Sep02

Come along on an outdoor adventure

by daverichey on 2012/09/02 at 8:12 PM
Posted In: The Daily, The Field, The Water, The Woods, Thoughts
DRO - King salmon caught on a Michigan Squid in the early fall
A nice king salmon caught in early fall on a Michigan Squid
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

The above title asks a good question, and it’s been tossed my way for nearly nine years by many readers. My answer is invariably the same: why not?

Anglers and hunters can understand a column, which is nothing more than a bit of self-indulgence plus some solid fishing or hunting experience and information. Columns are about what I think, feel, do, believe in, rant against, etc.

The same thing can be said about a blog. A blog (short for weblog) is a daily journal of sorts. It covers the wide range of my daily emotions, and how I look at things through a bleary and somewhat biased or jaundiced eye. You may sense a touch of anger, animosity, joy, sorrow or other human emotions. My feelings on a wide variety of things is never far from the surface nor am I adverse to bluntly speaking my mind.

I’ve been writing a daily weblog since I retired from The News

You’ll almost always feel my love for the environment, the animals, birds and fish that we hunt or try to catch, and you’ll feel my sense of betrayal and delusion when some sorry dude levels perfectly wonderful wildlife habitat and then builds a shopping mall or hard-scrabble subdivision.

Readers will read my unabashed feelings on brook trout that invariably turn me on in their watery little trickles, and the litter that invariably turns me off when I must look at it. You’ll note, hopefully with a righteous indignation like mine, when I bare my soul about the destruction of an ever-decreasing amount of wild land.

Hopefully, you’ll share my glee when the DNR does something really great or get ticked off when they continue to do something utterly stupid like depriving you and me of the opportunity to obtain private-land turkey permits in Region II while granting such permits to people in the Upper Peninsula and southern Lower Peninsula.

My blog runs daily except when something happens to my computer

My weblog runs daily, and I’ve only missed a few days since November, 2003, and then only because some piece of crud hacked my website. My archives are available to one and all, and I urge readers to dust off some of them and see what you’ve missed.

You’ll share my pain when my beloved twin brother George died on Sept. 10, 2003. You’ll get as excited as I did when catching a 30-pound muskie, writing about the Christmas Tree Bomber, and other true tales. I invite you to walk with me when we go into a bear swamp for a hunt, and what is even more fun, when we walk out in the darkness. Jump into my tree stand as we bow-hunt for whitetails, and whisper in my ear when it’s time to shoot a dandy buck or tell me to draw down on him and let up, giving him a life he could have lost had I shot.

Come along as we wade belly-deep into an area steelhead stream during those cold March days, and grab the net when we slug it out with hefty Chinook salmon in the fall. Let’s take a walleye fishing trip on Long or Platte lakes, a bluegill outing to Arbutus Lake, and we can trudge through the January snow in search of cottontails and snowshoe hares.

Sharing the outdoor life with each other

Do you feel up to laying flat on the ground as Canada geese hover overhead, honking loudly, as our belly muscles tighten and we lever our way to a sitting and shooting position? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t thrill to the loud and clattering flush of a ruffed grouse as the October dew dries on the ready-to-fall golden leaves?

Does any upland gunner fail to rejoice to the towering flight of woodcock as they dart and twist ever upward out of the alders before quickly plummeting to earth before we can swing and shoot

Calling predators with that high-pitched squeal of a dying rabbit is a heap of fun during the winter months as the coyote darts out of a thicket, and begins circling to a downwind location. We know a shot may be possible but it’s nerve wracking to watch the animal close in on a spot straight downwind. Will we get a shot?

Fishing and hunting has been a major part of my life for more than 60 of my 73 years, and I eagerly await each new season and every new adventure. You ask me: why do I write a daily weblog?

I write because I have a strong need within me to do so. There is a deep need to write, and a need to share my love of fishing and hunting with my readers. I don’t have to write for the money although I wish this blog and website paid more; instead, writing about the outdoors makes me feel good, makes me feel whole and helps smooth out all the rough spots in my life.

