” for its design that made it well-suited for plying these waters.

His forms were eventually purchased by Merton Comstock. Merton came from Farmington.

He and his wife moved to Moosehead for the fishing and hunting after WWII. He worked as a guide, trapper, carpenter, and mason.

Merton’s daughter, Mabelle (Connie), became a well-known fly tier, and the family carved out a good life here. The forms stayed in the family for a long time, passing from Merton to Fred Reckards, who was married to Connie.

Today, there are not too many canoe builders around. Modern materials

make for very light canoes that can withstand hard use and easy carry. But, there’s still something about a wooden canoe. The other day, a fellow who likes to design and build came in looking for information about the old forms.

He wants to start building again, in the traditional way. Why not?

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Striper Season Phases

February marks the countdown to fly fishing coastal waters for striped bass. Typically, the season can be broken down to winter holdovers, early northerly migrants, post spawn migrant arrivals from the south of Maine, early summer holding grounds, early fall staging, and southerly movement for the winter.

Winter holdovers tend to like spring-fed waters flowing into larger streams and rivers as that water is warmer prior to summer, or mud bottom areas that warm a little mid-day early in the season. Forage fish are numerous including: drop out saltwater smelt, fresh water smelt, mummy chugs, juvenile herring, pre-spawn alewife and all manner of small fish.

Standard deceiver patterns to match the hatch, hornburgs on size 1/0 hooks are fine fly selections. Fishing deep and slow is standard practice early in the season.

A few traditional poppers might be handy in most any color. Nothing fancy

weather patterns in the high country to avoid high, flooding waters reaching the lower estuaries, rivers and streams. Concentrate on the river and streams that have some tidal influence.

Early northerly mi-

Salt Corner

by Doug Jowett, Brunswick, ME

fresh waters. Yes, stripers will enter fresh waters to feed. A good example is the run of stripers above

Winter holdovers tend to like spring fed waters flowing into larger streams and rivers as that water is warmer prior to summer or mud bottom areas that warm a little mid-day early in the season. needed during the early season.

The only issue with the holdover fishing in Maine is high, cold and dirty water created by winter run offs coming from the mountain and hill country. Pick the warm days late in the day when water will be at its warmest. Watch

grant striped bass are those smaller fish that haven’t reached spawning age, meaning fish under 24 to 26 inches. Wave after wave of large schools daily will provide early season fishing along coastal water and into rivers and estuaries as they chase forage fish on their way to spawn in

Page 55

head of tide in Augusta on the Kennebec River all the way past Waterville.

Post spawn stripers begin arriving towards the end of May following their spawning activities in the Chesapeake Bay area of the Hudson River along with other minor spawning to the south of Maine. These

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fish are hungry after having spent a lot of energy during spawning and migrating.

Their arrival coincides with the drop out of winter spawning smelt and arrival of pre-spawning alewife, early mackerel.

Captain Doug Jowett is a Master Maine Guide holding a USCG Captain’s License who charters on Cape Cod and Maine. He has been writing outdoors columns and articles since 1965 in regional and national publications and in six books. Reach him at: http://www.mainestripedbassfishing.com

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Page 56

Mass Wanderings

by David Willette, N. Adams, MA My father always said that getting a doe permit is a curse and that it's almost a guarantee that you won’t see any deer. That thought crept into my mind when I clicked on the MassWildlife website back in August where I saw that for the 2019 deer season I was awarded a doe permit for zone 1. I was psyched.

What I like about getting a doe permit is the feeling that I have when I enter the woods during the firearm deer season. I don’t have to take the time and perhaps lose an opportunity for a shot while trying to look for horns. It’s the best feeling in the world. Not that

I’d be out there shooting at tails mind you or to take other bad shots per se, but it’s nice to know that the first deer that I see, that I can let the lead fly.

This permit is also valid during our six week long bow season which sounds great but I live in zone 2 which is usually where I do almost all of my bow hunting. It’s just more convenient to keep track of the deer in my “neighborhood”, so to speak. Zone 1 is only minutes away and that’s typically where I gun hunt. It’s just bigger woods and it’s a lot more difficult to bow hunt where I gun hunt.

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February 2020

The Doe Permit Curse

Our bow season starts in mid-October and runs through Thanksgiving weekend. This sounds great but unless you have a bunch of stands then it’s really easy to burn out your best spots in short order. I have roughly a half dozen spots but they don’t all hold deer every year. This year I had one spot that I hunt out of a climber that was regularly holding deer. From this stand I saw 12 does. There were bucks around. There was one morning where my trail camera showed the same nice 8-pointer came by three times by 9:30. I hunted it the next day and I got busted right after daylight. At one point later in the season I had four does right under my tree stand but again the deer were in the wrong zone. Why didn’t I just apply for zone 2? Because the odds are much better in zone 1. By the time that peak rut rolled around I had burnt out my stand and I was gearing up for the gun opener.

Opening day of gun season has always been a wild card here in Massachusetts. It’s nowhere

near what it used to be with so many hunters in the woods but on the first morning anything can happen. All trail cam pictures and scouting go out the window and by noon the bucks are nocturnal.

Mother nature threw the bay state deer hunter a curve this year dumping record snows on us. The storm started Sunday night, (Monday was the opener), and by the time it ended late Tuesday I had 22” of snow in my driveway. I didn’t even set my alarm.

I finally went hunting on Wednesday afternoon and the going was tough. Knee deep, semi-heavy snow.

Finally, by the second (last) week I could get into my gun spot.

There’s a small group of southeast facing hollows where deer like to gather when we have snow, and it’s a great place to stillhunt. These hollows are loaded with oaks and this year they held a ton of acorns and the second I walked in there I saw deer.

There were two problems.

One, by now these deer were very spooked and

two, it was so darn quiet that you couldn’t hear them run if you jumped them. A few times I wasn’t looking in their direction and they were out of shotgun range by the time that I saw them.

Finally, by mid-second week the stars aligned but my crosshairs didn’t. I was poking along with a good crosswind and two decent sized does stood up out of their beds, 50 yards from me. They were looking at me, standing broadside and I knew that time was short. The 1100 barked but it didn’t bite and I missed cleanly, shooting right over the top of the lead doe's back. Boy was I pissed. The 1100 had never failed me.

