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Inside Alex Honnold’s Tricked-Out New Adventure Van
Back in 2014, pro climber Alex Honnold gave us a tour of the 2002 Ford Econoline E150 he used as his mobile base camp. That van served him...
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You might be thinking more about snow than water right now. But that means it’s a great time to invest in off-season gear. And a bunch of BO...
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No one wants to have to use first aid. But everyone wants the goods when bad stuff goes down in the backcountry. You don’t have to try to f...
Monday, September 3, 2018
On Grand Rapids lake, local anglers dominate Minnesota Junior Bass Nation championship https://ift.tt/2wARm28
Grand Rapids, Minn. — Homefield advantage, indeed.
First-day leaders Kobie Koenig and Alex Keranen, of Grand Rapids, added to their comfortable advantage on the second and final day to pull away and win the 2018 Minnesota Junior Bass Nation State Championship, Aug. 25-26 on Lake Pokegama in Grand Rapids.
The duo, which led by nearly 5 pounds after Day 1 with a 23.3-pound bag, finished at 41.89, 7 pounds ahead of runners-up Jack Cleveland and Zach Wilke, also of Grand Rapids (34.88), who were second after the first day, too. Another Grand Rapids pair, Easton Fothergill and Nick Dumke, finished fourth at 29.63.
Ethan Vanden Busch and Patrick McMurry, of Lakeville, placed third at 31.34 pounds, and Tyler Strombeck and Logan Brecht, of Rogers, rounded out the top five at 27.64 pounds.
Hutchinson’s Paul Nass landed the big bass of the tournament – a 6.57-pound smallmouth on Sunday.
The post On Grand Rapids lake, local anglers dominate Minnesota Junior Bass Nation championship appeared first on Outdoornews.
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In Ohio, NWTF chapter hosting deer hunt to recruit new hunters https://ift.tt/2LS60a3
Columbus — It’s no big secret that the hunting and shooting sports are losing participants on a daily basis.
There are myriad groups trying to do something to reverse this trend, including the National Wild Turkey Federation.
The organization has hired Johana Dart to focus on recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) of hunters in Ohio. Dart works for the NWTF in partnership with the Ohio Division of Wildlife.
To that end, the Maumee Valley Chapter of the NWTF in northwest Ohio will be holding a special mentored crossbow hunt this fall to introduce new people to the sport of hunting.
“The Maumee Valley chapter approached me about doing a program to recruit adult hunters,” Dart said. “While a lot of our other programs focus on youths, they don’t have disposable incomes (like adults), their interests change, and so on. There are a lot of programs across the country that introduce people to hunting who might not have grown up hunting.
“They’re interested in the food and the protein (that hunting produces), but they don’t have that background of being introduced to hunting by a family member,” she said.
These are precisely the type of people that Dart and the Division of Wildlife hopes to recruit.
All of the information on this multi-session program is on Maumee Valley’s website at maumeevalleynwtf.com. Applications for the hunt are available on the website and are due by Sept. 5.
“I am sure that you are aware of the crisis which has been occurring in our hunting world for the past 20 years or more and I am referring to the lack of replacement hunters for those who are leaving the field,” said the NWTF’s Skip Markland, one of the organizers of this inaugural hunt. “Since 2011, we have lost over 2 million hunters nationally, which is starting to pose some serious funding issues for state wildlife agencies. If nothing is done to reverse this trend, it is only going to get worse.”
The goal of the first ever “Hunt for Food” hunt is a modest one in that the Maumee Valley chapter hopes to recruit at least 14 new hunters, said Markland.
The total commitment for the program is five days, three of which will be spent learning about the basics and the need for hunting.
“Basically, there will be three advance classes prior to a two-day archery deer hunt at Maumee Bay State Park on Nov. 3-4,” Markland said. “The advance classes will focus on the background of hunting and why we hunt, a day at the range to learn to shoot a crossbow, and then a day in the woods learning how to find deer sign and (develop) woodsmanship skills.”
No previous hunting experience is required and all of the equipment necessary for the hunt will be available for loan.
Registration for all of the events is at maumeevalleynwtf.com.
For more information, contact Markland at 419-769-6983, email wmrklnd@frontier.com; or Gary Robison at 419-410-5824, email gdrobison81@gmail.com.