You and me, we can go places and do things. We can discover new places to fish or hunt, and learn more about what pulls us ever onward to another wonderful outdoor adventure. People who stay indoors, and watch idiotic game shows on television have my sincere sympathy.

Me, I’d rather be outdoors with a bow or rod in my hand and enjoying all that nature has to offer. How about you?

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

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Sep01

From nature to a parking lot

by daverichey on 2012/09/01 at 9:25 AM
Posted In: The Daily, The Field, The Woods, Thoughts
DRO-Bear eating berries outside Traverse City
A black bear near Traverse City eating summer berries

photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

Are you a giver or a taker? It’s a simple question that goes far beyond a one-word yes or no answer.

The bottom line here, in the event that this question may come as a big surprise to some of my faithful readers, is very simple. Do you take more from your fishing or hunting trips and your living area, than you put back?

The purchase of a fishing or a hunting license grants us nothing more than an opportunity to legally fish or hunt. It is a privilege but not a guaranteed right. It promises opportunities, not limit catch or a heavy game bag.

Anglers and hunters pay their way; What do others do; They take

In days of old, when knights were bold, the landowner owned the fish and game. They also owned the river water that flowed through their property, and Heaven help those pesky peasants who poached one of the king’s red stags, a brown trout or Atlantic salmon.

The human population was far less 300 or more years ago than now, and peasants were kept in their places and ruled with an iron fist. People caught poaching were severely punished, and any fish or game they may have taken was confiscated.

Things are much different now. We have flowing springs, but bottled-water plants are tapping into the underground aquifers. They are taking water but putting nothing back. There are developers ready to quickly fill wetlands, and they operate on the premise that it’s easier to say “I’m sorry” and ask for forgiveness later, if caught, than to ask for and be granted permission first.

These are trying times, and everyone wants and needs some outdoor recreation. We need to smell the roses, but what will happen when the roses stop growing?

What will happen when former trout streams become a mere trickle before drying up because a bottling plant has shipped our water out of state for corporate profit, and the trout have disappeared because bottlers have drained and sold our water? What about the ducks that once inhabited the wetlands or the bullfrogs that croaked all night

How many people are speaking out to state governors? Are you standing up to face big business, and asking the hard questions: Is sale of our water right?

What happens to Great Lakes water when Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas want our water? What will be done then? Hopefully, compacts already in place limit such water withdrawals but those who do not care are greedily trying to circumvent those laws.

What about urban sprawl in our area and car-choked streets

Who among us is speaking out about urban sprawl in the Traverse City area? Or near Charlevoix? Or in the Petoskey-Harbor Springs area? Cadillac is another area primed for a push from those who wish to move north to what they perceive as paradise in northern Michigan.

How many people are willing to take a few minutes from their busy lives to ask why? Why is state government allowing this to happen? Why are cities like Detroit becoming an empty maze of cluttered and unsafe streets, boarded up crack houses, and why have 1.2 million people fled Detroit over the past 20 years? Why is the same thing happening in Flint and other cities around this state?

When will we get rid of all the crooks in government? Books have been written about Kwame Kilpatrick, who followed the lead of former Detroit mayor Coleman Young. The city was just something to be looted for personal game. They caught Kilpatrick, tossed him in the clink, but whatever they do to crooked politicians isn’t enough.

One needs to look no farther than some politicians. Consider Kwame Kilpatrick and his sordid text messages and political hi-jinks. He stacked some time in the can, but not nearly long enough for someone who profited while the city he was paid to protect teetered on the edge of death and total collapse, a city where crime runs rampant.

I ask: What will become of our open fields, marshlands, hardwoods and conifers that now provide cover for game and non-game animals and birds here in northern Michigan? Has anyone paid attention to the downsizing of Michigan’s deer herd? The marked decrease in snowshoe hares and some game birds?

How about those rivers where salmon and trout were once plentiful? Those rivers don’t support the same number of salmonids as they once did, and  they may never regain their great popularity as world-class steelhead waters.

What about our Department of Natural Resources, a state agency nearly as financially bankrupt as the entire state? When people lose their jobs in downstate factories, they often move north. Acre by acre, day after day, our land is being gobbled up, paved over and otherwise desecrated.