Muzzle-loader season was up next and I hate hunting with a muzzle-loader. I gave it a token effort and I called it a year.

At the end of the day, my father was right. He usually was.

David Willette is the author of “Coyote Wars”.

He can be contacted at coyote wars@gmail.com

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February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

The Ice Out Streamers

This month’s fly is another old one, the Ice Out streamer. I got the recipe and history of this fly from Charlie Mann of Winthrop, ME. I ran into Charlie at the Penobscot Fly Fisher’s Cabin Fever Reliever show in Brewer a few years ago. He had a selection of streamers at his table and I noticed one I’d never seen before. Charlie told me that he found the pattern and a list of recipes in his archives. He tied some up and they fished well so he shared the pattern. You won’t see many of these streamers around, and it’s a good pattern.

The fly was one of a series of tandem streamers put out by Bell’s Camp on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Charlie and I each did an internet search on Bell’s Camp and

came up dry. I tried calling the local historical society down there but also drew a blank. It looks like a great

streamer and it is the kind of vintage fly that I like to write about so I’m going to share it.

The streamers on the pattern page that Charlie had were all tied in the same general colors except for the beads on the wire between the tandem hooks.

There was a red bead in the front and the colors varied for each pattern. There is not enough space in this column to go into tandem

tying so I’m tying it as a single hook streamer; you can cast it or troll it.

If you tie tandems, you can change this recipe by simply adding beads to the wire connecting the two hooks. Use a red in front and your choice of color behind it.

Recipe for the Ice Out Streamers Thread – Black Hook – Mustad R7994720, size 6 Tail – Red Body – Black thread, lacquered Wing – Buck tail, gray on bottom, purple on top I’m using an old standby for a streamer hook, an 8x long Mustad. If your supply of the old version is used up, the revised hook

Page 57

The Tyer’s Corner

by Hugh Kelly, Detroit, ME

(R-79-94720) is a close second. I use black thread to tie on a red tail of hackle fibers. Wind back over the hook shank a few times with the black thread to make a level body. At this point, take a few minutes to coat the body with head cement and let it dry. This simple body will represent the black lateral line of a bait fish. After the cement is dry, tie in a sparse bunch of gray buck tail, about as long as the tail. Above that, tie in a similar bunch of purple buck tail. Tie off a head and you are done. You can change the color of the top bunch of buck tail, yellow is a good choice and so

is olive green, or red.

Remember to keep the buck tail sparse, you don’t want a lot of material on this streamer. This keeps the fly light, allowing it to move easier and show better action; most baitfish tend to be a bit translucent and sparse buck tail does a better job imitating them.

Hugh Kelly has fly fished and tied his own flies for over 40 years. He and his family live in Detroit where he ties flies, drinks Moxie and plans fishing trips. He can be reached at hkellymaine@gmail.com and writes a fly tying blog at puckerbrushflies.com

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 58

Muzzleloading Afield

by Al Raychard, Lyman, ME

Things change. We might not like it. We might even try to prevent it or slow its progress. But things do change. It’s part of life and inevitable. I feel it every day in bones and muscles I never knew I had in my younger days.

A good case in point is if you own a woodlot.

When we bought the property we now call home back in 1993 the wife and I spent practically every weekend doing things you do when investing in property and dreaming of someday building a house.

Things like clearing brush

and brambles, removing dead trees and in general making whatever improvements seemed necessary.

My longtime goal was to improve the habitat for wildlife but especially deer, so we’d have a place to hunt deer in an area that was seeing more houses built and habitat lost. After a long day we’d sit around a campfire as the sun set in the west, me with a cold beer and Diane with a glass of wine in hand and listen to whip-poor-wills on the ridge where our house now stands. It was a magical sound and we’d

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Managing Small Woodlots For Game hit the sleeping bags with that emphatic serenade in our ears.

Now it’s nearly thirty years later. The house has been built since 2000 and during the excavation process necessary changes were made to the landscape. In the years since we have made additional changes, clearing more trees and establishing extensive flower gardens, rebuilt old stone walls and built new ones, cleared an old field we never knew was there and made other “improvements.” We cherish the piece of heaven we’ve created but the only trouble is we don’t hear the whip-poor-wills any more.

At least not anywhere along the ridge where they were once common and the house now stands.

From what little I’ve been able to learn whippoor-wills prefer mixed woodlands of secondgrowth pine and oak that provide low shade and cover, especially near fields and other forest openings.

There’s undoubtedly more to their habitat preferences but whatever they are the changes we’ve made have altered the landscape to the point whip-poor-wills are no longer heard on our piece of ground.

I attribute this to the changes we’ve made but also because our woodlot has changed. Over the past quarter century or so it has grown into a mature forest, typical here in southern Maine. Several years prior to our purchase the property had been cut and most of the larger oaks were removed leaving stands

The author’s woodlot is better suited to turkey than deer and has reached a point for thinning. of smallish pines, younger oaks, stands of hemlock of various age along with beech, birch, maple among tree species. Young browse along with evergreen thickets were abundant offering good habitat for deer and the hunting was excellent.

Each season someone or several someone’s filled their tag. Someone still does and the property still holds deer but the hunting has become harder, largely I’ve been told because the woodlot has aged providing better habitat for species that prefer older or mature habitats. Species like turkey, which we see and have a ton of, the occasional bear generally captured on game cameras and various small game.

Largely because I like the way the woodlot is now, I’ve put off any cutting for years but after consulting with a forester last fall and for several reasons I’ve decided to have the property thinned come spring. The first reason is, it’s the right thing to do to benefit the forest. A second reason is some of the pines

have reached a lofty point, are crowning and we will undoubtedly start losing them unless cut. Might as well get something out of them while the getting is still good.

The third reason is to improve or provide better habitat conditions as I originally intended those many years ago. I’ve been told given time that will be the case, although I’m a bit concerned how the thinning will affect hunting this fall.

But, you have to look to the future and now’s the time to do it while we’re still young enough to witness the benefits. Two of my abutting neighbors thinned their lots several years ago and the remaining stands of mixed hard and softwood are doing well and the abundance of new browse and successional growth seems to benefit deer and other wildlife species.

