It’s rare when someone in the shooting sports gets any exposure on network television, much less a segment on Jay Leno’s show.

So tune in tonight (Nov. 5) if you want to get a glimpse of 19-year-old Kristin Braun, a member of the 2009 USA Archery World Championship team. Braun will appear alongside Leno, actress Wanda Sykes and food maven Rachael Ray. Early word from NBC is that she’ll be asked to shoot suction-cup arrows at a Plexiglas shield positioned in front of Sykes’ face to try to make the actress flinch.

Kinda makes me wish they’d treat Olympic-style archery just a little more seriously, but any publicity is better than none.

Florida’s first-ever hunting season for invasive Burmese pythons has ended.

In about three months, searchers found and killed 39 of the big constrictors. Wildlife officials say the snakes — introduced to south Florida by people who kept them as pets and turned them out when they became too big and strong to manage — are reproducing in the state’s tropical climate, and could now number in the tens of thousands.

The Palm Beach Post has details.

The man who invented one of trout fishing’s most famous fly patterns has died.

Russ Blessing, the man widely credited for the Woolly Bugger wet fly, passed away recently at his home in Harrisburg, Pa. He was 74.

Blessing reportedly was seeking to impart a little more action to a standard Woolly Worm wet fly when, sometime around 1967, he got the idea of substituting a long marabou tail for the standard short tuft of red wool. It was a marriage made in heaven. The revised pattern caught fish when other flies wouldn’t. A magazine article on the fly’s effectiveness caught the public’s attention and helped spread its popularity.

Today, no fly fisherman worth his salt would venture astream without a few “Buggers” in his fly box. Rest in peace, Russ. Your legacy lives on.

Remember Kennesaw, Ga., the town that passed an ordinance in 1982 requring its citizens to own and maintain handguns?

An official in Wyoming has a similar idea — not to require handguns, but to require backcountry hikers, anglers and hunters to carry bear spray.

Teton County Attorney Steve Weichman announced the proposal last week during a Yellowstone Grizzly Coordinating Committee meeting. If approved, it would require all recreationists overnighting in grizzly country to have bear spray on hand.

According to an Associated Press report, not everyone is sold on the idea. Bob Wharff, executive director of Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife,  worries that hunters might be forced to forgo a sure-fire bear repellent — a firearm — in order to use pepper spray.

Does this remind anyone else of the old joke about how to tell grizzly poop from other animals’ poop? It has backpackers’ “bear bells” in it, and it smells like pepper…

I’ve seen more road-killed deer in the past few days than I usually see in a month of commuting.

That tells me one thing: Pre-rut activity is starting to peak here in West Virginia.

Bucks are chasing does. When bucks chase does and does aren’t receptive, both critters often end up where they shouldn’t be — on a highway with a car bearing down on them.

The bad news is that most does won’t be ready to breed until the middle of the month. Jim Crum, deer project leader for the state Division of Natural Resources, says breeding ordinarily peaks sometime between Nov. 14 and Nov. 17, give or take a day or two.

So for the next week or so, be particularly careful when driving through whitetail country.

With West Virginia’s firearm season for deer opening later this month, law enforcement officials want to make sure hunters know what they’re doing before they head into the woods.

That’s why the Division of Natural Resources will hold a “Hunter Education Course Blitz” Nov. 14 and 15. During that weekend, some counties will have as many as three hunter-ed courses being taught at the same time.

Every person born after Jan. 1, 1975 must pass the course before purchasing a hunting license.

Look here for a complete list of classes, times and locations. Classes are listed by county. If your county isn’t listed, call one of the following DNR district offices to find out where the nearest classes are being held:

Farmington: 304-825-6787; Romney: 304-822-3551;  Elkins: 304-637-0245; Beckley: 304-256-6945; Nitro: 304-759-0703; Parkersburg: 304-420-4550; and Charleston, 304-558-2784.

In mid-October, when West Virginia’s fall trout stockings occur, the Gauley River below Summersville Dam is a roaring millrace choked with whitewater rafters and kayakers.

To make nice with anglers who would otherwise miss out on fishing the dam’s trout-friendly tailwaters, rafting outfitters pay for a special stocking.

The West Virginia Professional River Outfitters Association charters a helicopter to distribute 1,200 pounds of rainbow trout throughout the rugged Gauley canyon. The stockings have helped create a fine population of wild “holdover” trout that extends downstream several miles.

The most recent stocking occurred Oct. 28. By all accounts, most of the fish are still there, waiting to be caught.

Members of West Virginia’s Sportsman’s Gun Club thought they had lost their home when highway officials routed a four-lane expansion through their trap and skeet fields.

When the road went another direction, club members breathed a huge sigh of relief — a bit prematurely, as it turned out.

On Oct. 22, club officials received a letter. The letter informed them that the FMC Sportsmen’s Club, the leaseholder for the gun club’s property, had voted to terminate the lease. FMC officials gave no reason for the decision.

My Sunday Gazette-Mail column lays out the entire story.

The bottom line is that the gun club will need to relocate. Finding an appropriate property within a 20- to 25-mile radius of Charleston probably won’t be easy.

It’s amazing what people can do with photo-editing software.

The accompanying photo and another one allegedly from the same “sequence” have been making the rounds on the Internet.

The moose, estimated by the “photographer” to have been 8 feet tall at the shoulder and 12 feet tall at the rack, was supposedly roaming the woods near Elliot Lake, Ontario, when its picture was taken.

I’ve seen moose — big ones — “up close and personal” in Yellowstone National Park. Believe me, they’re huge. But they ain’t that huge. 

In the past month, two Montana grizzly bears have been found dead, their claws removed.

According to the Great Falls Tribune, the latest kill turned up Oct. 18 on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The first was found Oct. 1 on the Lewis and Clark National Forest.

The black market for grizzly claws must be lucrative, indeed, for people to risk poaching bears. Killing a griz in the lower 48 states is a violation of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Here’s hoping they find the perpetrators. And throw the book at ‘em.