Gun Identification

By A. Sayward Lamb

#1 To insure a positive identification of your guns, simply remove the butt-plate and inscribe either your name or a number that would prove you are the owner of that gun. Replace the butt-plate and no one else will know that you have this I.D. Be sure to write down and save what you have used for this method of identification.

#2 Be sure to write down and save the Serial numbers of each of your guns. This list will be very helpful if you ever have to prove ownership of that gun. Save the list in a secure location where it can’t be easily stolen or lost in a fire.

Nine Survival Tips if Ever Lost in the Woods

By Steven T. Remington

We all enjoy getting out in the woods and searching for game. Our thoughts of coming up victorious are in the forefront of our minds throughout the season, but are we prepared for the worst case scenerio? Usually the times when we are unprepared is when we least expect it. Make sure you hope for the best experiences while at the same time expect the worst. Below are 9 basic survival tips when lost in the woods. If you remember these tips your chances of survival will increase dramatically if ever you become lost while in the woods.

1) Stay Together!
DO NOT separate if you are with a friend or even a pet. A friend or a dog can provide body heat for one another in colder temperatures. You are able to cuddle up and stay warm. Do not let a dog loose, but keep them close by. Companionship is also important. A lot of times people act strange while alone and lost and are quicker to make irrational decisions. You and your friend have a better chance of surviving by keeping each other in check and bouncing ideas off each other.

2) Stay in one place or area.
DO NOT WANDER! This is the most important rule. If you can walk away from reading this list and are able to remember just one of these survival tips, please remember this one. When you wander around you are almost impossible to find. The reason is that those searching for missing people move very slowly while searching for clues and if you are constantly on the move then it becomes difficult to catch up to you. Sometimes surviving depends on hours, or even minutes. Another reason for not wandering is the great possibility of falling and getting hurt. When you are lost and then become hurt you can become hopeless and it is quite a tragic event.

3) Keep Warm.
Keep warm with the clothes you are currently wearing. Never shed any clothes! Look for exposed skin such as fingers, neck, and even your face. Try to find ways to cover these parts even if they don’t feel cold at the time. This strategy is not to “become” warm BUT to “remain” warm. If you are wearing a jacket, make sure it stays zipped. Though you may feel more warm than desirable the heat may save your life in near future encounters with changing weather temperatures and conditions.

Try to keep moving by collecting brush, branches, and leaves. Later it can be used to stay warm while you sleep. Try not to over exert yourself. The key is to keep moving so you keep your blood flowing through your body so you can remain warm, and at the same time not tire yourself. Make sure to keep your eyes open for any possible searches if you choose any little projects.

A good tip learned the hard way is to watch out for shoe laces. Branches have a tricky way of sticking into the tied laces and undoing them. Double knot your laces. If you lose a shoe for just a few seconds, your toes may never find warmth again until you are found. The most important article of clothing is a hat. If you do not have a hat try to find something that will cover up your head as best as you can. Over 70% of all your body heat escapes through your head.

4) Find a Cozy Waiting Place, Not a Hiding Place.
A cozy waiting place means, a warm place out of the wind and rain but not a place where people searching for you can not see you. Find a large tree and remain still. If you jump into thickets or bushes it is quite possible searchers will walk right by you.

5) Put Out Something Bright.
While you sit and stay warm, put out something bright to make searchers aware of where you are. We don’t expect you to create an entire camp from scratch but make a flag using what you have. Try not to take off any clothes to make your flag. It is important for you to keep your clothes on to remain warm. Some suggestions offered by trained search and rescuers are white paper, money, hair ribbons, a strip from an orange garbage bag, etc.

Also what has helped in past situations is spell the word “HELP” or “SOS” on the ground using rocks and sticks or even make a large arrow with them, pointing to where you are. Do anything that will attract attention to where you are.

6) Look For Searchers.
In previous situations people who become lost give up hope and forget people are searching for them. Always expect searchers to be coming and begin looking for them. If possible, your waiting place should be near an open space. When you hear someone coming, move to the middle of the clearing and call. Never run in the direction of the noise. Let them come to you. If it is an aircraft you heard, lie down so the pilot has a bigger target to look at. Then wave with both your arms and legs, like making an angel in the snow. Stand up immediately after the aircraft has passed because the ground can be very cold.