You ain’t gotta like it I guess but change is inevitable even when you own a woodlot. Hopefully it’ll be for the good. We’ll see.

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Saddle Stand Setups

I received a few questions by email asking me about my December 2019 article that mentioned “saddling hunting”, so I decided to explain a little more in detail this month. I would also mention that there are some great YouTube videos that demonstrate these stand setups and many more ideas. A word of caution – please practice these types of methods far in advance of the hunting season as some of these stand setups come with greater risk in my opinion.

I started using saddle type systems over 10 years ago when “Tree Saddle” came out with a really rough system that seemed like a “Bosun’s Chair” with a plastic board suspended from very stiff 3” webbing.

You could purchase a selfclimbing steel platform that was very poor at biting into the tree bark. That system didn’t last long with all its defects. I wanted some thing that was quick, easy to use, lightweight, and quiet as possible.

One of my setups I like a lot is using Lone Wolf Climbing Sticks with the use of 1” nylon straps as climbing adders to spread out the spacing of the sticks. There are many other sticks out on the market like Muddy and Hawk Helium which are made of lightweight aluminum about 30” long.

A set of three sticks and one nylon aider will allow me to reach a treestand height of approximately 17 to 18 feet. I did replace the standard Lone Wolf strap with an 8mm technical climbing line to get away from any metal “clanking” sound if the cam buckle hits on the

stick during setup. This method works great on any type of tree especially where a self-climbing stand is not practical.

Once at the hunting height I have selected, I install the Tethrd Predator platform. There are other tiny platforms out on the market just like the climbing sticks. Wild Edge Inc. makes the Wild Edge StepLadder and a platform attachment called the Perch.

Each step weighs about 1 pound and the Perch is

about 1.25 pounds. With practice you can zip up and down any tree quickly, but my problem was trying not to make any noise with this setup. The Tethrd Predator platform is about 3 pounds and my three Lone Wolf Climbing Sticks are about 7.5 pounds. The Wild Edge SteppLadder can be used with aiders to make it possible to reach a height of over 20 feet and make a platform with just 4 or 5 strap-on steps total.

As usual you should

Page 59

Flight Of The Arrow

by Jerome Richard, Clinton, ME

never leave the ground without a safety harness, but it needs to be a good harness that can be used for a saddle stand setup.

There are a few excellent choices out there including a Black Diamond technical harness, Hunter Safety System, Tethrd, and Aero Hunter that can be used.

I have used three of them and found the Tethrd Mantis harness the most com-

fortable. Whatever harness you use it must have a linesman belt attachment to be securely attached to the tree properly. To finish off my setup I wrap a rope up high above my head that includes a Prusik knot or a Ropeman 1 Ascender to attach the rope to my bridge on the harness. Depending on the tree diameter you may want to include a set (Setups cont. pg 63)

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Page 60

Cookin’ With New England’s WildCheff

Northwoods Sporting Journal

by Denny Corriveau, Kennebunkport, ME

It’s amazing how far we’ve come. Next year will make 40 years that I was introduced to the hunting lifestyle. Yes, I said lifestyle.

Hunting, for many of us is a total lifestyle choice.

It defines a large part of who we are, and embodies how and why we live the way we do.

I look back and reflect on the impact that hunting has established on my life and I would never go back and change a thing.

How we enjoy wild game has also evolved, and after 30+ years on my wild chef soapbox, I am pleased to see that others are starting to embrace new and innovative ways to enjoy their game. The further we expand our ability to cook game in new ways, the greater we gain understanding on how to practice

sustainability.

For those who truly understand the real essence of hunting, we comprehend that the natural resource that we rely on has a correlation to what drives us internally.

By seeing wild game as much more than something to throw creamed soup or Italian dressing over we acknowledge that this food has a much more meaningful part of our lives.

We learn to respect how special wild game is and how much it can influence our ability to eat healthy, support our mission to feed our family and provide fellowship among our hunting brethren.

I discovered, and subsequently internalized many years ago that wild game possess special characteristics that deserve to

PETS/VETS

February 2020

The Hunting Lifestyle

be celebrated and enjoyed.

Part of that connection is derived by the fact that we gather our food naturally as God intended.

We partake in a harvest of an animal that has never known anything but to live wild. We then, in turn participate in being a hunter/ gatherer and bring this food resource home.

The natural order of things takes place, and we now have an untainted meat reserve to draw from.

Then it gets real interesting. Game certainly nourishes us and provides us with desired protein, but it also opens a whole new opportunity for us. We can now work with a natural meat source that has unlimited possibilities.

Without question, the taste of game varies from species, but one fact remains the same – wild game and its flavor have an alluring quality.

While many focus on how they will enjoy their tenderloin, others are now beginning to envision that there is diversity in how they can enjoy preparing and eating their game; that is something that has been a high focus on mine for three decades.

It brings me joy to bring new knowledge to others, regarding how to get to the creative side of cooking game. I have always been proud to share “outside the box ideas” with people so they can have memorable food experiences with their wild game.

Now I am seeing some outdoor enthusiasts take to the creative path, with a willingness to try new things.

When I read the

“Good Book” it states that His mercies are new every morning. And so it is with your game. Be willing to take your game to new places; try new recipes, gain new experiences along the way and you will understand what it is like to live a tastefully delicious hunting lifestyle!

beer and simmer for 5-7 minutes, further reducing the liquid.

Now add vegetable stock thyme, and bay leaf.

Turn heat down to low and cover. Stirring occasionally, cook for approximately 20 minutes.

In a medium pot, add potatoes and top with cold water (just enough to cover WildCheff’s Beer-Braised potatoes, and a pinch of sea salt. Bring to a boil and then Venison Shepherd’s Pie Ingredients turn heat down to medium 1 T of WildCheff Rosemary and cook until potatoes are Olive Oil soft, approximately 10-12 1 lb. of ground venison minutes. Drain potatoes 1 sweet onion, peeled and and let dry for 15 minutes. diced Pour heavy cream and 1 carrot peeled and diced butter into a small sauce1 celery stalk, diced pan. Heat over low heat 1/2 T of WildCheff Wild until butter is melted. Pour Onion Blend cream mixture over the po4-5 garlic cloves, minced tatoes – puree until smooth.

