In this Issue
December 2005

FIN, FUR & FEATHERS
Rain, fish and fowl in abundance this fall
By John T. O'Leary, Jr.

John T. O'Leary, Jr.

After the certified coolest spring on record and one of the hottest summers, it looked like we might try for the wettest fall, by far. But, pardon the pun, the tides have changed.

Duck hunters found themselves with an abundance of quarry, with even the teal hanging around in mild temperatures. Unfortunately, the birds were widely (wildly?) scattered because almost all the low ground was under water. Some took to jump shooting what were commonly brooks adjacent to pasture land, or crop fields, that the deluge had transformed into lakes and flooded buffet tables. One friend left a dozen goose silhouette decoys in a cornfield overnight. The dawn’s early light showed only their heads and 6 inches of neck showing above the water. They looked like goose submarines, with the periscopes up. He also lost duck decoys to the raging torrents, on what is normally a mild mannered pasture stream.

I’ve mentioned in the past that many sportsmen have voluntarily limited their take of woodcock, because of their and scientists’ observations that the population levels were in a downward trend. Perhaps this abstinence worked, and nesting seasons were ideal; whatever happened the woodcock were back this fall in droves, in numbers old hunters fondly remember but thought they’d never see again. As I’ve said before, sportsmen see what is going on and take the appropriate action, long before government tells us what to do. It isn’t a self-serving job; it is our passion.

Fish & Wildlife had a headache on their hands trying to get pheasant stocked, what with roads closed and cart roads resembling canoe trails in many local areas. The erratic stockings reflected this. Pheasant are hardy but high-strung birds that do not suffer the close confinement of stocking crates well. Once they are in the stocking crate, they have to be released somewhere, soon. The plus side of all this water to a pheasant hunter was that the birds would not be using the hummock swamps for escape cover. My old setter, Lefty, went swimming out from the new shoreline, over the now submerged hummocks, and finally came back to land. He loved chasing roosters in those hummocks, hundreds of yards out of range, and I let him do it because he literally restocked the area, with or without his momma, Jill. His new kennel mate, Lily, is finding and pointing her birds at the ripe old age of 7 months. She is bird crazy. She is white lightning with a 35-yard range, her imposition, not mine. And she absolutely loves anything in feathers. If you come to visit, I wouldn’t wear down.

Fishermen who braved the torrents at North and South ponds were amply rewarded for their efforts with catches of bass, pike and trout of numbers and sizes that had to be seen to be believed. The flume created at South Pond by the gate extended out into the pond beyond 100 feet when I was there. All of this current pulled the big predators from their holes, and the bait-rich water rang the dinner bell. Having the barrier down accomplished no good, and probably caused even more woes for the poor folks on North Pond, and especially between the rivers. No wonder their houses are up for sale.
As this is being written, Veterans Day weekend, the archers are just seeing the peak of the rutting season for deer. My brother watched a breeding battle yesterday that took his breath away. Several bucks were attempting to get close to a doe that must have been almost ready for some buck’s advances. A nine-point buck that would weigh 200 pounds easily was getting his butt gored, thrown in the air, and driven down in the brush by a much larger buck that Dan could not get an antler count on, due to the fact that whenever he saw one it was either standing in the thick brush near the doe or running off that nine-pointer, swiftly and with that huge rack of antlers a blur in the brush. Then he miscalculated the yardage on a 10-pointer. Let’s just say Danny knows where the deer like to be, and puts himself there.

Let me know how you are doing out there. Bye for now. JTO.

Read previous columns by John T. O'Leary, Jr.