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Convention celebrates deep roots of trapping in Michigan https://ift.tt/2N9gC98
Evart, Mich. — A party atmosphere prevailed when the Michigan Trappers and Predator Callers Association held its annual convention here Aug. 17-18. A steady procession of a variety of people strolled through the gate all looking happy and content. They flocked to the Osceola County Fairgrounds here to attend the trapping demonstrations at an attractively arranged temporary wetland near an equally transient cornfield. The overriding message their presence gave was a simple one: The sport of trapping is alive and well.
Convention coordinator Joe Velchansky estimated that a thousand people would attend the convention. And the vendors present offered a full assortment of goods. They had displays of traps, lures, furs, trapping and calling DVDs. The weekend also featured skinning and trapping demonstrations, children’s games, a trap setting contest and raffles.
John Caretti, who offered a seminar on beaver trapping, said trappers haven’t always been so willing to share their knowledge. Back when he began trapping, Caretti said, more people were trapping for a living. Trappers were secretive. Competition could have a direct effect on their income. Now, Caretti said, fewer people are trapping for a living. They’re doing it for their love of the sport. As a result, they’re actively recruiting new members to their ranks.
Caretti, who edits the association’s newsletter, was manning a booth where children were stopping to sign up for a chance to win a prize. It was part of MTPCA’s mentoring and recruitment program. The organization offers a small token to youngsters who enter a raffle for a larger prize. The larger prize consists of things a young person needs to get involved in the sport: a trap or two, lures – items of that nature.
The MTPCA kids raffle has been an annual event for at least 15 years now, Caretti said. Usually about 140 children enter.
Youth are important to Caretti.
“Trappers are family oriented,” he said. “They love kids.” He lauds trapping as a way to get young people outside and enjoying nature.
Caretti began trapping many years ago when his family moved from Pennsylvania to Sterling Heights. The area was still a relatively rural area then, Caretti said. His father had done a little trapping while growing up in Pennsylvania. He gave both Caretti and his brother a trap and showed them how to make muskrat sets. After a few days, Caretti’s brother grew bored with the operation and sold his trap to Caretti.
“Just like that,” Caretti said, “I doubled the size of my trap line.”
He soon began catching muskrats, and he became enamored with the sport. Now he is well known in Michigan trapping circles. A picture of his daughter holding a muskrat once appeared on the cover of Michigan’s Hunting and Trapping Digest. Caretti was also in the photo. The photographer asked if it was OK if he blurred Caretti out. Caretti said he should if he wanted people to study the pamphlet. His daughter, now an adult, is still his trapping partner.
The MTCPA members all seem very aware of trapping’s rich tradition. Historians claim that as far back as the Ice Age, people were trapping. The fur they obtained helped them survive the cold.
After Europeans began their making their forays into North America, furs became an important export commodity. And, as trappers fanned out across the continent, besides sending pelts back to Europe, they often smoothed the path for future settlement.
The role trappers play in conservation is a theme Dorr trapper and MTPCA board member Chris Kettler emphasized. Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, the Natural Resources Commission and the MTPCA – with its membership of about 800 – all focus on the scientific management of furbearing animals, Kettler said. He added that furbearing animals are often in boom and bust cycles. They overpopulate, and then disease runs rampant. Suddenly, they’re nearly non-existent. Kettler said that Allegan County once lost 80 percent of its raccoon population when feline distemper tore through the area. A person could walk through cornfields and see dead and dying raccoons. Trappers, he emphasized, play an important role in wildlife management.
The objectives of the MTPCA are clear and spelled out on the organization’s website. The group exists to protect the rights of those who harvest surplus fur-bearing animals, to promote conservation education and to assist the DNR in wildlife management.
Those interested in learning more can visit the MTPCA Web site, www.mtpca.com. Both youth and adult membership options are available.
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Pennsylvania agency’s stream surveys expose wild trout populations https://ift.tt/2LPn54h
Bradford, Pa. — A team of biologists from the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission recently surveyed the headwaters of East Branch Tunungwant Creek in McKean County.
Although the main stem was designated Class A wild trout water back in the early 1990s, the tributaries that converge to create the stream have never been sampled. Until now.
“We want to find out, if there are trout here, what’s the biomass in this stream,” said Brian Ensign, fisheries biologist for Area 2, “and does it qualify as a Class A wild-trout fishery.”
According to Ensign, the biomass requirement for a Class A mixed brook/brown trout, as well as strictly brown trout, fishery is 40kg per hectare. However, in brook trout streams, the requirement is only 30kg per hectare.