The answers are not nice but they are easy to answer. We’re talking about an excessive loss of habitat. We’re talking greedy businessmen. How, I wonder, can Exxon and other gas companies declare such huge profits for shareholders while the average person was breaking his back trying to stay afloat when gasoline was over $4 per gallon? We have Medicare programs that no one understands, and skyrocketing prescription drug prices. It’s bureaucracy at its worst.

More people help increase the price of gas in some cases

Granted, what has happened in the past several years to our deer herd is not easy to cope with. But take a hard look at some of the problems.

Urban sprawl is eating away at land necessary for deer to live. People move north, buy five or 10 acres of paradise, and disrupt deer travel routes. Homes are built where deer crossed roads. As more people move in, buy land, the terrain becomes even more fragmented. The deer soon disappear to another area that has yet to be exploited.

People see bears where they’ve never been seen bruins before. The animals need a place to live, but humans have taken over. We own 20 acres we bought 30 years ago, and admit that we may have contributed to the problem. However, we did it long before the big push to move north came about. Traverse City was a nice and quaint northern town on the water.

Now, some surrounding areas harbor sex monsters in some of our local schools. Six such people were named in today’s issue of the Traverse City Record-Eagle <record-eagle.com> . That is hardly anything for people in this area to be proud of. Five men and one woman have been charged for sex charges against students.

Deer numbers in our area are down so we hunt elsewhere when we can. Does this solve the problem? Of course not, it just puts a bit more hunting pressure on an area that hasn’t felt the full force of land development like what has taken place around Traverse City.

Look at Traverse City today. It has the same types of problems as southern cities have faced for years. Drugs, embezzlement, rape, robbery, murder. We’ve got that whole bag of nastiness up here now, and paradise has lost most of its glitter and luster, but it still looks nicer than downstate so people keep coming back for another sample of the northern good life.

Twenty or 30 years from now, when Traverse City has expanded southeast past Kingsley, southwest to Thompsonville, northwest to fill the entire Leelanau Peninsula, and northeast to meet Charlevoix that is expanding southward, we’ll have the same problems that people fled when they moved north from the downstate big cities.

The difference is people who move north bring excess baggage with them, and now they want this area to be like their home area once was. Folks, it doesn’t happen that way.

When will people look around, see the slow but certain destruction of this area, and wonder how and why we let it happen? Of course, the answer is easy: we are too busy raising a family, pinching pennies because half our pay is a view of the bay, and if we live long enough, we’ll learn that if we aren’t part of the solution, then we must be part of an ever-growing problem.

Stupid bumper stickers like this are not needed here

Just yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker that stated how upset some people can be. It stated: Drain The Bay and Double Our Pay.

Meanwhile, paradise has been turned into another drug store chain, gas station, bank or a cement-carpeted parking lot. And one must look hard to find a rose to smell, a deer to see, or that wonderful silence at night when the northern lights sparkled in the heavens. Sorry folks, but the aurora borealis is hard to see through the glare of city lights.

The problem is people have taken what we deemed as ours and given nothing back. How sad is that?

How greedy are we? Many people should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve paved over paradise and turned it into a gigantic parking lot.

It’s time for people to give something more back besides lip service.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

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Aug31

Steelhead Fishing: Four Decades Ago

by daverichey on 2012/08/31 at 8:12 PM
Posted In: The Daily, The Water, Thoughts
DRO-steelhead 40 yrs ago
George Richey (left) with big fish and the late Stan Lievense at work
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

It was April 1, 1968, my second year of guiding brown trout, salmon and steelhead fishermen, and I was scouting the Little Manistee River for clients who would arrive the next day.

The river was rain-swollen and murky, and in another hour of heavy rain, it would be a foot higher and the color of chocolate milk. I thought a big buck steelhead was on a shallow gravel bar an easy cast from shore, and brother George shinnied up a tree and stood on a big branch.

“That fish is huge,” George muttered to me. “It’s bigger than any steelhead I’ve ever seen, and his cheeks and gill covers are an orange-red color. It is a truly awesome fish.

