Another Friday, another Giveaway, and this week's winner is one of our most frequent commenters, Shannon Tucker! We all hear a lot from Shannon on the blog -- most recently about her close dog encounter. 

     This week, Shannon will be receiving this gorgeous Women's Tin Cloth Field Jacket courtesy of Filson. We're a lucky blog to have such great prizes, and I hope she enjoys it!

     So congrats to Shannon, another big thank you to Filson, and I look forward to finding another good home for good gear next week.

     Oh, and as my 4 1/2 year-old cousin Macey stands next to me decked out in her Belle-from-Beauty-and-the-Beast costume, ready to hit the neighborhood, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! -K.H.

     A big congrats to the Phillies, and to all you Philadelphia fans who phinally claimed a world series title last night!

     Of course, something like winning a championship game is the achievement of a major -- and in many cases -- lifelong goal for players and fans alike. But we all set more modest goals for ourselves as well -- personal achievements that won't draw TV crews and world name recognition, but that are deeply gratifying nonetheless.

     You may have seen this recent hometown story out of Dotyville, Wisconsin about an 89-year-old named Delores Wilhelms, who harvested a buck with her late husband-and-hunting-partner's crossbow. According to this FDLReporter story, Wilhelms had to suffer through a few snickers from salespeople when she got her hunting license, who mocked her age. But no matter, on Oct. 15, she harvested a 150-pound, 3-point buck from a blind on a neighbor's property.

     Wilhelms' husband Bill had passed away in 2006. Although she's recently begun wanting to return to their cabin "up north," she didn't want to make the drive alone, and had trouble finding someone who could take her. After a neighbor solved the problem by inviting her to hunt his land, even a deep cut on her thumb during target practice that landed her in the emergency room couldn't keep Wilhelms from heading out to the blind. She missed her buck the first day she saw him, but got him at 5:45 the following evening. "It's a thrill, I tell you," she told the paper. "I hope God lets me live long enough to do it again next year."

     Many of us have field goals for ourselves -- a trip to Africa, a grand slam, a dream elk hunt, or even just a safe season spent with family and friends. From past achievements to currrent works in progress, what are some of yours? -K.H. 

From time to time, we've looked beyond hunting to acknowledge the fisherwomen among us, and considering the history-making weekend at the Women's Bassmaster Tour Championship, this is another one of those times.

On Saturday Oct. 25, Kim Bain of Alabaster, Ala., beat out 19 competitors on Arkansas' Lake Hamilton to become the first female angler to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic in the event's 39-year history. She won with a three-day total of 23 pounds, 8 ounces, which also earned her the WBT Angler of the Year title.

Bain, 28, is an Australia native, who moved to the U.S. 9 years ago to pursue a career in bass fishing. This was her first season of WBT competition and last April, she claimed a surprising victory on Texas' Lake Lewisville, and went on to be the points leader going into last weekend's competition. For more on her background and plans for the Classic, see this Bassmaster article.

But Bain's competitors certainly gave her a run for her money. Finishing second with a three-day total of 21 pounds, 11 ounces was Audrey McQueen of Edgar, Ariz., who is also an eight-time champion elk caller and is currently 4 months pregnant (her doctor cleared her to compete). Third place was occupied by Debra Petrowski of Arlington, Texas, who totaled 16 pounds, 6 ounces, and whose 23-year-old daughter Kim also competed last weekend.

But now all eyes are on Bain, who will spend the next four months preparing for the 2009 Bassmaster Classic Feb. 20 - 22 out of Shreveport-Bossier City, La., and the Red River. Upon her win, Bain told Bassmaster.com, "I had a big dream as a kid, which was to fish the Bassmaster Classic — and here I am." What a great example of what hard work and belief in yourself can do for your dreams. -K.H.

[Photo courtesy of BASS Communications]

With my apologies, the Gear Giveaway is taking one week off, and will return next Friday with another great prize from Filson. But no worries, a week off now just means it will last a week longer later!
    In the meantime, I thought I'd post these comments from Paula, our first gear winner of the year, who had a recent and unexpected run-in with a neighbor's dog. Something like this happen to anyone else? -K.H.

     As the final installment in our series of interviews with the women of the Pennslyvania Game Commission, we have Colleen Shannon, who's a land management group supervisor ("land mangement officer" for short) in the north central part of the state.  It's amazing how asking essentially the same questions of three different women -- even in the same state -- reveals such a differing range of experiences.

     The photo is Colleen with an elk calf that they captured and "collared" as part of an ongoing survival study. They used an expandable radio telemetry collar designed to last about 18 months. They also attached an ear tag for future identification when the collar is gone. Colleen talks about the process in some great detail along with many other interesting perspectives below. Thanks to Colleen for the fantastic interview! -K.H.

FSHuntress: What made you want to work for the game commission?
Colleen Shannon: My father subscribed to "Game News," the PGC's monthly magazine, so I always read the magazine when I was growing up.  There was a monthly column called "DGP Diary" written by a different District Game Protector every year (DGP was the title for our officers before we switched to WCO - Wildlife Conservation Officer).  That column featured an officer giving day-to-day descriptions of the work he was doing - sort of like a blog.  The Game News also has a monthly feature called "Field Notes" where officers would submit funny or interesting notes about happenings in their area.  I think that exposure to the profession is what prompted my interest in a career with the PGC. However, at that time (1970's and '80's) there were not any female officers in the PGC and very few females in law enforcement in general.  However, we were in the post-Earth Day renewal of interest in the environment and right in the midst of the "modern" feminist movement so things were changing and opportunities for women were expanding.  I knew that I wanted to work outdoors so I enrolled in the Forest Science program at The Pennsylvania State University in 1978. Penn State did not have a Wildlife Science bachelor's degree program at that time so I figured Forestry was the next best thing even though my dream was to become a DGP.  During my time at Penn State, I became aware that a female graduate of the PSU Forestry program (Cheryl Stauffer - now Cheryl Trewella) was accepted as the first female officer trainee at the PGC's Ross Leffler School of Conservation.  I was thrilled to think that a woman could become a PGC officer.  Cheryl, of course, graduated from the program in 1982 and is still working for the PGC as you know.  I graduated from Penn State in 1982, and the PGC began recruiting for another class of officer trainees in 1983.  I took the tests and scored well but our training class was delayed until 1985 for budgetary reasons.  As part of my training in 1985 I was assigned to work with Cheryl Trewella so she has always been a role model and mentor for me.  I graduated from the training program in 1986 and was surprisingly assigned to a fairly rural area in Northcentral Pennsylvania. In 1987, our title was changed from District Game Protector to Wildlife Conservation Officer.  In 1997, I was promoted to my current job.

FS: What are your job duties?
CS: My current job is more administrative in nature but is still a field position.  I supervise the work of 3 crews of habitat development and maintenance workers whose day-to-day duties involve creating and maintaining wildlife habitat on public lands and maintaining roads, parking lots, signs, waterfowl impoundments, and other infrastructure on our State Game Lands and other public access areas.  I manage 75,000 acres on 12 separate State Game Lands in 5 different Counties.  This involves writing comprehensive management plans, annual work plans, and seeing to the day-to-day needs of game lands users.  I frequently interact with various businesses such as electric companies, coal companies, gas companies, and others who have rights-of-ways across our lands or have the rights to mine or develop gas on our lands.

I also maintain my full law enforcement credentials and training so that I can apprehend individuals that I may encounter breaking the laws as I go about my duties and I also will set aside my land management duties to assist the full-time law enforcement people in the peak hunting seasons.  I have also served as a Defense and Control Tactics Instructor for my entire career and provide training in self-defense to our officers on an annual basis.

My duties include assisting with wildlife management activities in my area.  I am fortunate in that my area includes most of the elk management area of Pennsylvania so I assist the elk biologist on a regular basis with tranquilizing elk to attach radio collars, surveying elk, and monitoring the elk hunt.  I also assist other wildlife management activities as needed such as deer research, turkey trap and transfer, etc.

