Pennsylvania’s West Branch Susquehanna Watershed now has wild trout after water quality improvements
News about our environment can get you down, because so much is bad. Invasive species, climate change, habitat destruction, rampant development and pollution feel like such daunting challenges that we’re numbed, resigned to inaction.
But sometimes news – real news – is good, even uplifting, hopefully inspiring. People working together can make things better. I heard such news last week at the Keystone Coldwater Conference in State College.
Ben Moyer: Book from 1968 still timely as politicians try to exert influence over wildlife management
Serendipitous. There’s a word you don’t get to wield every day. It describes the fortunate, but accidental, discovery of something useful or interesting.
A serendipitous discovery happened here as I scanned my bookshelves for my copy of “Trapping North American Furbearers” by Stanley Hawbaker. Before I found Hawbaker (a native Pennsylvanian), my eye snagged on a tidy green volume published by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department back in 1968. It’s titled The White-Tailed Deer of New Hampshire.
Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania’s Provident family engages new generation in the outdoors
The ice came; the ice went.
Still, winter delivered a weeklong window when Pennsylvania ice anglers could indulge that passion they pine for. An account of one outing follows. Long-time readers may recall the event that prompted this tale. A telling appeared in this column nearly 20 years ago.
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Ben Moyer: The use of drones for game recovery just doesn’t fly
Early last month, state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, Bucks, Lehigh counties, circulated a memorandum seeking support for his soon-to-be-introduced legislation that would make use of aerial devices (drones) legal in Pennsylvania in game recovery.
Proponents of drone use in game recovery might argue that recovery, in a strict sense of the word, is not hunting, and point to Ohio’s permission to use drones in this way as justification for Sen. Coleman’s bid.
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Ben Moyer: Public does not grasp the seriousness of invasive species
The recent discovery of several alligators in western Pennsylvania rivers prompted intense coverage on local television and in print mainstream news. The message in all that attention, though, was off the mark.
Every broadcast focused on the pet-owner’s irresponsible to cruel treatment of the individual alligator so unfortunate to find itself on the loose in the upper Ohio River basin. The confused crocodilians even garnered cute names among sympathizers and reporters.
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Ben Moyer: Notice of Stocking form in Pennsylvania simple but sketchy
I’m affiliated with an organization that sponsors a Fish & Boat Commission Cooperative Trout Nursery. Early in December our group received a letter introducing the just unveiled Notice of Stocking form which, effective Jan. 1, 2024, must be submitted to PF&BC before an individual, club, company, or agency stocks fish of any kind in waters of the commonwealth.
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Ben Moyer: The cycling rewards of deer hunting include ushering in a new hunter
Deer hunting’s rewards are diverse. At its core is the individual’s vigil, watching the woods for deer. The moment you first see a deer, followed by those as you witness grace and beauty that you love but, in this setting, are willing to destroy, is riveting. There is nothing else like it in everyday life.
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Ben Moyer: Selfless steelhead angler an example all can learn from
Hopefully, the young man described below is an Outdoor News reader and will recognize himself here. I didn’t ask him, as the moment was his. There was no call to identify myself in that way, at that time. We were two strangers on a stream.
Days before that, I’d decided to go to Erie, Pa., to try and catch a steelhead. This is not something I’ve had much success with on earlier attempts.
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Writings of former outdoor humor columnist Pat McManus are health aid for the outdoorsmen
A silver lining of my wife’s recent resolve to monitor my blood pressure is that I rediscovered Pat McManus.
Protocol dictates that I sit, comfortable and relaxed, for several minutes before the electric sleeve performs its python-like constrictions on the upper arm. That’s so your pressure returns to normal after exertion (Like trekking across the room?). I’ve read that laughter reduces blood pressure. So, hoping for readings that won’t alarm my spouse, I sought my copy of “They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?” a McManus’ classic I’d neglected for years, to read between the squeezes.
