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Outdoors

Know the rules: Hunting law protects you

Most hunters, or at least the responsible ones, know their game laws before they head into the woods each season. Hunting times, locations, and bag limits are important, but there are some additional laws that protect hunters that some folks are not aware of. Unfortunately, I hear more and more stories on a regular basis about hunters having their outing interrupted by someone who doesn’t like hunting. People who bang pots and pans and blow air horns nearby to scare away the game in which they pursue. People waking into their hunting areas with dogs and yelling directly at the hunter ...

Good rockfish season expected after trophy season

CHESAPEAKE BEACH, Md. — After two very productive days of workshops and seminars at the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers Association spring conference and awards banquet at Chesapeake Beach resort, common sense dictated an early departure Sunday and a full-night’s sleep before pursuing Pennsylvania spring gobblers Monday morning. When Captain Chris Mills, who operates the 40-foot charter boat “Coolbeanz” with Captain Andy Brinsfield as his mate out of Rod-N-Reel Marina, invited six writers for a 6 a.m. departure to pursue trophy rockfish they had enough sense not to decline the ...

MLB pitcher asks hunters to Okla. duck dugout

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Archie Bradley is making a call from the bullpen to see if hunters might like to join him in a dugout in Oklahoma. Or more accurately, in a duck blind. The former Broken Arrow baseball and football standout who was drafted by the Diamondbacks in the first round in 2011, developed a love for waterfowl hunting about the same time his baseball career took off. Now he and former BA teammate Mak Monckton and Spring Valley Rod & Gun Club founder Adam Maris have an idea to boost Oklahoma’s reputation as a waterfowl hunting destination and ...

Hip or not, you can still kill wild turkeys

We all have friends who are always on the band wagon of the “hot new thing” when it comes to turkey hunting. The newest ammunition, the newest vests and clothing, decoys, and calls. I’ll honestly admit that even I sometimes jump in on the excitement when something new comes out. Unless you’re actively trying, it’s quite hard to stay on top of and up to date with all the new advancements in an industry that generates billions of dollars in retail sales each year. So where does that leave the average gobbler hunter? The type of hunter that after paying the bills, putting food ...

The road less traveled is often the better route

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” These words from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” are used as an allegory on life — that doing one’s own thing and not going along with the crowd often makes the difference between an ordinary person and an artist such as Frost. Members of my generation or older may remember Frost at Kennedy’s inauguration when a gust of wind blew the feeble old man’s poem (that he had written for the occasion) away, so he recited some lines of other works from ...

Treatment tells ticks to bug off

Friends, I’m really tired of seeing my hunting buddies and colleagues of the outdoors industry struck down by a little, teeny-tiny, disgusting bug. Yes, I’m talking about the creepy-crawling and bloodsucking ticks. Fortunately for me, after spending years peeling ticks off my skin, I’ve never tested positive for the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, otherwise known as Lyme Disease. I haven’t, but I very easily could have, and subsequently forced into submission to its adverse effects on the human body. That said, there are a variety of tick-borne illnesses in addition to Lyme ...