For many years before 2016, the Maine Warden Service conducted so-called “covert operations.” Basically, warden investigators were authorized to go undercover, use a different name and a cover story, and infiltrate a nest of hardcore poachers and eventually bring them to justice. These covert investigations were employed sparingly, and targeted at truly bad hombres, habitual …
Talk about “sticker shock”! You’ll know what I mean when you go to your town office to renew the registration for your all-terrain vehicle. For a Maine resident, the registration fee has gone this year from $45 to $74! By my calculator, that is a 60 percent increase. It’s bad enough at the gas pumps. …
Fueled by a liberal press and the animal rights lobby during the past decade, the conventional notion has come to be this: recreational hunting is on the skids, living on borrowed time. Even among the ranks of outdoor writers, there are some of my peers who have bought into this negativity, arguing that the blood …
Among those Maine anglers who talk and ponder such things, the Arctic charr is getting a fair amount of attention these days. This cold-water native Maine fish has a Laurentian lineage, which means that its ancestors date back to the Ice Age. In the U.S., there are just 12 waters that hold the Arctic charr. …
Like lawn dandelions in spring, new outdoor books are popping out all over. Here for your perusal is a summary of the books and a short review of each. More detailed purchase information about these books is available at www.sportingjournal.com. Click on “Outdoor Books.” “More than Wolverine” by Jeremiah Wood. Wood is a trapper, biologist …
Yet again, a legislative attempt to allow Sunday hunting in Maine has gone down in flames. The bill, LD 2014, faced some formidable opposition, not the least of which was from the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) and the Maine Professional Guides Association (MPGA). Although SAM has long advocated for Sunday hunting, it opposed this …
“One of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am unable at the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the time being has slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old situation.” — P.G. Wodehouse At times I have done dumb things, in the …
“Gobble, gobble, gobble.” In the hardwoods on a ridge in Granby, Mass., a number of years ago, that sound of a wild turkey shattered the pre-dawn quiet. In the floating mist and the half light there was something chilling and mystical about this almost prehistoric vocalization. I had never before experienced any sound in the …
By V. Paul Reynolds Soon it will be time to go fiddleheadin’. For the true gatherer, the first fiddlehead green that pokes through the sandy silt in the lowlands near brooks and streams stirs an inner joy. I count myself among the true gatherers. Finding wild things to eat that were not processed by man …
Over the years, debate has ensued over whether the national environmental organization the Sierra Club actually has been an adversary of our hunting rights in this country. Not so long ago, the NRA, a proponent of hunting rights, dropped its supporting membership in the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) because of OWAA’s support of …
Sunday hunting in Maine or not? I can think of few other more tenacious outdoor issues that have been so perennially debated over the years, yet never resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Even hunters themselves have been divided over this issue. There have always been compelling arguments on both sides of the question. Personally, I have …
If you head west from any marina in the Florida Keys, out into the Gulf, you will find dozens of small mangrove islands called keys. Rabbit Key is a 30-minute run from the mainland. Getting there is a bit of a challenge that involves finding the right “cuts” to avoid running aground on shallow reefs, …
