Outdoors: Good crappie fishing just steps away | Mansfield News Journal

Written by

Dick Martin

Take a survey of the favorite fish sought by Buckeye anglers, and you’ll find a close competition between Lake Erie walleye and perch and inland largemouth bass and bluegill.

Crappie won’t rank high, but their ranking is deceptive because when spring rolls around, thousands of anglers stop their casting for serious game fish, and turn to this little silver-sided panster — and that includes people who rarely fish.

Why does this flat-sided little fish have such popularity?

That’s hard to say. Maybe it’s that they’re an unusually picturesque fish, black and silver with sleek lines, or that it takes so little to catch them, usually a float, splitshot, No. 6 hook, and a minnow.

One thing has to be a factor, that they’re delicious eating, so good that arguments over which is best, crappie, bluegill, yellow perch, or walleye can last for hours. It adds up to lots of reasons to try them during spring fishing.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Outdoors: Good crappie fishing just steps away | Mansfield News Journal | mansfieldnewsjournal.com.

House committee endorses ending voter-approved ban on spring bear hunting – The Denver Post

A House committee Monday approved a bill that would overturn a 19-year ban on the spring bear hunt.

House Bill 1294, sponsored by Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, won agricultural committee approval on an 8-5 vote. The bill would let the Division of Wildlife allow the hunting of bears whenever necessary. The legislation drew praise from Colorado’s agriculture community and fire from animal-rights activists.

Colorado voters passed the ban on the spring hunting of black bears, the only bear species that lives in Colorado’s wilds, with a 70 percent approval rate in 1992.

The ban was part of Measure 10, which also banned the use of dogs or bait by bear hunters. The bill does not change those aspects of the law.

Brown said he brought the bill as a “health and safety” concern following publicized incidents of human-bear encounters. Brown said he didn’t intend to reinstate the spring hunt but wanted to give the Colorado Division of Wildlife the authority to maintain the bear population as it sees fit.

“I just feel like the division needs a little more flexibility,” Brown said.  Click link below for full story!

via House committee endorses ending voter-approved ban on spring bear hunting – The Denver Post.

Hunting squeakers in the spring

By Hunter Mike

Kentucky’s spring squirrel season will be open June 5-18.  This is a great time for hunters to get out and enjoy the woods.  Hunters can also use this time to do some early scouting.  June is a perfect time to hang tree cameras to monitor the antler growth on the bucks that are hanging around your property.

Hunting squirrels in the spring can be a challenge.  Hunters that face that challenge will improve their skills by having many obstacles to overcome while stalking spring tree rats.   Instead of hearing that too familiar rick-a-dee-rick of a squirrel cutting on a hickory nut, hunters will have to rely on sight to locate squeakers.  With the summer foliage, this is a challenge in itself.

Calling

Calling is one of the most effective ways to locate squirrels in the spring, according to C&C Outdoorsman Keith Sutton.  Some calls bark, some chatter and some imitate the distress call of a young squirrel.  Most of these calls are not necessarily designed to bring the squirrel to you.  They are designed to coax the squirrel into revealing its location.  The calls make them move in the trees, or they might bark back at you.  From personal experience, the distress call of a young squirrel is highly effective.  I have bagged several gray, and fox squirrels that have come right to my position when I’ve used this call.  When used properly, calls can help hunters see more squirrels than they would without calling.

Hunters should consider hunting aggressively during the first three hours after dawn.  This is the coolest part of the day, and the time when squirrels will be most active.  Truth be told, it’s more comfortable for us to be out there at this time as well.

Spring Food Sources

Squirrels won’t be munching on hickory nuts, walnuts or acorns at this time of the year.  In the fall, finding these food sources is like finding a gold mine.  In the spring, squirrels will thrive on leaf and flower buds, fungi and berries according to Sutton.  Hunters must find these types of food sources if they want to find squirrels.  Sutton suggests that mulberries are the X-factor for spring furry limb chickens.  If you find a mulberry tree, you are likely to fill the daily bag limit.

Remember, squirrels like to forage on the ground to try and find leftovers from last fall’s nut crop.  Don’t spend all of your time looking up in the trees.  Scan the entire area.  Many times during the deer season, we sit in our stands and watch squirrels come out of their tree dens.  Keep in mind where these spots are and go straight to them on opening day.

Go to http://www.kdfwr.state.ky.us/ to check out the 2010 Spring Hunting Guide if you are uncertain of bag limits or any other regulations.  Be safe and good luck!

Excitable gobblers mean exciting turkey hunting season | The Courier-Journal

By Gary Garth • Special to The Courier-Journal

Kentucky’s spring turkey season will open Saturday, and the state’s 90,000 or so gobbler hunters probably can look forward to one of their best seasons ever.

Steven Dobey practically guarantees it.

“Well, no, there’s no guarantee,” said Dobey, the turkey specialist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “But I think this could be the most exciting season we’ve had.”

Exciting?

“Yes. It should be a really exciting time to hunt.”

Turkeys are flourishing across the state. Dobey estimates the flock at about 220,000, including an extra-large crop of 2-year-old gobblers. That’s the reason for the excitement.

Two-year-old gobblers are the testosterone-fueled teenagers of the turkey woods — physically mature but blundering through a serious case of lovesickness. The want of female companionship can make these normally secretive and shy birds somewhat careless. Consequently, they fill the most tags.

“Their hormones are telling them what they need to do,” Dobey said, “but experience hasn’t caught up with them yet.”

This year’s anticipated good times can be traced to the summer of 2008. Summertime is when Dobey and a few colleagues spend about eight weeks counting recently hatched turkey poults. Dobey then comes up with a fairly accurate estimate of the average number of turkey chicks per hen that were produced that year.

In 2008 it was an astounding 3.7 chicks per hen, the most in the 26-year history of the summer surveys.

“It was just a great hatch,” Dobey said, “so there are a lot of 2-year-old birds this year, and 2-year-old birds are exciting to hunt.”

The record hatch of 2008 manifested itself somewhat last spring, when hunters tagged a record 29,007 turkeys, 24percent of them 1-year-old gobblers (called jakes). The previous season only 14percent of the birds tagged were jakes. A juvenile bird is legal if it has a visible beard, as nearly all jakes do.

Dobey wasn’t surprised at the spike in juvenile kills last year, saying, “If they’re on the ground, people tend to take them.”

Kentucky’s turkey hunting success rate hovers around 33percent. Dobey says hunters are becoming more selective, but even those determined to wait for an older bird will enjoy being in the woods with young gobblers on the prowl.

“There should be a lot of calling and a lot of bird movement,” he said.

Those 2-year-old gobblers can boost hunting opportunities during the often-lax midday hours and especially later in the season, which runs through May9.

“There’s going to be a lot of hens that are with gobblers, but there’s going to be a lot of (young) gobblers, especially, that don’t make the cut,” Dobey said. “They’ll be out looking for hens.”

Midday success is likely to go up as the season moves into May. By then many hens will have been bred, and after an early-morning feed they will have returned to their nests. That will leave plenty of young gobblers who haven’t found a receptive hen searching for one.

“They’re out looking for hens, and sometimes they’ll come in without making a sound,” Dobey said. “They’ll just appear. It’s exciting.”

Kentucky’s statewide youth turkey hunt (ages 15 and under) was last weekend. Hunters checked more than 1,800 birds.

via Excitable gobblers mean exciting turkey hunting season | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal.