The blog has been a little slow lately for 2 reasons.  #1 - it’s 100 degrees outside in Alabama and there is only so much fun to be had in the outdoors right now.  #2 - I’ve been putting in some long hours at my research site collecting female white-tailed deer and doing a fetal sex ratio/conception date study (special permits required and attained…no worries).

Now, in a state like Alabama where the rut coincides with the end of rifle season, hunters may not be able to use fetal sex ratio data in their herd management.  However, in North Carolina, where a majority of does are bred during late October thru mid-November, hunters can still harvest deer through the end of December and into January during special urban archery seasons.  In situations like these, hunters may want to consider collecting data about the fawns that are being carried by pregnant female white-tailed deer.

In general, the QDMA markets an easy-to-use fetal ruler that at a certain length gives a corresponding conception and delivery date.  Hunters can plot their data and visualize the spread and timing of their rut.  This is invaluable information from both a hunting and herd management standpoint.

What does the data mean?  In a nutshell, the earlier and more concentrated your breeding is, the healthier deer population with relatively balanced sex ratio and buck age structure you have.  This data is especially useful to collect over many years and plot to see long-term trends related to increased doe harvest or the protection of younger bucks from harvest.

If you think you would be interested in incorporating this element of deer data collection into your hunting property management, see these links for more information.

QDMA article

Fetus scale from QDMA store

I hunted Jordan Game Lands a fair bit over my years at NC State.  But one reason I spent more time at Falls of Neuse Game Lands is that archery-0nly zones were more abundant.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is holding a meeting at 11:00 a.m. on July 21 at the Centennial Campus location to hear comments on the proposal to designate 200 acres of public hunting ground near Nancy Branch, Morris Branch, and Panther Creek in Chatham County as archery only zone.

I can only presume that there is some development that is encroaching on the land and that archery hunting would be the safer hunting method from a public perspective.  Trust me when I say this…archery-only zone usually means better hunting in NC Piedmont public land.

Bowhunters should keep their eye out to see what happens with this proposal and may have an extra honey hole to scout this fall away from everyone with their thundersticks.

Not just for Alabama residents, this guide produced by Alabama DNR is worth using wherever you live in the Southeast.  A no-nonsense, straight forward vocabulary approach to identifying aquatic plants.

Follow the link to begin identifying your aquatic weed problem.  The guide is conveniently broken down into emergent, submersed, floating-leaved, floating, filamentous, and planktonic categories for an easier start to your search.

This one is worth bookmarking and with all its pictures, an amateur should be on the easy track to pinpointing his or her pond weed problem.

It’s official and in the 2009 North Carolina Hunting Regulations book.  After all the debate and banter between lawmakers, commissioners, rifle hunters, bowhunters, and the general public, muzzleloader and rifle seasons will not be structured any differently than what they have been in the past.  Presumably because of the flow of letters in opposition to the rule changes, these regulations will have a better chance of making it to writing in 2010’s hunting year.  But for now, North Carolina’s bowhunters will still enjoy an almost 2 month bow season in the center of the state.

Thought this was a nice piece done by Gerald Putt.  He has been honored 4 other times as having etched NC’s best waterfowl art.

2009’s print is of a tri0 of American wigeon that are resting in the shelter of some cattails.

Sales of the stamp and print go to fund the purchase and restoration of wetland waterfowl habitat in the state of North Carolina.

If you are interested in purchasing either, you can visit the NC Wild Store.

Smattering of topics that I gleaned from my most recent issue of “The Wildlife Professional”.

*Bet you didn’t know that horseshoe crabs are harvested for the main purpose of providing bait for conch and eel fisheries.  Delaware Bay has the world’s largest number of horseshoe crabs, and limits have been tightened to prevent overfishing of this unique crab species.

Ronnie Garrison, 2007

*The Burmese python invasion of the Florida Peninsula is bordering on epidemic.  With an estimated 30,000 constrictors in the wild, Florida FW&S officials are encouraging employees to get formal training in large reptile handling.