7) Do Not Lie on the Bare Ground.
The only exception to this rule is when an aircraft is flying above you, so laying on the cold ground for a very short period of time, attracting attention, will be more beneficial. Being in direct contact with the ground for any length of time is dangerous. The cold ground will steal your body heat from you. Build a mattress using available materials such as branches, moss, leaves, etc. Try to make the mattress as thick as the one you sleep on at home! After the mattress is completed, gather the same amount or more, of the same material and use it for the blankets. This is called a survival bed.

Do Not Eat Anything you are not sure of.
Do not eat any berries, mushrooms or anything else unless you are 100% sure what they are. Being hungry is not as bad as compared with being violently sick. Even field experts have made mistakes by not properly identifying wild berries. In turn, this can be fatal. If it doesn’t directly kill you, it can inhibit your chances of staying warm, being found, and making rational decisions. And remember, there won’t be anyone there to look after you. You can go without food for a long time, but you cannot go without water.

9) Stay Away from Large Rivers and Lakes.
You must have drinking water to survive, but be careful where you get it from. Do not go near any large bodies of water. Instead, drink from a water supply that is smaller than you are, so you can not fall in. Another source of water can be found on leaves in the form of dew.

By Steven T Remington

Indiana DNR Wants To Prevent Coyotes From Being Sold

What some are calling an ambiguous loophole in an Indiana state law, trappers who are taking wild coyotes outside of the prescribed coyote trapping season, are keeping them alive and selling them to dog trainers and using them to collect urine for use by trappers. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources says that practice has to stop.

Coyotes are being sold to states that allow hound trainers to use live wild animals for training purposes. Indiana does not allow this so trappers are selling the coyotes to states like South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia where the use of live animals is allowed for dog training.

Animal rights groups are pressuring the IDNR saying the practice is cruel and inhumane but some legislators who sit on the Natural Resources Study Committee don’t see it that way at all.

State Sen. Greg Walker, who is on the committee, said he did not see a problem with selling the animals to dog-training facilities because the care is often better than their lives in the wild.
“For the kennels which do the training of hunting dogs, they prefer to keep the animals in good condition,” said Walker, R-Columbus.
Generally, trainers do not allow the bait animals to be caught, Crider said.
“It’s really nothing that runs counter to what these animals experience in the wild anyway,” Walker said. “It’s part of their natural makeup, it’s part of their DNA, and so if it’s cruel, I guess sometimes you’d say nature is cruel.”

While the DNR is suggesting a change to the rules, the Study Committee could propose legislation that would override any DNR recommendation.

Tom Remington

Virginia Considering “Earn A Buck” Program

With the whitetail deer population somewhere around 1 million and growing in Virginia, officials with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is considering instituting an “Earn a Buck” program in eight locales around the state where deer populations are the highest and most problematic.

The so-called Earn a Buck program requires that hunters harvest at least one doe deer before they are allowed to take a buck. This effort has been tried in other states with reasonable success and helps in reducing deer populations. Without the requirement, sometimes hunters will opt out of taking a doe and taking only buck deer instead. This leaves more does and more does mean more fawns in the spring and the cycle continues.

Read more about this proposal and the areas that will be affected here.

Tom Remington

EHD A Bit “Ho-Hum” In The Deep South

We are at a point where it would be safe to say that this year’s outbreak of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) is quite widespread. Here’s a list of states that have confirmed cases of the virus that is carried to deer by biting midges or no-see-ums: Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Montana, Mississippi and Georgia. In addition, some states are waiting for test results to confirm what they already suspect – South Carolina is one such state.

To confirm the presence of the disease, blood and certain tissue has to be analyzed.

According to both the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and the Alabama Department of Conservation, dealing with EHD is quite routine. Charles Ruth, Deer/Turkey Project supervisor for the South Carolina DNR says flair-ups in that state seem to run in cycles of 3-5 years and there’s a reasonable explanation.

“This is probably related to the fact that once deer are exposed to the disease they are more resistant to it. Therefore, if you have disease one year the deer become exposed or inoculated to the disease and you do not see much disease activity until there is turnover in the deer population. After several years you are dealing with another cohort of deer and their systems are ‘naïve’ to the disease. The last time there was significant hemorrhagic disease activity in South Carolina was in 2002, therefore, disease activity could be relatively high this year.”

This theory is confirmed by a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“We have some cases every year,” said Keith Guyse, a whitetail specialist with the Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division in the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In the Coastal Plain, the virus is there frequently enough that deer have been exposed to it and have some resistance to it.

Both representatives indicate that EHD in their respective states is pretty much routine only because of the build up of a certain degree of immunity. Therefore, these southern states don’t see wide outbreaks of the disease that often. When EHD hits the more northern climes, EHD seems to grab harder. Ruth explains.

