I know there’s a reason, however, that they’re doing that program. Lemme see if I can’t make contact with their bios and see what that is.

AW
NWS

Thanks for the information

AW
NWS

Tri-Cities Sportsmans: Jan 20-22
Yakima Sportsmans: Feb. 17-19
http://shuylerproductions.com/

Portland Boat: Jan. 11-15
Puyallup Sportsmens: Jan. 25-29
Portland Sportsmans: Feb. 8-12
Redmond (Ore) Sportsmans: March 8-11
otshows.com

Colorado Springs: Jan. 13-15
Billings: Jan. 20-22
Kalispell; Jan 27-29
Great Falls: Feb. 3-5
Bozeman: Feb. 24-26
http://greatrockiesshow.com/

Eugene: Feb. 3-5
Roseburg: Feb. 17-19
Medford: Feb. 24-26
http://exposureshows.com/

Lisa Erickson
Kenai River Charters

COLUMBIA RIVER JOINT STATE NOTICE

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife July 15, 2011

At a Joint State hearing today, the states took the following action:

2011 Recreational Salmon Fishery – Below Bonneville Dam
Closed for sockeye and adult Chinook retention effective Monday July 18 through July 31, 2011 in the area from the Astoria Megler Bridge upstream to Bonneville Dam. All other permanent regulations remain in place.

2011 Recreational Sockeye Fishery – Above Bonneville Dam
Closed for sockeye retention effective Monday July 18 through July 31, 2011 in the area from the Bonneville Dam upstream to the Highway 395 Bridge near Pasco, Washington. All other permanent regulations remain in place.

FUTURE MEETINGS

A Compact hearing is scheduled for 10 AM Thursday July 28 at the Holiday Inn (204 West Marine Dr.) in Astoria, Oregon.

Lets Fish

Swanny

However, if you look at the bottom of that BAker Lake post, you will see this info:

“This entry was posted on July 16, 2010 at 11:29 pm and is filed under HEADLINES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.”

I am both disappointed and more than a little angry that Mr Gay – after talking to me at length – concluded I had had an encounter with a cougar and had (apparently to his mind) confused a cat call and the deeper, fundamentally different-sounding roar of a much larger animal.

Simply put, that is nonsense. Balderdash. Rubbish.

It is the height of presumptious arrogance for Mr Gay to have completely dismissed my experience, report, and veracity out of hand and concluded that my experience was something so dissimilar to what actually happened as to be laughable.

I had been forewarned that modern wildlife biologists were an arrogant lot. I am now am a firm believer and doubt quite seriously I will ever again bother to talk to one again. What’s the point?

For background, I am 54 years old, my dad had been a logger back in the day, I grew up on a farm, have been around animals from small rodents to 1000+ pound domesticated animals all my life, have been going into the woods since I was a small child, have had the privalage of having had three cougar encounters, and have been around no small number of bear.

Further, like virtually everyone else with any interest in the backcountry and internet access, I have been exposed to no end of recordings and video of both bear and cougar making all sorts of vocalizations.

Without going into details, the short version is that there is no way in hell that the animal I encountered was a cougar. I have never asserted exactly what it was, but it was absolutely with 100% certitude NOT a cat/couger/mountain lion. No way, no how, absolutely not. Period. Exclamation mark.

If it was a bear, it also not a typical 100-200 pound Washington black bear.

It was a large animal.

I estimate that in order to make the volume and nature of sound that the animal did and have it reverberate (NOT echo – REVERBERATE) the way it did, that animal had to be at least (at an absolute bare rock-bottom minimum) 300+ pounds and I’d estimate that it was actually much (MUCH) larger than even that.

I would refer Mr Gay to the cover of July 2nd 2011 Seattle Times for a picture of the type of “cougar” I had an encounter with. LIke I said, the height of presumptious arrogance.

The WDFW draft wolf plan is so dramatically pointed toward the wishes of wolf advocates and away from proper game management, ignores documented results from ID and MT, and the concerns of ranchers (both cattle and sheep), sportsmen, and pet owners, it would appear that the input of the minority group members as participants of the Wolf Working Group was greatly discounted, if not completely ignored.

AW
NWS

None of that is true whatsoever.

For starters, there are very few writers in Washington who have written more words over recent decades about hunting and fishing here than Leroy Ledeboer. Besides in the pages of Northwest Sportsman, you probably have read his previous work in Washington Fishing & Hunting News, Washington-Oregon Game & Fish magazine and the Wenatchee World. Living in Moses Lake since the 1960s, Leroy has hunted since he was 10 (he’s now 72) and this fall and winter undoubtedly will be found tromping around the wasteways of the Columbia Basin in search of mallards and geese. He also enjoys fishing nearby lakes and reservoirs. He is among the elder statesmen of Washington’s hook-and-bullet writing world. Besides myself, Rich Landers, Jim Pearson, Dave Workman and a handful of others, I’m willing to bet that in recent decades no other writer’s advice has led to more game in the freezer than Leroy Ledeboer’s has. If PETA knew how many deer, elk, geese, mallards, doves, grouse, turkeys, coyotes, bears, etc., etc., etc., he’s inspired folks to chase and bag, they’d tar and feather him. I’m proud to have Leroy writing for Northwest Sportsman. I’m also proud to have him writing material that will lead to the advancement of the future of hunting.

