After a couple of years’ worth of searching, West Virginia wildlife officials finally found an area in the state’s mountain highlands to add to their list of public lands managed specifically to grow trophy bucks.
Check out the Calvin Price State Forest in Pocahontas County.
I went electrofishing with a Division of Natural Resources crew yesterday, and the results were pretty darned gratifying.
We were shocking the Elk River near Gassaway for muskies, and the deck appeared stacked against us. The water temperature was 65 degrees — about 10 degrees warmer than the biologists prefer. Muskies tend to vamoose long before the boat gets near them when the water temperature gets above 60.
In addition, the crew had yours truly aboard. My reputation within the DNR is that of a “human cold front.” Electrofishing crews tend to have a hard time when I’m around.
We weren’t terribly hopeful when we started shocking, but we ended up doing OK. We shocked up three muskies — a 33-incher, a 36-incher and (fanfare, please) a 49-incher (pictured)!
I’ll have the full story in next Sunday’s Woods and Waters page of the Sunday Gazette-Mail.
From a DNR news release dated yesterday:
Test results have detected the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) agent in a total of seven white-tailed deer sampled during the 2009 spring collections in Hampshire County, according to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
These most recent deer testing positive for CWD were collected by Wildlife Resources Section personnel working in cooperation with landowners, and they were all within the Hampshire County CWD Containment Area (i.e., that portion of Hampshire County located north of U.S. Route 50).Â
Paul Johansen, the DNR’s assistant wildlife chief, said the CWD-positive findings were about what agency biologists had expected.      Â
I’ll unfortunately be in Michigan when it takes place, but it would sure be interesting to see how many humongous catfish get dragged out of the Monongahela River when Cabela’s King Kat Tournament Trail hits the Morgantown area June 13.
The one-day tournament, which sports a guaranteed $5,000 payback, will be open to local anglers as well as touring professionals. Entry fees are $200 per team. Teams can consist of one or two anglers. A third is allowed provided the third person is under 16 years of age or over 65.
The tournament’s hours will be 6:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The weigh-in is scheduled for 4 p.m. at the Hazel Ruby McQuain Amphitheater.Â
If this photo is any indication, fishing on West Virginia’s New River might not be good for a while yet.
The picture, taken in mid-May, shows the giant hydraulic, or “hole,” created when the New got high enough to break over Whale Rock at the head of Upper Keeney Rapids in the river’s Lower Gorge. The New was running at 50,000 cubic feet per second at the time. It’s lower now, but still not quite angler-friendly. Recent heavy rains certainly haven’t made the situation any better. And to think that in February we were worried about a drought…
If phone calls and e-mails are any indication, West Virginia’s new September bow and muzzleloader seasons probably won’t be as popular with hunters as wildlife officials hoped they’d be.
The most common complaint? That the Division of Natural Resources supposedly created the season to control overpopulated deer herds, but then imposed a special fee on hunters who participate in it.
“They’re selling our deer herd!” is a cry I hear pretty often nowadays.
Paul Johansen, the DNR’s assistant wildlife chief, clearly believes additional fees were necessary. “It was the fiscally responsible thing to do,” he told me. “It costs money to implement game-management and law-enforcement programs. Hunters and anglers, through license fees, pay for those costs. I don’t apologize that it takes money to run one of the best deer management programs in this country.”
But Johansen also acknowledged that the DNR doesn’t charge extra fees to hunters who participate in other hunts designed to reduce whitetail numbers, such as urban hunts, state park hunts and hunts at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
“Those hunts involve small areas with confined boundaries,” he said. “We feel there’s the need to provide a little extra incentive to entice hunters to participate in them.”
Maybe he’s right. But my personal opinion is that the September bow and muzzleloader seasons will tick off as many hunters as they satisfy. If DNR officials truly wanted hunters to participate in the season, they should have dangled a carrot instead of swinging a stick.
A Loveland, Colo., man suffered serious injuries when lightning struck him and another shooter during a round of skeet.
Josh Renuche, 32, had just called “pull” when the lightning struck and exploded his shotgun. A friend, 32-year-old Brent Kuehne, was also injured.
The Greeley Tribune has the entire story.
Updated 5/27: Renuche remains in critical condition with burns over most of his body.
Hat tip: J.R. at The Outdoor Pressroom
Every year about this time, I crunch the numbers and try to determine which West Virginia counties will offer hunters their best chance at bagging a deer.
Here’s my technique:
First, I determine how many deer were killed in each county. That’s easy. The Division of Natural Resources publishes those numbers in its annual Big Game Bulletin.
But raw harvest alone doesn’t determine how good a county’s hunting actually is. Greenbrier County, for example, yielded 4,191 whitetails last season, but those deer were spread over 986 square miles of habitat. So the county produced just 4.25 deer per square mile — fewer than all but 14 of the state’s 55 counties.
So next I take each county’s raw kill and divide it by the county’s habitat area. Then, to provide a balance between raw harvest and productivity, I rank the counties — highest to lowest — in each category and average the two. The highest-averaging counties get the highest rankings.
So here, in order of rank, are this year’s Top 10 “best bets” based on last year’s numbers:
Harrison, Upshur and Putnam finished just out of the Top 10.
This is the time of year when West Virginia’s trout streams are at their absolute best. Reports on the WVAngler.com Web site are bearing that out. Fishermen say they’re seeing some nice mayfly hatches and lots of rising trout.
On rich, productive streams such as Monroe County’s Second Creek and the Elk River in Pocahontas, Randolph and Webster counties, reports of “snout soup” have started coming in.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, snout soup occurs when a heavy aquatic insect hatch or mating swarm causes every fish in the stream to rise to the surface to feed. Trout snouts appear literally everywhere.
It’s an exciting phenomenon, and it happens rarely enough in West Virginia that anglers get really pumped when it does.
His name was Ronald Stephen Abell. He was a welder and an outoorsman. He was laid to rest under a totally cool headstone.
For a close-up view, check out The Washington Post:
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