The fish was huge at about 25 pounds; Could I hold him

“You know about where he is. Cast a copper spinner upstream and reel hard when I tell you.”

I cast, and George said to cast another six feet farther upstream in hopes of getting the spinner down in the heavy current. My next cast, he said, was on target.

“That’s the spot,” he said. “Keep casting to it. Reel hard now!”

I reeled, and nothing happened. Cast after cast went into the right spot, and I’d reel fast enough to make the spinner blade turn over in the current, and after 40 or 50 casts, George yelled “Hit him!”

The hooks were slammed home as I felt the strike, and nothing happened, so I pounded the rod tip back to set the hooks again. The huge steelhead rolled to the surface, his cheeks and gill covers glowing like evening campfire embers, and the fish started upstream, his dorsal fin creasing the surface like a shark. Not fast but with great power.

I moved along the bank but stayed downstream. The trick was to make the giant fish fight the rod pressure and the river current. We duked it out in the soggy rain for 10 minutes before the fish swapped ends and headed downstream into a deep hole. I was reeling while running but still the fish tangled the line in underwater brush and broke me off.

“How big,” I asked George. He’d caught steelhead to almost 20 pounds, and guessed this ponderous male was at least 25 pound, perhaps more.

It was the largest steelhead I’d hooked, before or since

Wow, you say. That’s what I said, and of the thousands of steelhead I’ve caught before and since, it remains the largest one I’ve seen.
or hooked.

My point with this is that incident occurred back in the days of very few steelhead fishermen and lots of big fish. The Little Manistee River at that time had a huge run of spawning steelhead that averaged, according to the DNR, between 11 and 12 pounds. A 15-pounder wasn’t anything special, and it took a 17- or 18-pounder to raise eyebrows.

That year, also on the Little Manistee River, I found a 30-yard stretch of gravel that was wall-to-wall fish. The bottom was honeycombed with spawning redds, and 15 or 20 feet away would be another redd, and every one held a female and one to four males. We fished only for the male fish because a hooked hen would take all the boys with her.

On that day I set a record of sorts. I hooked 30 steelhead in eight hours, and am proud to announce that I made a professional release on every fish. If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, a professional release means I lost every fish, one way or another.

Steelhead four decades ago far out-numbered anglers.

There were far more steelhead in those days than now. There are far more fishermen today than back then. It’s easy to do the basic math; fewer fish are being sought by more anglers.

There are still some rather exciting days if anglers can find a spot where fishing pressure is minimal. A few years ago me and another man hooked 30 steelhead in a morning. We landed about half of them, and released each and every one. Those days seldom occur any more.

Low Lake Michigan water levels haven’t helped. The Betsie River mouth has been so low in recent years that very few fish make it upstream. Rivers like the Manistee below Tippy Dam can be good at times, but the fishing pressure is just too much to suit me. I can take a half-day of fishing in a crowd, and then get turned off by the whole thing.

That doesn’t mean that you should, but it’s easy for me to remember way back when to those special occasions when a steelhead fisherman would be unlucky to see two other anglers all day. And, back in the day, people didn’t crowd you or wade down through a spawning bed. People had manners, which are hard to come by these days.

They had some class. The fish were larger and more plentiful, and the rivers weren’t swarming with anglers. It was a different era, and the steelhead fishing now is still fairly good, but remembering what it was like 40-45 years ago is enough to make a grown man cry.

Personally, it’s my thought that we’ll probably never see the likes of those days again but remembering them remains a great thrill.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

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Aug29

Honesty in the outdoors

by daverichey on 2012/08/29 at 8:12 PM
Posted In: The Daily, The Water, Thoughts
DRO-honesty in outdoor writing
The author with one of the thousands of steelhead caught since the early 1950s
photo c. Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

I’m well into my 45th year of outdoor writing. Some of the nation’s premier outdoor writers are or were my friends before they passed on.

In my lifetime I came to personally know thousands of scribes from across the United States and Canada. Some were known through word of mouth, and many were folks that I worked with in one way or another.

Some were magazine editors, newspaper reporters, photographer, or people who labored in the vineyards of radio or television. Some wrote books on fishing or hunting, and others were fishing or hunting guides who wrote on the side.

Most writers are honest but I’ve known a number who were not

The good ones had one trait in common. They were honest in their writings, and always told the truth.

My father told me during my second year of outdoor writing in 1968 that he expected one thing out of me: honesty. “Never lie to your readers,” he said. “Tell the honest truth about your experiences, and never fib to them. They will spot a liar in a heartbeat, and make damn sure you know what you’re talking about. If you don’t know a topic, don’t write about it.”

I’d never had any intention of lying to anyone, but when my father told me that, I paid attention. I’ve been at this job for almost 45 years, and have never lied to my readers.

I sell books about fishing and hunting, and buy books, and I’ve always been honest. If someone sends me a book for appraisal and possible sale, I tell them the approximate value of the book and what I can pay. I explain I must buy at wholesale price, and by selling at retail price, I make some money although I never know how long I may have to hold that book before it sells.

Most people are aware of the differences between wholesale and retail, and most know that a bookseller who buys book at retail prices and tries to sell them at retail, will soon be out of the book- buying business.

However, I’ve got a bit off the track. Some writers I’ve known were not honest. I once knew a guy who got into a financial bind, and came up with this solution to make some easy money. He was going on an Ontario moose hunt.

This guy was an out-and-out crook

He contacted Remington for a 30-06 to use on this hunt. He then went to Winchester and got a .270, and then to Savage for a 30-30 rifle. He hit on Weatherby for something else as well as several other firearm manufacturers, and apparently left on his hunt. He didn’t tell the firearm manufacturers that he had borrowed several other rifles.

Two months went by, and a bunch of firearm reps were gathered at a show, and got to talking about a hair-raising experience that Johnny Outdoorsman had experienced on a recent hunt.  The Winchester guy mentioned loaning his a rifle and scope, and then told how the writer explained how he and his guide narrowly escaped with their lives. He had one of our rifles, and when the canoe swamped in a sudden storm, the canoe capsized and all of the equipment and food went to the bottom of the lake.”

“Well, said the Remington spokesman said, “that’s some story. He told me the same story about the guy telling him about losing their 30-06. The Weatherby and Savage Arms guys piped up saying they had lost firearms to the same guy. They began talking amongst themselves, and the Winchester rep, who lived nearest the outdoor writer, agreed to talk to the guy.

When confronted with so much incriminating evidence, the writer ‘fessed up to telling a lie. All told, he had bilked the manufacturers out of nearly $20,000. He had turned the firearms over to friends that bought them at “discount” prices.

He was a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, a group that I’ve been a fulltime member since 1968. OWAA drummed the guy out of our organization, and the companies sued for the value of the so-called “lost” firearms.

For a number of years my wife and I had a business working with outdoor writers who wanted to self-publish books that were not attractive to the big publishers. We worked with a number of people, but there was a problem. Within a group of southern writers there was one person who saw a way to make some big money.

He would hire out to help an author come up with a good title, a fine book, and get it published. I know one man who lost about $40,000 to this outfit. Every two weeks the gent he hired would send an invoice for $2,000. He had over $20,000 into a book that hadn’t even gone to press yet, and he felt he’d been taken.

He called me, asked me what I thought, and I told him to call the law, work with OWAA and the attorney general for that state, and that thief narrowly escaped going to the Gray Bar Hotel for his crimes.

The point of all this rhetoric is: as is true in all walks of life, there are crooks and thieves out to make a shady buck. Usually, they trip themselves up. The biggest way is they begin to tell lies. It’s said that liars and lovers should remember their tales because they often slip up.

One could ask who these writers are. I know but I’m not talking. The problem is that if someone starts lying it’s usually in a written story. I’ve been at this job for all these years, and there is no need to lie. I’ve got a weather of true stories, more than enough to last me the rest of my lifetime.

I’ve been in some very tight spots at different times

I once wrote a piece about things that have happened to me in the outdoors. Falling off a hotel fire escape and breaking my back, being attacked by a pack of semi-wild dogs, getting caught in quicksand, and having a drunk pull a .45 on me in a bar-restaurant.