2 sprigs of thyme, chopped Season with sea salt and 1/2 C of porter beer pepper to taste.

1 T of tomato paste In a casserole baking 1 C of vegetable stock dish, add meat and veg1 bay leaf etable mixture and spread 3 large potatoes, peeled and evenly. Top with mashed cut into 1-inch cubes potatoes, spreading evenly 1/2 C heavy cream all the way to the corners.

3 T of unsalted butter Bake in oven for apsea salt and pepper proximately 20-25 minutes, until everything is Directions warmed through.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Bucktail Basics

Page 61

Fly Fishing

by Joe Bertolaccini, Orrington

By the time you read this column there will be about 60 days to open water fishing, meaning it’s time for us to start thinking about the flies we’ll be needing for the upcoming season. It’s no secret that early spring trout and landlocked salmon are attracted to baitfish imitations represented by bucktail and streamer patterns.

Bucktails, as suggested by Joe Bates in his classic, “Streamer Fly Tying and Fishing,” are considered to be any hair fly, regardless of size, which is of a shape that gives the appearance of a baitfish in the water.

Examples would include

the Mickey Finn, Governor Aiken and Black Nose Dace. Streamers enjoy a similar definition except that wings are composed of feathers, although bucktail is often included as throats or underwings on such patterns as the Gray Ghost and Barne’s Special.

With that, let’s take a look at bucktail as an important ingredient of baitfish patterns. Bucktail hair is generally obtained from the white tailed deer and may be purchased as natural tails or in a whole host of dyed colors. If you are a deer hunter or have deer hunting friends, be sure to keep the tails for

fly tying. It is just a matter of deboning the tail, cleaning or scraping any meat or fatty deposits from the cavity, sprinkling on some salt and allow to dry. The natural white hair can be dyed with any permanent color if desired. The finer hair near the tip of the tail has good action in the water, ties in with a minimum of bulk and results in a slim profile which simulates natural baitfish, especially smelt. The hair near the butt end tends to be more hollow, thicker and will flare when tied in, producing to my way of thinking, an undesirable effect. My preference is to use the

finer tail fibers with a 6x or 8x long streamer hook, allowing the tip of the wing to extend slightly beyond the hook bend, minimizing the probability of short strikes as well as reducing the tendency for the wing to wrap around the hook shank.

In preparing bucktail, a bunch slightly larger than what you might need, should be clipped as close to the hide as possible and the short hairs and fuzz removed from the cut ends.

The tips can be evened up either by use of a hair stacker or by eye. I prefer to do it by eye because stacking can produce too much of a paint brush effect where the tips are lined up in a perfect vertical plane.

When aligning by eye,

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the tips will have a more natural taper which can better represent the sloping back of baitfish. The bucktail should be lightly moistened and twisted to compress and interlock the hairs. Resulting thickness of the bundle should be about equal to the outside diameter of the hook eye.

If a fuller wing is desired, it is better to add another bundle or two separately because many natural fibers like bucktail are slippery and if too many are tied in at once, they could easily be pulled out. There are several ways to attach bucktail. Before tying the hair directly to the hook shank, take a turn of thread around the bundle (noose loop) to keep the hairs (Basics cont. pg 64)

2

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 62

By V. Paul Reynolds Squaretail.

It’s been awhile since that word has been used around anglers, but I like it, and miss hearing people use it. It’s one of those words that triggers the synapses and gets gray-haired anglers thinking back to canvas-covered Old Town

Squaretail

brook trout. And it’s the perfect, unpretentious title for a splendid showcase book by Maine fishing writer and trout activist Bob Mallard. Published

by Stackpole Books, it is a rich, information-packed, photo loaded collector’s book that is as fitting of a tribute to salvalinus fon-

February 2020

From his book, here are some expressions of his unbridled passion for trout: “Brook trout are the most beautiful fish...they are greatly unappreciated.. brook trout need friends to survive….the preservation of wild native trout is more important to me than fishing.”

The Skowhegan trout man has never been bashful about expressing his love of brook trout and his stalwart determination to share the trout- preservation gospel... boats and bamboo rods.

“What’s a squaretail?” Put that query to a fisherman next to you in a casting pool on one of the Tennessee creeks in the Great Smoky Mountains. Chances are he won’t have a clue. Heck, a young Mainer fishing Soudy might not have the foggiest either.

Game’s over. In Maine, a squaretail is a

tanalis as any book could possibly be.

Knowing Bob Mallard over the years, personally and by reputation, I would have expected nothing less. The Skowhegan trout man has never been bashful about expressing his love of brook trout and his stalwart determination to share the trout- preservation gospel with anyone who will listen.

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I fished years ago with Mallard from his drift boat on the Upper Kennebec River. In between cigars and too many bass hookups, we talked trout, trout and trout. We agreed to disagree on the question: to eat, or not to eat - trout that is.

Today, I noticed that, in person and in his book, he avoids the “never- eata-trout soapbox.” He’s mellowed with age. However he did sneak this last sentence in his chapter on trout terminology: “And, like golf, you don’t have to eat the ball to enjoy the sport.”

The book certainly is, as advertised, ‘The definitive guide to brook trout and where to find them.”

Mallard leaves no stone

unturned. His wife Diana and other photographers have added immeasurably to the book’s eye appeal with exceptional photographs of stunning male brookies adorned in their fall colors. The book is available online at www. bobmallard.com.

Yo u c a n ’t s a y i t enough. Maine is blessed with a wild native brook trout fishery like no other in the continental U.S. And, as Mallard points out, experience elsewhere teaches us that there are perils for this coveted game fish, the most significant of which in Maine is the wor-

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risome plague of invasive fish species in our trout waters.

Squaretail is a wonderful book about trout and how and where to fish for them. It likewise gives wider exposure and permanence to Mallard’s laudable trout-preservation message.

From all of us who love brook trout, a tip of the fly-studded fishing hat to Bob Mallard for all he has done, and will do, to keep brook trout preservation a fisheries management priority in this state and elsewhere.

