Organizations come in all sizes and a variety of names: Fish & Game Clubs, Rod & Gun Clubs, Sportman’s Associations, Angler’s Alliance, you name it. And they can be found all over New England, and the country for that matter, in little hamlets and even big cities. They have been around for years. They are […]
outdoors in maine
Posted inLocal Sports
High-tech rifles used in hunting raises ethical debate
Few would disagree that the breakneck pace of technology threatens to overwhelm us. Recreational hunting is not exempted. When it comes to hunting ethics and fair chase, new questions flood the conversation almost as fast as cutting-edge technology. Here is a doozy. Should it be legal for a big game hunter to use a computerized […]
advertisement
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Over-cooking can spoil great wild meat
Let me be blunt: When it comes to eating out, I am a cynical curmudgeon who prefers my own or my wife’s great cooking. Frequent patronizing of restaurants is my idea of an obligatory chore. My wife is convinced that my jaded view of restaurants is grounded in the fact that I am close with […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: New junior hunting law in effect
When it comes to junior hunters and hunting safety, I am old school. A former certified hunting safety instructor and father of two sons who were brought up with guns, my boys were indoctrinated early and often in all of the protocols of safe gun handling and safe hunting practices. (Each of them, at my […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Cout marginalizes IF&W’s law book
A number of years ago, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIF&W) elected to join a national trend to consolidate and slick up its Plain-Jane hunting and fishing law book. With the help of a private publishing firm, the law book was dressed up in an attractive magazine format, complete with eye-catching graphics […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Nonresident hunters — The kiss-off
When it comes to cultivating one of its last remaining industries, tourism, it seems that Maine is its own worst enemy. Take hunting for example. In 2002, there were 41,538 nonresident hunters who bought a Maine big-game hunting license. Less than a decade later, in 2010, that number fell to 27,898. Think about that. Over […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Chamberlain chowder hits the spot, every time
Although I don’t ice fish any more (hard to find safe ice in the Florida Keys), I was once a die-hard ice fisherman and I have seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good days on the ice were almost always in mid-March when the afternoon sun warmed things up, the […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Thoughts on president’s gun measures
“While Rome burns” President Obama has begun his last year in office with a series of executive actions that he believes will reduce gun-related violence in this country. His critics contend that this is another cynical attempt to distract Americans from his foreign policy failures. Even if this is not the case, even if the […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: Ice safety reminders
Each year about this time, the Maine Warden Service urges us to use extreme caution before venturing out onto any ice that may be covering Maine’s waterways. This is timely advice. Two winters ago, three night-time snowsledders perished in one night on Rangeley Lake when they and their machines broke through thin ice. This year, […]
Posted inLocal Sports
Outdoors in Maine: The dastardly spruce budworm returns
Unless you are in your forties, you probably have no recollection of Maine’s last spruce budworm infestation. The budworm, which can chew its way through acres and acres of coniferous forest and kill spruce and balsam fir, left its destructive mark on Maine’s softwood stands in the mid 1970s. I remember it well. By the […]