Deer likely die in South Carolina each year from hemorrhagic disease, however, there is no indication that a major outbreak has occurred in the state since the mid 1970s. The disease is part of life for deer in the Southeast and fortunately it appears that Southern deer have acquired some immunity to the disease, said Ruth. Northern deer, on the other hand, are not exposed to the disease as frequently since the insect vector is not as common in cooler climates. For this reason, significant outbreaks and mortality from hemorrhagic disease are more likely in northern deer populations.

Guyse from Alabama makes reference to the same theory.

“Typically in North Alabama and above the fall line, they’re not exposed to it as often. So over a period of time you have a population that doesn’t have much resistance. When you have (outbreaks) up there, it tends to be more noticeable.”

This helps us understand why some states may have more severe outbreaks, killing larger numbers of deer, than others but why this year are outbreaks so widespread across the landscape of the country? Some have related it to the summer heat and drought. That may be true, I don’t know. It would be logical to assume that being that the virus is carried and spread by tiny midges or gnats, a larger than normal population of that insect would be directly proportional to the spread of the disease. Of course science isn’t that simplistic and we know that there are probably many more factors to consider or it could be just merely a coincidence.

However, Guyse from Alabama eludes to the theory of increased numbers of midges, somewhat.

“Auburn (researchers) had traps out to catch the flies and they might catch a few every once in a while, and then all of a sudden they catch hundreds,” Guyse said. “Much of that still is a mystery.”

Obviously, they don’t have a good handle on it either.

Hunters and others should be aware of the symptoms they may find on deer suffering from the disease.

Symptoms of hemorrhagic disease include poor physical condition, sloughing hooves, abrasions or sores on the brisket and legs, and ulcerations on the mouth, tongue, and rumen (stomach).

As I said earlier, verification of the disease has to be done in the lab.

If you see sick or dead deer in your travels, please report it to the appropriate authorities. It is highly recommended that nobody eats any of the meat from deer sickened by EHD.

Tom Remington

EHD Outbreak Widespread And Following Drought

As most hunters are aware, several states are experiencing outbreaks of EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease). To date, states involved are, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey and Montana. In those states, some are experiencing widespread outbreaks while others are sporadic. Either way, it appears that this year’s outbreak is one that could be classified as the most widespread in some years.

J.R. Absher, the Newshound, and I sent a couple emails back and forth this morning about what’s happening with EHD. In one of my emails, I asked J.R. if this was what he would consider a large outbreak from his years of experience in the field. What he told me was that in a previous article he mentioned that he had talked with a friend of his, Doug Markham, information officer for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, about this year’s outbreak.

My good friend Doug Markham, information officer for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, dropped me an email over the weekend saying it’s as bad as he’s ever seen it in his 20 years with the agency.

Some especially hard-hit areas of the Volunteer State could lose half their deer to EHD this year, Markham speculated.

One other thing that J.R. mentioned was that it seemed that the EHD outbreak was following a similar path as this summer’s drought. I’ll have to do some investigating to see if I can find out if that is a common occurrence.

In the meantime, we all need to be praying for some frost and freezes to kill this thing off.

Tom Remington

Virginia Game Officials Want To Preserve Hound Hunting “Done The Right Way!”

By Tom Remington

In an article I posted the other day, I said that the state of Virginia was beginning work on dealing with hunting with hounds. I told you that I had contacted the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to get some questions answered about the hound hunting issue.

I spoke by telephone with Bob Duncan, Wildlife Division Director, who was kind enough to answer my questions and relate to me the position of the VDIGF on the issue of hound hunting. Read more

Spring Deer Scouting

By Robert Lane

In late March and early April, most outdoorsmen and women in Maine are tuning fishing gear, buying new tackle and anxiously waiting for ice-out on their favorite lakes and ponds. After a winter like this one, that can be several long weeks depending on what part of the state you live in. If you’re anything like me, most of your tackle was inspected, cleaned and any necessary repairs made over the winter. When the waters open up, I want to grab it and go. Read more

Autumn Awakenings

By Rod Davis

I squirmed and squiggled to get comfortable in the dry leaves on that October Saturday. I was sitting on a steep hillside in Pocahontas County, in West Virginia. It was mid-afternoon, probably about 3:30 -4:00 PM. The big man sitting on my left side watched the tall hickory trees intently, for any sign of movement.

It was one of those early autumn, blue bird perfect days that cause your nose to breathe a little harder than usual, just to get more of that crisp, clean air inside. Read more

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