The author is editor of the “Northwoods Sporting Journal.” He is also a Maine guide and host of a weekly radio program — “Maine Outdoors” — heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on “The Voice of Maine News - Talk Network.” He has authored three books; online purchase information is available at www. maineoutdoorpublications. com. or at www.sportingjournal.com

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Great Meredith Rotary Ice Fishing Derby

Well, February is the month when there’s fun outside, but work inside. I know, fun is better. But, if we don’t work inside, many of us may pay for it down the road. I’ll get to that in a minute.

The fun part is the Great Meredith Rotary Ice Fishing Derby on the weekend of February 8th & 9th. Go to meredithrotary.org for tickets which are $40 for the two-day event. The five heaviest Black Crappie, Cusk, Lake Trout, Pickerel, Rainbow Trout, Yellow Perch and White Perch will be on the board on both Saturday and Sunday for prizes of $500, $200, $150, $100 and $50.

The seven largest fish form a pool from which the top three prizes will be drawn.

First Prize is $15,000 cash, Second is $5,000 cash and third is $3,000 cash. In addition, cash prizes will be given away forty-six times over the two days to random ticket holders that may or may not be fishing!

Setups

(Cont. from pg 59) of knee pads.

I bend at the knees and straddle the tree trunk making my profile in the tree much smaller. The Tethrd Mantis harness supports your weight. I’m 5’-4” and weigh about 145 pounds, so this setup makes my chances of being “sky lighted” against the horizon very small compared to my Lone Wolf Sit & Climb self-climber which may be impossible to use on trees that have limbs in the way.

When a deer comes into my area, I simply standup in

Now the work part.

The Legislature is back in session and there’s some proposed legislation that could impact how and what we do outside. HB1504 would establish a committee to study the prohibiting of recreational

animal, fish, or wild bird to be beaten, cruelly whipped, tortured, or mutilated shall be guilty of a class B felony”. Seriously? Do you know anyone who’s gone out to beat, whip or torture a bear, woodpecker or yellow perch? Me either.

First Prize is $15,000 cash, second is $5,000 cash and third is $3,000 cash. trapping. “The committee shall define recreational trapping and the feasibility of prohibiting recreational trapping in this state. The committee may solicit the advice and testimony of any individual or organization with information relevant to the committee’s objective. The committee shall report its findings and any recommendations for proposed legislation on or before November 1, 2020”.

HB1606-FN reads, “Any person who purposely beats, cruelly whips, tortures, or mutilates any wild animal, fish or wild bird as defined in RSA 207:1, or causes any wild

There’s got to be a back story to this one.

One of particular concern is HB-1115 which is relative to the discharge of a firearm in the compact part of a city or town.

This would change the current law of having to be 300 feet away from a dwelling and now making it 900 feet or three hundred yards. The definition would be : “(1) Any nonresidential, commercial building, including, but not limited to, industrial, educational, or medical buildings, plus a perimeter [300] 900 feet wide around all such buildings without permission of the owner.

the platform and rotate into whatever position I need to make the shot.

I’m not going to discuss my lightest method of “saddle hunting” using my technical climbing rope, ascenders, and aiders in this article because it was mentioned in the December article.

I want to be in and out of hunting areas in the Expanded Archery Zone so that man nor beast knows I have been there. My methods allow me to make adjustments quickly too if the deer pattern changes and I’m not close enough to in-

tercept them. Just remember to practice setting up at home to become proficient with both the stand setup and to practice shooting your bow with this system.

Jerome Richard is past president of the Maine Bowhunters Association, Master Outdoor Safety Education Instructor for MDIF&W, Registered Maine Guide, member of Franklin Search and Rescue, and a Licensed Professional Engineer. He can be reached at jerome. richard7@gmail.com

Page 63

New Hampshire Outdoors

by Peter St. James, Warner, N.H. (2) Any park, playground, [or other] outdoor public gathering place, or other property designated by the legislative body of the city or town for public recreational use. (3) Any contiguous area containing 6 or more buildings which are used as either part-time or permanent dwellings and the spaces between them where each such building is within 300 feet of at least one of the others, plus a perimeter 300 feet wide around all the buildings in such area”. If enacted, this bill would limit hunters in populated areas of the state where the deer population is thriving. I’m not aware of any incidents that would

have initiated this dramatic and seemingly arbitrary, proposed increase. It may be sincere, but I get a whiff of anti-hunting with this one. We’ll find out?

See…ice fishing is so much more fun than politics. Think I’ll head to Lake Sunapee and forget politics for a while. Perspective is a remarkable thing!

Peter St. James, host of a daily show on WTPL 107.7FM in Concord, is a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association, Outdoor Writers Association of America and is a licensed NH Fishing Guide.

Ice Fishing

526

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 64

New Hampshire Guide’s Journal

February 2020

Ice Fishing: A Better Mousetrap

by Tim Moore, NH

Thirty years ago, the only way I knew how to ice fish was to walk out onto the ice, drill some holes (or chisel them), set some tip ups, and wait. The idea was that the fish came to you and if you didn’t catch anything, it was because the fish were just not biting. On days when the fish weren’t active, we didn’t catch much. The modern ice fishing revolution has changed that. Efficiency and mobility are becoming commonplace words used throughout the ice belt. Today’s ice anglers have a plethora of tools and techniques specifically designed to make ice fishing more productive.

The longer that sunlight has been blocked by snow cover and ice thickness, the more the weeds will die off. This will cause fish to move deeper to find more oxygenated water, but early in the season fish can almost always be found in the weeds. Drill holes in the same manner that you would cast a line in open water: cast a lot and don’t cast in the same spot if there are no fish there.

With ice fishing this means

drilling more holes, but it’s usually worth it.

Having the right tool for the job is crucial. Electronics have changed the way many anglers ice fish. I use a Vexilar sonar flasher, and scores of ice fishing clients can tell you that it makes all the difference in the world. The dial displays objects in the water column, such as the bottom, your lure, and the fish in real-time. The most important piece of information a flasher will give you is when there are no fish and it’s time to move.