There’s not a word of a lie in any of them. They happened to me, and everything about these experiences was true.

My getting the job as the Outdoor Writer for The Detroit News in 1980 meant the company went into my background with a fine-tooth-comb, and did a thorough background check on my character. In closing, I reiterate what I’ve said before.

I took my Daddy’s advice, and have always told the truth. If you read somewhere that I caught a 38-pound Chinook on a fly line, you can take it to the bank because I had that fish weighed on honest scales about three hours after it was caught.

If I write about me and another man catching and releasing 99 of 100 steelhead we had caught in one day on the Platte River, it’s another believable story. Catching 12-13 pound walleyes on Manistee Lake is true, and there is nothing to gain by lying.

What I write about is what I’ve done, and I’m proud of my accomplishments and those thing’s I’ve done in my life. Mind you, this job hasn’t always been fun but I honestly believe I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

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Aug28

Rainy Day Whitetails

by daverichey on 2012/08/28 at 8:12 PM
Posted In: The Daily, The Field, The Woods
dro_big buck
A big buck posturing in a soft rain and far from any bow hunters
photo courtesy Dave Richey Outdoors©2012

There are times when a bow hunter can hear a whitetail coming for 100 yards. If the animal is upwind, and the leaves are as dry as corn flakes, the sound carries for a long distance.

Whitetails depend on their hearing for survival, and dry leaves advertise their presence. The opposite is true when it rains.

The leaves soak up the rainy weather, and a whitetail can ghost through the woods with barely a sound. This is an important reason for hunters to spend time in the woods when the rain is falling.

Fog, a light mist or a soft drizzle can cause bucks to move

I’ve written before that deer love to travel when a soft misty rain is falling. There is a soft pitter-patting sound under such conditions, but it doesn’t seem to bother the deer. They seem to be able to separate that soft noise from a dangerous noise without a problem.

These soft rains seem to get deer moving earlier in the evening, and it appears that deer move with more confidence during a soft rain. They appear more comfortable moving between bedding and feeding areas, and they seem to eat and move without hesitation.

I’ve had people ask if I feel a soft rain will carry human scent downward. I believe, to a small degree, that it does. I also think that low-lying ground fog will hold human scent near the ground.

Soft rains and fog seem to go hand in hand during the autumn months, and I’ve seen some of my largest bucks under such conditions. The fog seems to offer big bucks a sense of security, and they seem to be on the move. This is most certainly true during the pre-rut, rut and post-rut, when buck and doe activity is high.

One thing about fog is it distorts the sense of sound. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to a buck grunting as he tends an estrus doe, and in the fog, my vision and hearing is limited. I’ve seen bucks appear and disappear in the rainy fog without ever seeing the doe, and there have been many times when the doe is visible but the tending buck cannot be seen.

Fog is the hardest to hunt in because it distorts hearing and vision

It’s at times like this that a hunter must be alert. I remember one night several years ago just before the Nov. 15 firearm season opener, when I saw a half-dozen bucks appear and vanish into the fog. All were moving, all were grunting, and the antler and body size of each one indicated they were individual animals.

Judging distance in the fog can be difficult. I’ve talked with a number of people who know the far edge of their bait pile is 20 yards away, and if a doe or buck appears in heavy fog, they feel the animal is much farther away that it appears. They aim high to compensate for this imagined difference and shoot over the animal.

The best advice is to put out markers  if you are not using bait. A measured distance must be believed, even if the fog makes the animal appear much farther away than what it is.

I like rain on the roof, rain after my crops are planted, and rain (on occasion) when I’m hunting. I dislike a steady diet of it, and I compare that to eating steak every night. One soon grows tired of it.

I find it enjoyable to  hunt under these conditions

Hunting in the rain isn’t too bad. It offers something a little different to a bow hunter, and that is fine by me. I enjoy a variety, a change of pace, in my hunting, and I can hunt in anything except a downpour or when the lightning is dancing in the sky.

Most of all, I like to hunt in those soft misty evening when the darkness comes early because of heavy rain clouds overhead, and when the whitetails seem to slip up on a guy. That is when a hunt really means something to me.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

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