Ledeboer is not advocating a minimum age of 16 for hunting education. That is being misconstrued from his use of the example of a minimum age for getting a drivers’ license, age 16 — not as an entry level for hunting.

As he states, those minimums do not make sense for his farmer friend’s two young sons who could drive tractors and big grain trucks around the farm well before their 16th birthday. But his point is that, for the good of society as a whole, we have certain minimums before we allow anyone behind the wheel of a car on the public roads.

Ledeboer took the tack of interviewing hunter ed instructors in the wake of the controversy that began with a mid-March article (http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/mar/17/long-time-hunter-ed-instructors-quit-after/) about the decertification of a hunter ed instructor in Tri-Cities for complaints about his treatment of students. That brought up the issue of how young is too young to begin kids on hunter ed? Leroy talked to numerous instructors and most said that 12 was a reasonable age to begin. Currently there is no minimum age in Washington. Leroy’s article details how one 5-year-old was enrolled in a course, falling asleep on his father’s lap while sucking his thumb. Twelve is not without precedent. It is the age at which Montana and Idaho youths are allowed to hunt for big game.

With hunter numbers sagging over recent decades, there has been much effort to recruit new hunters. Washington even allows hunter ed to be deferred a year. No new hunters, no future of hunters. At Northwest Sportsman we celebrate the success of young hunters. Since we began publishing in Oct. 2008, we have run five covers with early teen or preteen hunters, even though they do not sell well on the newsstand. We also highlight special youth hunting seasons.

If there was anything in the article that should have been done differently — if not excluded entirely — it is the photo that ran in the magazine version. Using the success shot of Rebecca and Ethan Ediger, 11 and 9, as a counterweight to Leroy’s piece backfired by dampening their achievement. Holding their ringneck pheasants high, they’re an example of youngsters who don’t fit the mold — like Leroy’s farmer buddy’s sons out plowing the back 400 with tractors the size of elephants and hauling grain in rigs the size of dinosaurs.

And that’s the thing. How do you determine who is ready and who is not? Some who are younger are more mature than some who are older. Some who are smaller and weaker may be more coordinated than those who are larger and stronger — and maybe clumsier. We make rules by age — when we can legally drink, when we can smoke, when we can vote, when we can run for president, when we can drive.

I don’t know the answer to this, but if you have thoughts, post them here or email them to me at andy@nwsportsmanmag.com.

AW
NWS

Thanks for covering this story and doing it well!

AW

Thanks for the laughs –

JK

My expert in the area says, yeah, he sees a few guys there, but he was above there today in the weather and sent me an image of him with a decent springer. Ask for Kirby at Cascade Locks.

Hope that helps!

AW
NWS

In the photo provided there are no trout, it looks like Perch, Pumpkinseed, and possibly a Crappie. None of these fish in the picture are native to the Pend Oreille River system. The fish they are concerned about are the West Slope Cut Throat, and the Bull trout. I think the photo provided to you by the Kallispel Tribe shows the same thing their studies do, the Pike are not eating the trout.

The biggest problem the trout in the Pend Oreille River are facing is when they put Box Canyon Dam in in the 50′s, it effectively turned the river into a warm water fishery. Summer water temperatures are to warm for the trout. But species like the Large Mouth Bass (Non Native) flourished. Next came the Northern Pike and the Small Mouth Bass, and with the warm water and the multiple back bays and sloughs they seem to have found their “niche”.

They are now showing a decline in Large Mouth Bass numbers in the river, but just like Long Lake in Spokane I think the finger can be pointed at the Small Mouth Bass. In a June 22nd 2008 Spokesman review article by Rich Landers, Joe Maroney, fisheries manager for the Kalispel Tribe was quoted saying “I’ve told the bass clubs that bass aren’t showing much in the pike diet at this time”, and he looks to be correct still today judging by the photo Mr. Connor graciously shared with everybody.

http://www.kuow.org/stream/kuow.asx

Check out the pics; one is described as near Potholes, and that would be Lind Coulee

I don’t post much from the mag to the Web, or take Web posts and put them in the mag, so you’re basically getting two different products.

AW
NWS

So many things wrong wth this legislation. It is a bureaucratic nightmare requiring more employees, more advisory committes with travel budgets, more enforcement, new programs (Youth Development & Conservation Division?!!) and in SB 5622/HB1796 a revisit to the failed passes/parking day-use fees of yesteryear.

No fiscal notes yet available but this is really 7th grade math and no one should think that when $50/$5 fees didn’t raise revenue, $40/$30/$20 will somehow magically fund parks & rec and all the associated agencies under this legislation.

It will never work.