Lightweight batterypowered augers have become game-changers for ice anglers across the ice belt. Decreasing the weight of augers, like with the Clam Auger Conversion Kit with a K-Drill bit, can allow you to almost tirelessly drill a hundred or more holes in a day. More holes means more access to fish. Just remember, don’t drill more holes than you need. Drill a few, and fish them all before drilling more.

Another tip is to fish for the biters. Sometimes there will be a lot of fish

under the ice and after you catch a few, the remaining fish become finicky and stop biting. I call the fish that won’t bite the lookers.

When all I have under me are lookers, I move to another hole and fish for the biters. I always return to some of my original holes and often find that some of the lookers are now biters.

Efficiency is another key to being more productive. Efficiency can come in the form of appropriate clothing or not bringing things you don’t need.

Being cold makes fishing harder, which in turn will make you cut corners. Cutting corners will decrease your productivity. When I’m on the ice I wear the Ascent Suit from Ice Armor

by Clam. The Ascent Suit is specifically designed for

ice fishing and has added buoyancy that will keep me safe, warm, and dry in any weather. The less time I spend trying to stay comfortable, the more time I can spend fishing.

In addition to being comfortable, try to be as efficient with gear as possible. When you use a piece of gear, put it back where it belongs. Then, if you want to move, it takes almost no effort. Sometimes being able to move quickly and effortlessly is the difference between moving or not moving, which can be the difference between catching and not catching.

Catching more fish makes ice fishing more fun for many anglers, but the focus should be on the fun. If you don’t find these techniques to be more fun,

then stick with what you know. Whatever you do, keep it fun. After all, isn’t that why we are there?

Most importantly, be safe.

Early in the season, make sure you check the ice thickness everywhere you go. Don’t ever assume the ice is the same thickness everywhere because it’s not. Have fun and we’ll see you on the ice.

Basics

sufficient room for a neatly finished head. Take several more tight wraps to further secure the hair, lift the butt ends and clip off at a 45 degree angle. Dab some head cement into the clipped ends and cover with tight thread wraps. To mount additional bundles, return the thread to the original tie-in point for the wing and using the same process,

add a second bunch directly over the first. The final product should have distinct separations for multicolored patterns. Bucktail can also be applied without the noose loop. However, care must be taken to hold the material on top of the hook with a very tight grip of your thumb and forefinger, doing the same with each subsequent layer

to maintain a sharp color separation.

The above procedures can be used with other natural hairs such as calf tail and squirrel tail, however many baitfish imitations require longer fibers that only bucktail can provide.

Synthetic fibers are also available in various lengths and colors, but may clump up when wet and generally

do not have the tapered tips that natural hairs can provide.

(Cont. from pg 61) consolidated into a tight bunch, place on the hook and tie down with one or two pinch wraps, all the while keeping the bucktail on top of the hook with a firm grip of your left thumb and forefinger (if you’re a righty). Be sure to leave

Tim Moore is a fulltime professional fishing guide in New Hampshire.

He owns and operates Tim Moore Outdoors, LLC. He is a member of the New England Outdoors Writers Association and the producer of Tim Moore Outdoors TV. Visit www.

TimMooreOutdoors.com for more information.

Joe has enjoyed fly fishing for over 65 years.

His first book, Fundamentals of Fly Fishing, is now available. He can be reached at: brewerberts@ aol.com

Northwoods Sporting Journal

February 2020

Page 65

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Northwoods Sketchbook

Giganteus!

and phosphorus, but it was replaced by juniper and

by Mark McCollough, heather as the post-glacial Hampden, ME climate changed. Current Thud! This is the time They spanned up to 12 feet theory suggests the Irish of year when deer, moose, from tip-to-tip with 4-foot elk had an adequate skeland elk shed their antlers. wide palms. Despite their etal size to support their Imagine the relief when colossal proportions they antler growth. Like modern Megaloceros giganteus were fast, agile runners deer, during times of nutrior the Irish elk sheds his able to evade dire wolves, 80-pound antlers. With scimitar-toothed cats, and luck both antlers were shed cave lions. simultaneously. Otherwise, The stags evolved

February 2020

people ever arrived there.

We know a lot about this species from the hundreds of fossilized antlers and skeletons that were recovered from Irish peat bogs. Museums in Ireland have stacks of antlers.

Many were found by Irish

these gigantic deer today just as did the cave painters in France. What a sight it would be to see these impressive deer wielding their giant antlers again.

Maybe that will happen someday. Scientists are developing methods to

peasant families in the 1800s who unearthed them when harvesting peat for fuel. Over 100 Irish elk were found in Ballybetagh Bog south of Dublin. Commercial dealers probed the bog with iron rods to collect Irish elk skeletons to sell to museums overseas, a new method of antler hunting! They learned to differentiate the sound and feel of antler compared to rock. The demand for antlers and skeletons continues today with high quality antlers and skulls fetching five-figure prices.

The Irish National Museum and others now sell fiberglass replicas to create an alternative supply.

We daydream about

extract ancient DNA from extinct Pleistocene animals. DNA was first successfully extracted from Irish elk bone fragments in 2005. Irish elk last roamed the Earth in Siberia where well-preserved specimens were recently discovered.

Mummified Pleistocene animals are emerging from a deep-freeze permafrost as the climate warms. Will freeze-dried specimens from Siberia or the bony displays in Irish museums come to life again?

The stags evolved large, palmate antlers to display their dominance and attract females from a distance in the open bogs and grasslands where they lived. Females demanded ever-large antlers that reflected the stag’s fitness. the stags lived a lop-sided life for a few days.

The Irish elk, sometimes called the giant deer, was one of the most spectacular, albeit odd, of the cervid clan. It was neither exclusively Irish or an elk.

They evolved during the glacial periods of the last 400,000 years and were found throughout Europe, northern Asia, and northern Africa. The name “Irish” stuck because hundreds of well-preserved specimens were recovered from peat bogs and lake sediments in Ireland. Their antlers adorn the castles and hunting lodges of Ireland, and they are depicted on Ireland’s flag.

The paleontologist Julian Huxley said, “Size has a fascination of its own.”

Like many Pleistocene species, this fantastic deer had super-sized proportions.