FS: Could you talk a little more about the radio collaring?

CS: We tranquilize elk for collaring but that is only for the adults.  For collaring calves we search for them when they are bedded down using the "hider" strategy.  We can usually walk up to them and handle them until they get to be about a week old so we just grab them and straddle them to do the processing which involves sliding the collar over their head, attaching the ear tag, checking their sex, and weighing them in a net.  It is probably the most fun thing I have ever done in my job because it is like hunting but we don't kill anything.  We find the calf by first locating the cow and observing her behavior and checking to see if she is lactating by looking for the enlarged milk sac using a good pair of binoculars.  If we think she has a calf nearby then we search the ground until we find it (or not) and then try to grab it before it jumps up and runs off (if it is old enough to run well we almost always lose the race !).  It is great fun observing the cow and trying to figure out where the calf might be hiding then trying to catch it!

FS: What's a typical day like?
CS: My job is very diverse and there is no typical day.  I may spend a whole day in my office on administrative matters and paperwork or be out in the field checking on the work that my crews are doing, planning future work, conducting a wildlife survey, or meeting with a company who needs access to a game lands.

FS: Are you a hunter yourself?
CS: Yes, I have been hunting since I was 12 years old, which was the minimum legal age in PA until recently mentored youth hunting programs were established.  I started out hunting for ring neck pheasants with my Dad and brothers where I grew up in southeastern PA.  I also hunted for deer in Northcentral and Southcentral PA with my family.  I now hunt almost exclusively for deer with a flintlock with a group including many current and retired PGC officers. We have a great time hunting together, it is one of my favorite times of the year.  I have also made 3 trips to Colorado with my friends to hunt for elk with my flintlock and we are planning another trip next year.

FS: What's the best thing about your job?
CS: The absolute best thing is that we can see the difference that we have made with our wildlife habitat projects because we see many species of wildlife utilizing the improved areas and we also see sportsmen and women using these areas.  My particular part of PA includes many areas that were strip mined back before there were good environmental laws so the land was not reclaimed.  There are high walls on the landscape and acid mine drainage polluting the waterways.  We have been successful as an agency in obtaining funding through state grants and partnerships with non-profits to reclaim some of these areas on State Game lands.  It is very rewarding to be able to correct the sins of previous generations and return the land to a condition more usable by both wildlife and people.

FS: What's the most challenging thing about your job?
CS: The work load is incredible.  I know there are more opportunities to make improvements but there is so much to do and not enough hours in a day.  We are being swamped in PA right now with a strong interest in development of deep well natural gas reserves.  I am impacted every day with the results of this activity on our State Game Lands.  Consequently, I can't spend enough time on other important aspects of my job so I get frustrated.  But overall, I feel that I have the best job in the PGC,  I enjoyed being a WCO but being a Land Management Officer is the best of both worlds.

FS: What do you think most hunters might not know or realize about your job?

CS: Most hunters really have no idea of the effort that we put into habitat management in PA.  They think our money is spent paying officers to "harass" the hunting public or pick up dead deer along the highways.  We do so much more as officers and as an agency and, in fact, the biggest chunk of the agency's budget is spent on habitat management activities which are paid for through hunting license fees and Pittman-Robertson funding.  Most hunters also have no idea what constitutes good habitat management practices so even if they see what we are doing on the State Game Lands they do not understand it.  I think the current increased interest in private land habitat management being promoted by many conservation organizations such as Quality Deer Management Association, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and many others is helping in this regard.  As people learn more about habitat practices they recognize what they see on public lands and ask more questions or solicit advice for their own projects.

    ...our morning-hunting, coyote-spotting Judy Black, who sparked a lively discussion with her bowhunting story earlier this week. For that great post, and for her contributions to the discussions that followed, Judy will be getting this beautiful Rugged Twill Medium Field Bag from Filson.
    Of course, everyone's been commenting like crazy this week -- I LOVE this time of year and all there is to talk about! Keep the comments coming, and I'll keep the gear going. In the meantime, congrats to Judy, another big thank-you to Filson, and have a great weekend!  -K.H.

    The third and final presidential debate is tonight, and I'll be tuned in and keyed up. Keeping in the spirit of the debate (but without actually discussing politics, because frankly, my nerves could use a break), I thought we'd talk about the art of debate in the field, ie., conflict resolution.
    Hopefully you've never had occasion to stand your ground in the woods, but I know it comes up. One of the most frustrating stories I ever heard was from a woman who'd shot an elk while hunting with her husband, then was approached by a conservation officer who could not be convinced that her husband hadn't shot the animal for her. Wow.
    And we've all seen too many headlines (hell, one is too many) of territory disputes ending in injury, or worse.
    Thankfully, I haven't experienced anything nearly that frustrating or serious. But I was on a duck hunt a number of years ago with a landowner/guide, who certainly made life a little less pleasant.
    I was still new to shotguns, and this particular morning I was using a borrowed one that I'd been given a half-hour earlier. I have a long neck, so I'd fit a Velcro pad on the stock so my cheek would be better positioned. I happened to be sitting next to this landowner in a floating blind when I had to take a minute to readjust it.
    But he quickly decided he'd had enough of me. He turned, said, "That thing's just a gimmick," ripped the pad off, and threw it across the blind, where it skidded into the water.
    Well, it didn't turn into much of a debate, because even though I was mad as hell, I was still very unsure of myself in the field, and besides, this guy seemed to have a temper, and my little gadget was gone for good. I backed down, I'm afraid to say, and just made the best of it.
    What conflicts have you encountered in the field? Or rifle range, sporting goods store, wherever. And how have you resolved them? (Hopefully, more effectively than I did back then!). -K.H.

I'm thrilled that I'm starting to get season updates from blog readers, and I just got this great email from Judy Black. She was bowhunting for whitetails when she got to see some exciting displays of nature at play.
    What's your best moment of the '08 season so far? Or do you have a favorite daybreak story from seasons past? In the meantime, I'll get out of the way and let Judy tell hers. - K.H.

     I absolutely love the sound of the world waking up, and there is no place better than a tree stand to experience it.
     On Saturday morning my husband had harvested a doe and cleaned it out on the south end of the field where I hunt.  I hunted my stand Saturday night and there were a few deer in the field feeding when they all came to full alert.  I thought, what the heck is coming that caught their attention? I couldn't see anything from my stand but they sure could.
     Now if you have ever been in a treestand and had turkeys come through, you know they sound like a small freight train.  They not only make a lot of noise as they move through the field or brush, but they are constantly making clucking noises.  With none of that going on, I waited to see what had caught the deer's attention.
    Soon two small, young turkeys showed up and they made little noise, only faint little "peeps."  Once they made their way through the field, the deer could see them and settled back to eating.  The youngsters moved along and eventually I saw them fly up into a tree to roost.
     The next morning I was in my stand at first light and the crows and ravens were feeding on the remains of the doe that was harvested the day before.  They would take turns flying in, taking a piece and then you could hear them as they flew overhead.  As they flew over, I remember thinking how cool it was to hear the wind under their wings.
     I had heard the turkeys fly out of their roost but they didn't come out on the field.  I listened as the blue jays and chickadees came to life.  The squirrels ran up and down the pine tree next to me knocking down the pine cones.  A woodpecker broke the morning silence with his extremely LOUD pecking.  The deer continued to feed in the field and when they were out of sight, you could hear them pulling up a mouthful of rape and chewing it.
     As I sat there, I heard a sound that was unfamiliar to me.  It was like a shrill whistle and then almost like a yelp.  Again and again I would hear this and even pulled up my face mask to hear it more clearly.  Again and again but often it would be two whistles and a yelp.  Then one whistle and two or three yelps, moving around but not far.
     I finally figured out that what I was hearing was the young turkeys.  They were too young to make the sounds that the older turkeys do, but were working their young voices up to the yelps and clucks.  By the time I left my stand, I heard more yelps and whistles.
     Not long after the turkeys moved away, I saw a head bounding through the tall grass on the south/west side of my field.  What in the world was that, I found myself saying out loud.  I leaned forward and a large coyote raced across the field towards the spot where the doe had been cleaned.  The trees came to life with crows and ravens and the sound was deafening.
    Within minutes, movement caught my eye and another coyote came out of the woods.  He stood on the west side of the field about 60 yards from the tree that I sat in.  Soon another coyote joined him and they stood together on a rotten log.  The two of them wanted to join the first one across the field but soon turned to walk back into the woods.
     Those two were not out of sight when I spotted yet another coyote making his way to the field.  Four coyotes in less than 10 minutes.  Almost immediately the three of them moved back in to the woods and disappeared.
     I climbed down out of my stand and couldn't wait to get home and tell of my morning in the blind.  My husband told me he thought that was better than seeing the 8 point bucks that had frequented my field.  Many people don't get to see a coyote in their lifetime and those that are lucky enough to get to see one.  I got to see four in one sitting.
    I cannot stress to people how wonderful it is to sit and listen to the world wake up.  Whether it is on your front porch, on your back deck, in a tree or at a park, there just is nothing better.  It truly is the greatest therapy and is there for everyone, free of charge.
     I love to morning hunt and most days I have to go to work once I get out of my stand.  That couple of hours in my stand has awakened every one of my senses and cleared my head for the day ahead.  I am relaxed and ready to meet the challenges of the day.  I have woken up with nature and it just doesn't get any better than that. - J.B.