*Almost 10% of the world’s whooping crane population died in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas over this past winter.  Drought conditions dried up the marshes where the birds call home and their prey - blue crabs - can be hunted by the long legged birds.

Photo courtesy of FWS.gov

In a future post, probably early next week, I’ll address some pro- and anti- arguments for hunters going lead free in coming years.

Check out the Hog Blog in the meantime, one of Phillip’s hot ticket items is his perpetual discussion of the lead issue in ammunition.

Well, it took me a few days to get the pictures off my camera from the Emerald Isle half of our North Carolina beach trip.

Wednesday was slow fishing with a stiff breeze coming out of the south.  The wind and waves did make for aquarium-like water conditions, but no Spanish mackerel moved in to chase what few baitfish could be seen.  A quintet of “sea mullet”, actually a variety of kingfish that gets perpetually misnamed, made it to the fish cleaning station.

Thursday was our best day of fishing.  Same crystal clear water conditions, but the bottom fish were more active around high tide at 11:00 a.m.  We beached around 20 fish in 2 hours.  Kingfish, spots, pinfish…  But just before high tide, I had a 20 minute stretch of fishing that made the whole week worthwhile.  Tap, tap, tap…17″ flounder.  Hmmm…throw fish in cooler, throw right back to same sand bar.  Tap, tap, tap…15.5″ flounder.  This is no coincidence at this point, so I tied on a flounder rig tipped with a green and white shad dart.  I filleted a small spot that I had been saving for bait and lobbed the entire apparatus into the surfline.  First cast…16.75″ flounder.

Still kicking myself for not taking some pictures of the catch down by the surf while they were still fresh.

At this point, I’m thinking that I could wiggle my big toe in the surf and pull out a flounder.  But as soon as I thought I had the rest of my limit of keeper flounder in casting range, they vanished.  I threw my flounder rig for another 45 minutes without so much as a nibble.

I guess it was just one of those “fluke” things, pun intended.

Regardless, we had a nice cooler of surf fish to clean that night.

Friday, back to slow surf fishing.  I caught about 10 sea mullet, or whatever you want to call them, throughout the day but nothing else was biting.

That evening our fishing culminated in an awesome fish fry though.  We had 2 skillets of hot oil sizzling as we dumped batch after batch of fish fillets coated with egg and fish batter.

Oh, can’t forget to throw in this picture.  A fishing trip to Emerald Isle wouldn’t be complete with the occasional sand shark making a mess of your 2-way bottom fishing rig.

As promised, here is dukkillr’s final blog post on his recent Canadian black bear adventure.  He ends on a bang, or should I say a “thwack!”

Follow the link

‘Nuff said.  17 years in the making.  Lemieux kissing the cup for the first time in almost 2 decades - beautiful!

No pictures, because there isn’t much to report.  The wind can’t decide which way to blow and the warm water was blowing nearshore then a couple miles out and then back and so forth.  I don’t know if the fish didn’t like their water in constant flux, but they sure didn’t appear to be within casting distance of the shore.

Sunday yielded not a single bite on the Gotcha, and even more surprisingly…nothing on a double bottom shrimp rig.

Monday - I hit the beach in Duck with my uncle a little after 6 a.m.  I’m only 3 casts deep and a 16″ blue flat annhilates my Gotcha.  Good tussle and he hits the beach and straight to the cooler.  10 minutes later, Uncle Pat nabs a 13.5″ speckled trout on a leadhead jig tipped with a plastic grub.  Looking like quality is the name of the game today.  Then everything dried up.  Another hour and a half of casting with 0 hits to show for.  Sporadic fishing with the Gotcha and double bottom rig throughout and nothing to show for.

Tuesday - the cold water was back in full force and the fish were not in the mood to eat or they weren’t even in the same ocean.  No bites…tough.

Stay tuned for a fishing report from the Crystal Coast of North Carolina at Emerald Isle.  We’ll be driving south on Wednesday morning to spend the second half of the week with my wife’s parents.  Hopefully warmer water will bring more hotter fishing action.  Can’t go any direction but up!