These Goliaths stood about seven feet at the shoulder and weighed up to 1,500 pounds, equivalent to a large Alaskan moose. Their behemoth antlers were the largest of any deer.

large, palmate antlers to display their dominance and attract females from a distance in the open bogs and grasslands where they lived. Females demanded ever-large antlers that reflected the stag’s fitness.

Bog-stained antlers show battle scars that prove they also used their antlers for fighting. They likely engaged in carefully choreographed pushing contests, like moose do today.

Scientists debate whether the Irish elk’s outsized antlers led to their demise about 8,000 years ago.

Early paleontologists believed they drowned when crossing rivers or their antlers tangled in trees as forests moved northward.

Later, ecologists pondered how Irish elk could possibly support the mineral demand to grow such large antlers. To grow their head gear, male deer mobilize calcium and phosphorous from their bones during the summer. These nutrients must be replenished during the remainder of the year.

Willow is rich in calcium

tional or climate stress their antlers were smaller. Most scientists believe that Irish elk were unable to adapt to changing vegetation and subarctic condition after the last glaciers retreated.

Declining nutrition from forage plants likely reduced the female’s calving rate.

Beautifully rendered images of Megaloceros are among the 45,000-year-old cave galleries in France.

The Irish elk captured the human imagination and filled their bellies. Human hunters probably had a part in extirpating this animal across the steppes of Europe. However, these beasts disappeared from the British Isles before

Mark McCollough is a wildlife biologist who lives in Hampden, Maine.

His email is ellmcc25@ yahoo.com

February 2020

Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 67

Time to Howl

Contrary to what some people believe, coyotes are extremely social animals. Anyone that spends over 460 hours a year in the woods most likely have heard the coyotes extensive vocabulary. I’ve heard two coyote within fifty yards of me talking back and forth. I heard an unexplained screeching or squeaking sound. It wasn’t anything I’ve ever heard. To hear these faint sounds made by a coyote you need to be extremely close. I heard these strange vocalizations in the

January through to the beginning of March the coyotes will be either still seeking for a mate to reproduce or they have already succeeded. If all goes well the monogamous pair will be parents either in late April or sometime in May. Some mating pairs are greeting new puppies in early June. It all depends on how early the coyotes pair up to mate in the winter months. The female coyote’s gestation typically lasts about two months. What does all this information mean

In the event you do venture out to howl in a coyote this January or February be prepared to sit at least an hour or longer. Dress for the occasion. Pick your spot carefully.

month of October. It was still three months away from the coyote mating season. They are social at anytime of the year.

Typically here in Maine during the months of December and January coyote seek hard for a companion. They will mate by February. It’s quite possible that the two coyotes walking by my deer blind in October were a mating pair that hooked up early. I first heard a few contact calls coming from the nearby wetland moments before hearing a couple greeting howls. A short while later the two coyotes were walking behind me making those strange squeaking sounds. Those sounds were sort of like puppy whimpers that were slightly on the squeaky side. Maybe it was a dominant coyote traveling with an adolescent. That might have been the case since it was early for mate seeking.

to a predator hunter in January?

Quite simple, really! It’s time to howl in those coyotes! January is prime time for breaking out coyote social vocalizations.

Get out there really early in the day to either use a mouth call or an electronic caller to sound the contact/greeting howl. Be at ready position for a coyote could pop-up from anywhere at a moment's notice. It’s that time of year that coyotes are seeking that companionship. A coyote could rush in thinking it’s their mate that went off to hunt. They might come in to your howls for the fact they could be lonely. Quite possibly one of the mating pair died and the survivor comes in seeking out a new companion.

There’s a number of reasons a coyote will show up after you howl.

In the event you do venture out to howl in a coyote this January or February be

prepared to sit at least an hour or longer. Dress for the occasion. Pick your spot carefully.

Do not sit facing the wind or with the wind at your back. A location with a high vantage point with a crosswind is ideal.

You need to be ready to shoot downwind immediately after a calling sequence. The high vantage point will allow you to spot an approaching coyote circling to the downwind side with the possibility of being able to shoot before it sniffs you out.

In my deer hunting area the coyote population has gotten ridiculous. It hasn’t been this bad for several years. I’m guessing all of Maine could use

On The Prowl Justin Merrill, Cherryfield, ME

a coyote population reduction.

Let’s all do our part this winter to try our best at hanging a few pesky coyote on the skinning pole. Find out when the fur buyers meet in your neck of the woods and make plans to go. You could get anywhere from $40 to $60 dollars for each coyote pelt. Dino International Furs is located in South Portland, Maine. There are others like Northeast Hide & Fur Corporation and Black

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 68

On Point

by Paul Fuller, Durham, N.H. The benefits of having crate- trained dogs are numerous. I can’t imagine what it would be like without our dogs being crate trained.

First, if properly trained, a crate provides security for both a puppy and an adult dog. The crate should be, in the dog’s mind, considered a safe place. A crate is a place that belongs to the dog. A place that is comfortable and provides a place to relax.

For the dog owner, a crate provides piece of mind.

If you need to leave the dog unsupervised, you know the dog will not be tearing up the house. Also, if traveling, the crate keeps everything in order if staying in a motel.

You can leave the dog in its crate while going out to eat.

Also, you make points with motel management if you tell them your dog(s) stay in a crate during your stay. In addition, our dogs always have one hour of quiet time in their crates after being fed. This SELLERS LANE

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practice helps avoid bloat.

Crate training should begin with the day you get your new puppy. Crate training for an older dog is more difficult.

There are numerous types of dog crates. We use the wire fold-out crate. We can easily see our dogs and be aware of what’s going on in the crate. Plus, if traveling, they’re easy to fold up and put in our vehicle. The size of the crate should depend upon the size of your dog. Crate manufacturers usually list the size and weight of the dogs that fit into each crate. Dogs do not want to urinate or deficate on their bedding. So, for a puppy, be sure the crate is not too big.

Make the crate a warm and comfortable place to be.

We use Mud River Dog Product crate pads and then add a small blanket or two. Dogs like to create their own nest so provide what they need for their nest. Since our dogs may be unsupervised at times, we

Crate-Trained Dogs

do not put toys in their crate.

