This will probably be my last post until July 3 or so. I’m taking my family to a camp up in  the Petersburg area, and Internet access is pretty limited.

If the Internet hookup turns out to be better than it was last year (which is doubtful), I’ll continue to post. Otherwise, expect to see a fresh post sometime during the late afternoon of July 3.

Have a great week, folks!

Division of Natural Resources conservation officers will be keeping an especially sharp eye out for drunk boaters during the June 26-28 weekend.

It’s all part of a national enforcement effort known as Operation Dry Water. DNR officers will conduct more patrols, breathalyzer tests and checkpoints on waters throughout the state.

“There will be arrests this weekend, and some boaters will face the consequences of boating under the influence,” said Lt. Tim Coleman, the DNR’s Boating Safety Coordinator. “But we’d much rather arrest someone than to have to tell their friends and family they’re never coming back.”

Be warned, folks. Have fun, but stay “dry.”

Roughly 50 hunters a day will be allowed onto the deer-rich grounds of West Virginia’s Stonewall Jackson Resort Park for a three-day controlled hunt in November.

The event, scheduled for Nov. 16-18, will focus mainly on antlerless deer. Superintendent Sam England said the park’s whitetail herd has grown too dense and needs thinning. “The high population of deer creates environmental imbalance within the park and subjects the herd to increasingly poor browse and health conditions,” he added.

Applications can be downloaded by clicking this link. Paper applications are available at DNR district offices, DNR headquarters in South Charleston and Elkins, and at Stonewall Park. Completed applications must be mailed by Aug. 28 to be eligible.

Forty years ago, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

People still joke about it today. But the Cuyahoga today is much, much cleaner than the oil- and debris-polluted Cuyahoga that ignited June 22, 1969.

Clevelanders recently held a lighthearted celebration to mark the event’s 40th anniversary. The menu centered on smoked or fire-roasted snacks, provided by the brewers of Burning River Pale Ale.

The U.S. Environmental Protection agency said the Lake Erie tributary supports much more life than it did then. A 2008 survey revealed 60 species of fish in the river, compared with 23 in a 1984 study.

The Cuyahoga’s comeback roughly parallels that of West Virginia’s Kanawha River, which in the late 1960s was too polluted to support carp. Now it’s one of the Mountain State’s top mixed-bag fisheries, with vibrant populations of bass, catfish, sauger, walleye and muskellunge.

Instead of waiting until someone decided to drill for oil or natural gas in a remote Montana wilderness and then protesting about it, Trout Unlimited decided to take preemptive action.

TU officials bought the federal leases that would have allowed developers to drill.

The leases, located in the Badger-Two Medicine area of the Rocky Mountain Front, encompass some 18,770 acres. Federal regulations prohibit further lease purchases in the area, but would have allowed pre-existing leases to be developed. By selling the leases to TU, developers essentially sold their drilling rights.

Upper Badger Creek, which cuts through the lease area, is home to the largest westslope cutthroat trout fishery in the Lewis and Clark Wilderness.

The Great Falls Tribune has more on the story.

After a week on the road, my sizable posterior is back in my cubicle’s swivel chair and my aging eyes are once again focused on a computer screen.

Blog posts will be more frequent for about a week and a half, but will likely thin out again when I leave for a family vacation. It’s that time of year…

Browning’s long-awaited Maxus line of autoloading shotguns should start shipping late next month.

That’s the word straight from the lips of Paul Thompson, media liaison for the Utah-based company. The shotguns, chock full of interesting and innovative features, will come out first in 12-gauge 3-inch and 3 1/2-inch versions. Available colors will be black and Mossy Oak Duck Blind camo. Other gauges and stock choices will follow.

I got to shoot one, and I was impressed. I’ll have more on the Maxus in an upcoming Woods & Waters feature story.

America’s top bass fisherman says today’s anglers need to be tech-savvy to survive in the highly competitive tournament-fishing circuit.

Kevin Van Dam, Angler of the Year in last year’s Bassmaster Elite Series and the leader in this year’s, believes the days are gone when a good ol’ boy without much technical expertise could thrive in the cast-for-cash world.

“You can have a good fishing trip that way, but you’re not going to be successful competitively,” he told me. “You have to know a lot about electronics, about locating fishing spots using GPS, and about the technical factors that make one lure a better choice than another.”

I’ll have more from the legendary KVD next Sunday on the Gazette-Mail’s Woods and Waters page.

His name is John Otterbacher. Heart disease tried to kill him, but he wouldn’t stop living. He resolved not just to survive, but to really live.

He set a goal to survive long enough to go on a long sailing trip with his wife and two young daughters. Their voyage, told in the book Sailing Grace, tells not only of stubborn perseverance, but of embracing mortality and finding peace in the simple act of living day to day.

I was fortunate enough to hear Otterbacher tell his story in person. I’ll be reading his book. If you like stories of survival, tender tales of family life and well-spun adventure yarns, I’d suggest you read it too.

The National Archery in the Schools Program is designed to get middle-school and high-school students to adopt archery as a lifetime sport.

Looks like it’s working; an independent study showed that 28 percent of the students who take the two-week physical education-class curriculum end up purchasing their own archery equipment.

Wow. Since more than a million students have gone through the program nationwide since 2002, a lot of bows and arrows must be getting sold.

The AIS program is currently being taught in more than 160 West Virginia  schools.