For management purposes, every stream in the commonwealth is divided into sections, and each section is assigned a number, starting with the uppermost reaches which is labeled section 1.
To get an accurate assessment of any section’s potential, at least 10 percent of it must be surveyed, and the survey must start as close to the mouth of that section as possible.
Each survey crew consists of at least four people. Two of them carry probes and nets and walk side by side up the stream.
A third member keeps track of the distance they’ve gone and follows closely behind with another net used to pass fish back to the fourth member who then measures each one on a belly board and records the data.
Before release, this fourth person also clips the trout’s caudal fin so that if they must resurvey a section at a later date, they know which fish have been previously captured.
They use gas- and battery- powered backpacks (this particular day, they opted for battery power) that can produce both AC and DC current. Tests are done to determine the conductivity of the water so that they know how to adjust the voltage flowing into the probes.
Ideally, they want just enough to briefly stun the fish while they collect the necessary data.
As the crew progresses, they take frequent stream-width measurements. Later on, back at the office, they use a Peterson estimate (which, in scientific jargon, is an equation designed to produce a statistically unbiased estimate for finite populations) to generate a spreadsheet that helps them determine if a stream will meet Class A criteria or if they need to return the next day to make a second pass.
Once a survey begins, the crew makes every effort to stay in the water until they’ve reached the finish line. In small streams, that often means climbing over, under, and through obstructions such as crossing logs, blow downs, or piled up debris.
Staying in the water, probing every inch of it, is the only way to get the most accurate population samples.
But despite their best efforts, some fish inevitably evade them. According to Ensign, smaller fish are least susceptible to electroshock because they lack the surface area of larger fish and therefore absorb less shock.
Also, in bigger, deeper pools, it’s difficult to get close enough to stun or corner trout so that they can be collected.
In truth, Section 1 of East Branch Tunungwant Creek and its tributaries are not unique. They represent a tiny part of thousands of Pennsylvania streams that have never been assessed.
In fact, of an estimated 67,725 streams in this state, more than 80 percent, have never been surveyed. And until a stream is surveyed, we may never know how factors such as pipeline construction, road construction, and urbanization are impacting our coldwater resources.
The goal of the commission’s Unassessed Waters Initiative is to “proactively identify and properly classify the most at-risk streams which support naturally reproducing trout populations in order to protect, conserve, and enhance those waters as wild trout streams.”
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to do that except to survey each and every body of water.
Headwaters are especially important because they serve as nurseries for the rest of the watershed, and trout in a variety of sizes and age classes is indicative of a healthy fishery.
“We’ve been finding strong populations of young-of-the-year trout,” said Ensign, “not just on East Branch, but everywhere we’ve surveyed. This year’s hatch has been really good.”
Of course, it’s not all small trout that show up in these headwaters. Ensign and his crew surveyed three different tributaries that day, some of them less than 6 feet wide, and every one of them produced quality wild brown trout up to 18 inches long.
“Another part of our job as we survey these streams is to observe the quality of the habitat and make recommendations for improvements,” said Ensign. These improvements can help offset major issues such as erosion and sedimentation, forest fragmentation, and lost stream connectivity that could possibly threaten the resource.
Once the survey on the East Branch Tunungwant Creek tributaries was completed, surveyors hiked back to their vehicles where more tests were performed to determine pH, alkalinity, buffering, hardness, and various characteristics of the water.
All of these things combine to provide a deeper insight into the quality of the resource and what is needed to protect it. And they hopped into their vehicles and headed off to the next stream where the same process would be repeated all over again.
One more stream survey down. Only 53,000 more to go.
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Sunday, September 2, 2018
Experiencing The Outdoors Together
Experiencing the outdoors is an awesome way to spend your weekend, or any day as a matter of fact, and it brings people of all kinds together (as can be read here). But how much longer will the outdoors be around for us to enjoy, before it starts to disappear? People argue that this has already begun, but what are your thoughts? Do you think enough is being done to reign in the decline in environmental facilities available for everyone to enjoy?
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Exploring Creepy Hurricane Sunken Sailboat
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Eric and Shelby are off the coast of Miami, exploring a sailboat shipwrecked and sunken by a hurricane. It's dangerous and a little creepy, but they uncover some exciting finds! Watch the video: https://youtu.be/P8MpK9_ZIfw https://i.redd.it/ebvok7hhpxj11.jpg [link] [comments] |
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