As with any dog training, approach crate training with enthusiasm and a happy voice. This approach helps the puppy/dog feel this is good stuff they’re learning.

Now, let’s begin the training process. As with most of our puppy training, we

pick up the puppy and place inside the crate. The next day, put the bait right in front of the crate once and then just inside the crate two times. If using small pieces of hot dog, the pup will smell the bait if it’s not seen. As the pup steps into the crate, softly and in a happy tone, say “crate”. The

use bait to obtain the desired behavior. With the crate all set up with bedding, open the door. Put a piece of bait directly in front of the crate with the crate door open.

We use homemade jerky, however, a small piece of hot dog will work fine. Over a period of one day, repeat this exercise three times. Do not

third day, repeat the inside the crate exercise three times.

The third time, shut the door and leave the pup in the crate for a few minutes. Make sure the puppy can still see you.

On the fourth day and beyond, simply extend the time the pup is in the crate. After one week, you should begin just using the command “crate” and no longer use bait. Also, you should now walk into another room and not allow the puppy to see you for a few minutes.

An important point to make is that you should not respond to whining or howling when you leave the room.

If you respond, you’ve quick-

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ly taught the pup that he can get what he wants by crying.

Ignore the fuss and it will eventually stop.

After you have left the pup in the crate for at least 30 minutes and you’ve disappeared into another room, it’s time to go outside. Try staying outside for 15 minutes. Then return like nothing happened.

Gradually extend your outside time. Here are a couple of tips before leaving the pup for an extended period of time.

Make sure he’s been outside to poop and pee. And, make sure he’s had some exercise.

Both will help him relax and most likely even sleep.

We have a rule in our house. A puppy is never left in a crate for more than one hour. An adult dog is never left in a crate for more than three hours except at night when they happily sleep in their crates. If longer, boredom may set in and the dog becomes anxious or even destructive.

Please remember that a properly crate-trained dog is a happy dog. Also remember that crate training is like any other training. When you run into a roadblock, simply

step back and repeat the previous step.

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Northwoods Sporting Journal

Page 70 SELLERS LANE

February 2020 SELLERS LANE

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(207) 696-4247

www.HearthAndHomeRealty.com 274 Main Street Madison, ME 04950

#3397-No Anson; #3386-Embden; 3 BR, 2 bath home Beautiful 3 BR, with so much to 2 bath home offer. 6.7 acres with extra large with easy access heated 2 car to trails. Nice yard garage. Large with in ground back yard and pool. In 2017 a new garage w/breezeway, new plenty of parking. appliances, new pool liner & fencing, paint, Partially finished basement set up for playroom flooring and also offers central air and hard wired and third bath. Want a quality move-in ready generator. $134,500 home, this may just be just for you. 2.34 acres. $249,900. #3382-Solon; #4299-Anson; This 2BR, 1 bath Move in ready mobile home and spacious makes a terrific home with hunting camp or wood floors use as a year throughout. Nice round home. porch to enjoy Separate log your morning bunkhouse to accommodate extra guests. coffee. Great first home or investment property.

Another out building large enough for ATV's and 3 bedrooms and 1 bath with a 1-car detached snowmobiles. 2 acres. $59,900 garage. 0.25 acre.$69,900

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CALL Our Past. Your Future

P.O. Box 72 Houlton, Maine 1-800-341-1566 www.wardcedarloghomes.com

Cell: 207-551-5835

Fax: 207-472-3084

email: fieldsrealty@maine.rr.com 72 Fort Hill Street Fort Fairfield, ME 04742

$85,000 LaPomkeag Lake Authentic log craftsmanship at its best. This open concept camp includes a separate bedroom with two large beds plus sleeping loft. Commercial Garland range has four burner plus grill. Located on very private LaPomkeag lake. Camp is furnished and equipped-ready to move in. Gray water system for shower and sinks. Snowsled trail a mile away with easy access.

$59,900 999 Fournier Road T9 R7 Wels, ME

Rare offering on the shore of Aroostook River located between the Salmon Pool and the Mooseluk Stream. Prime fishing for native trout and salmon on the river and many other opportunities nearby. You can hunt, snow sled and vacation in the North Maine Woods. Well maintained 20x24 camp.

$75,000 84 Mountain Road, Presque Isle, ME 29 acres of woods abutting 800 acres of State of Maine park land can be yours. This wooded parcel includes gated road access a good portion of the year. Recent improvements include new chimney top, roof and leveling. $82,000 999 Pingree L141 Loc F T8 R10 Wels, ME 00000 Would you like to be near the Allagash region and some of the best fishing/hunting in the North Maine Woods? This camp is very well built and maintained and has a very nice lawn and yard to allow outdoor enjoyment.

Overhead Door Company of Bangor

“The original since 1921”

Residential Sales, Service Parts for Residential, Commercial, Industrial 24-Hour Emergency Repair Reliability and so much more

Commercial

$199,000 72 Puckerbush Trail, T1 R8 Wels, ME This camp is located on the end of a peninsula on Millinocket Lake with a spectacular view of Mount Katahdin. Property inlcudes a fully-furnished main camp with 2 bedrooms and a sleeping loft, open floor plan for the kitchen and living area.

www.bigbearrealestatecompany.com

515 Main Street • Presque Isle, ME 04769 Office: (207) 764-4600 Cell: 227-2305 Fax: 517-6860

1-800-696-2235 56 Liberty Drive, Hermon www.overheaddoorofbangor.com

Judd Goodwin Well Co

"We Do It Right The First Time"

Complete Well & Pump

Installation, Service and Repair Residential • Commercial Camps • Cottages

P.O. Box 17 Greenville, ME 04441 Office: 207-695-695-3645 Cell: 207-280-0923 goodwinjudd@yahoo.com www.juddgoodwinwell.com Member Maine Groundwater Association

BATTERIES ENJOY PEACE OF MIND WITH A NEW INTERSTATE BATTERY THIS WINTER

ATV, SNOWMOBILE, SIDE BY SIDE, UTV BATTERIES

HUGE SELECTION LOW PRICE Exchanged $38 - $162