Latest On Wisconsin Outdoors Columns
4-19-2012
Most Wisconsin springs will bring its share of uncertainty regarding water temperatures and unstable weather as Wisconsin anglers and hunters do their best to plan assaults on spawning walleyes and crappies or hope the week they’ve drawn during the 6 split turkey seasons cooperate. You couldn’t have predicted this spring heading into winter. Walleye spawning activity was done before you blinked in many areas and Toms were strutting and gobbling a month ago when it would have been more normal for a foot of snow to paint the landscape.
You might say the unseasonably warm spring gave guide Dave Hraychuck from Polk County some unique things to write about this week during a few days off from chasing fish to chase beavers. You will want to see Dave’s beaver and snapping turtle photos taken in an area of the great northwest where a couple weeks before he was peering through augured holes and 18 inches of ice. Link to Trapping If it moves and wears hair or scales, Hraychuck can catch it. He is one fine chef too so while at it link to Inland Fishing and we’ll tack up a bunch of his just-sent recipes. None of which are beaver burgers.
Back to spring turkey hunting for a minute. This week I’m heading to Grant County again to act as a caller for my brother’s season 2 turkey hunt. John is a great duck caller while I have scared off more greenheads on the call than had the New Berlin West tuba section been crammed into the blind with us so we flip flop primary calling responsibilities in spring and fall. I rarely lose to a Tom when it’s just me and the gobbler…man to man. Tom is in trouble and I don’t care what season I’ve drawn. (I like to keep talking about this because it’s the only thing I’m good at). If you have drawn season 6, don’t cry. You may be losing out on some great fishing but you also may step into your greatest chance for a really big bird that’s still frisky but without the companionship of a hen or 12. To read about my own past battle with a wary monster bird during the latest season, link up with Upland Game. While there, if you haven’t already look back a few weeks and see a story posted 2-21-2012 on true expert caller Neal Herman entitled “Better Late-Expert Caller Prefers Season 6”. I tagged with Hermann in Barron Wisconsin last year. He’s good. Learn from him.
Our fishing guides around Wisconsin are keeping us up to date on what’s working now, north and south. Professional Guide Phil Schweik sends photos and tactics for both species of bass and nice walleyes he and his clients are taking on the Wisconsin River near Wausau over the last few days. See that on this website under Inland Fishing . You remember we touched last Blog on tremendous Coho salmon fishing in the Ashland area before talking more in-depth about the walleyes and pike my guides targeted in shallow shoreline water just off Ashland’s backdoor in 2011. Captain Jim Hudson is back this week to tell you why he calls the Coho the new salmon king of Chequamegon Bay, and much of Lake Superior stretching west all the way to Minnesota. Link to Hudson’s story and photos under Great Lakes Fishing or Fishing Reports.
Also under Fishing Reports, read about backwater crappie fishing with Wayne Morgenthaler near Richland Center, Dave Duwe keeps his focus on Delavan and Geneva, and John Ross does the same in Price County. The Hayward Area Visitors & Convention Bureau puts out such a detailed report on a weekly basis showing us what to do in Sawyer County that we link to it here under Fishing Reports and Outdoor News. Inland Fishing and Outdoor News were also both posted with more sturgeon reports submitted by Fisheries Biologist Ron Bruch, DNR news and statewide results of the spring hearings.
For both good news and results of good shooting with the high school trapshooting teams completing their third and fourth weeks of competition, link to firearm. Also, if you like to shoot or compete at your local Wisconsin range, make them aware that the National Shooting Sports Foundation may have a lot of money to make your facility even better. “The NSSF, the trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry, invites public and private shooting facilities to apply for up to $400,000 in grants that can assist in developing strategies to put more target shooters on their firing lines,” according to a release you can read by linking to Firearms.
While there, read another release detailing the Environmental Protection Agency’s denial “of yet another frivolous petition by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)-an established anti-hunting group-calling for a ban on the traditional ammunition (containing lead-core components) for hunting and shooting, according to the second media release”
“The CBDs serial petitions erroneously claim that the use of traditional ammunition by hunters poses a danger to human health and wildlife, in particular raptor populations such as bald eagles. The truth is that wildlife populations, including raptor and bald eagle populations, are soaring. The myth of a human health risk has been thoroughly debunked by a 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that found the health of hunters consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition was not at risk.”
Link to Upland Game for information on two Wisconsin activities on the horizon for the Ruffed Grouse Society, a Milwaukee fundraising dinner including the traditional gun boards and silent auctions, and a youth education day in Marshfield.
Don’t forget Dave’s Turf & Marine free Fishing Expo next Sunday, April 22, in Watertown. Get the details at Inland Fishing.
Don’t forget Deer Hunters…Dr. James Kroll will hold six open house meetings around Wisconsin this week to gather ideas and solutions and forge a new age for Wisconsin Deer management practices. Link to Deer Hunting and while there, also read Kroll’s not very flattering preliminary report on current management practices.
The next time I see you, may you be giving Tom a ride to the truck.