    I have to say, I forgot how hard it is to choose a Gear Giveaway winner every week -- Holy cow! Everyone contributes so many thoughtful stories and comments, picking a "best one" is nearly impossible.
    But after re-reading and re-re-reading the discussions since the Giveaway opened, I'm happy to announce this week's winner: Paula Smith of Hop Bottom, Pa! Paula has been contributing a lot of great comments over the past week and a half. She says she's new to this, and learning a lot from the blog.
    The prize this week is from blog sponsor Filson, who has been generous enough to contribute some very exciting pieces from their women's line to the Giveaway. Paula will be getting this beautiful Women's Northern Quilted Vest -- nice!
    So, now we're on to next week. As was the case last year, our prize line-up is a grab bag of various clothing and other gear items. I'm chasing down more prizes, with the goal of keeping the Giveaway going as long as possible, with as many winners as possible.
    So congrats to Paula, a big thank-you to Filson, and I'm looking forward to another winner next week (not to mention hearing how everyone did out there this weekend!). -K.H.

    Now we know how impressive we are about getting ready for the season (as if there was ever any doubt). But, of course, logistics like target practice, scouting, stand hanging, and gear getting are only part of the equation. Once the season starts, there's an element that's harder to measure, and it's all mental.
    For me, hunting has a lot to do with mind games and mental discipline. And it starts with getting my head off the pillow. Are you a Christmas-morning sleeper, who can't get to bed the night before then can't wait for the alarm the next morning? My congrats if you are -- I, on the other hand, need to start making deals with myself the second the alarm goes off (Like, if I only hit the snooze once, I'll let myself grab an extra fun-size Three Musketeers).
    And the mental rigor continues in the field -- from staying awake, to staying put when nothing's moving and you've been out there for hours. Especially if it's cold. I know I'm not above resorting to chocolate bribes to keep myself there just a little longer (clearly, food is one of my great motivators).
    And when you -- God willing -- finally see something, do you have mental nerves of steel, or does your brain do a momentary freak-out until you can get yourself under control? I'm lucky to be very even under pressure -- a trait I'm endlessly grateful for.
    From getting out of bed to getting your deer on the ground, what's the mental component like for you? Does your brain sometimes work against you, or have you been hunting long enough that you know what mind games you need to play to make the most of your season? -K.H.