Field Notes

From the Houston Chronicle:
Karl Virtue never gave much thought to owning a gun until after he reached Social Security age.
But a year ago, after a tussle with a man he caught stealing from a neighborhood construction site, the 70-year-old figured it might not be a bad idea.
Now he's a card-carrying concealed handgun license holder. And, as a senior citizen, he represents one of the most likely age groups to take advantage of the 1995 Texas law allowing law-abiding residents to carry guns.
There's good reason, Virtue said.
"When I was younger I never had to worry, because nobody was going to go out of their way to give me a hard time," said Virtue, a retired fundraising consultant. "But when you get old, you feel you've lost your mojo. You feel more vulnerable . . . ."
Virtue bought a 9 mm handgun . . . .
He hasn't started carrying the gun, but if the need ever arises, he said he'll be ready.
"The old geezers in Texas," he said, "are well-armed."

So, do you want the “old geezers” in your town to be “armed”? Will (or do) you carry as a senior citizen?

Local-news headline writers were cheated on Christmas Eve when a deer that crashed into a dollar store in (my home town of) Malone, NY, turned out to be a doe. One reporter is rumored to have left the scene shaking his head and complaining, “I thought everything here was a buck.”
Here's the story.

Lake trout thrived in Lake Michigan before sea lampreys decimated the species in the 1950s. Since then, the lake’s lakers have shown no evidence of reproducing naturally--until now. "This is like finding a needle in a haystack," Jim Dexter of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, told the Associated Press. “This is definitely good news,” he added, but noted that a comeback for the species is a long way off yet. 

For anyone inclined to answer “yes,” first check out this story from the Ohio’s WCPO news:
State wildlife officials say one of their worst poachers is behind bars in Carroll County, charged with multiple counts of illegal hunting.
Douglas Andrews' hunting license was revoked for life in 1993, after he was convicted of poaching deer and wild turkey in southeast Ohio.
He also was accused of running an illegal deer hunting and meat sale operation.
But officials say that hasn't stopped him.
They say the Toledo man used a high-powered rifle to hunt deer, then took only the choice cuts of meat, leaving the remains to rot.
In Ohio, hunters are only allowed to use shotguns and muzzleloaders.
Following his arrest on December 4, Andrews was convicted of one count of illegal hunting and sentenced to six months in jail.
He has pleaded not guilty to 12 additional charges.

From Kentucky's News-Democrat & Leader:
Young hunters in the Bluegrass State are the most recent to benefit from the Families Afield program after the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission passed two measures to open doors for young hunters.
The first measure establishes a one-year, non-renewable exemption from hunter education classes when the novice hunter is accompanied by an adult mentor. The mentor must be a licensed hunter at least 18 years old. The second measure raises the age at which young hunters must take a hunter education course prior to hunting from 10 to 12 years old.
Families Afield legislation is creating new opportunities for young hunters in several states, including Michigan and Ohio, where more than 27,000 apprentice licenses have been sold. Part of the mission is to let parents--as opposed to states--decide when a youngster is old enough to hunt.
Do you think this is a good idea? How old were you when you started hunting? Do you think you could have safely started earlier? At what age will your kids be old enough to hunt?

Photographer Patrick Ford got a little too close to a barracuda he was feeding in 1986. The fish, nicknamed Smokey, was often fed by divers. In this instance, Ford was making an underwater video. The fish filleted two fingers. One healed fine, the other not so well. Check out the story with video and photos here.

From an Associated Press article in the Helena Independent Record:
The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says his agency will start removing federal protections from gray wolves in Montana and Idaho by January, regardless of whether Wyoming has submitted an acceptable plan to manage its own wolves by then.

Wyoming's plan is tied up in lawsuits, and Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall said Tuesday his agency is moving ahead with Idaho and Montana, where management plans are already in place.
Defenders of Wildlife, which advocates on behalf of wolves, vowed to fight the move, saying delisting by state is illegal.

Last week, we posted a story reporting that the USFWS had suggested a compromise solution to their standoff with Wyoming, which that state (so far at least) has not accepted. So should the feds move forward without them?

You don’t see many dog-shoots-man stories, but according to this AP article in the Sioux City Journal, doctors have amputated the upper right forearm of goose hunter Russell Stough, who was injured when his dog stepped on his gun’s trigger.

We’re not looking to point fingers here, and we certainly wish our fellow hunter all the best in his recovery. But for the sake of preventing future accidents, it’s important to note that his story at least appears to graphically illustrate why a shotgun’s safety should only be taken off as you shoulder the gun to shoot, and not before.

Speaking of hunting accidents, according to this Huffington Post blog entry, Vice President Dick Cheney does in fact (or at least did in fact) have a dead deer on his lawn—which leaves the door wide open to all sorts of speculation. Feel free to offer your own below.

From The Jersey Journal:
Jersey City's one-gun-a-month ordinance has been shot down.
Hudson County Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli, calling the law "arbitrary and capricious," ruled last week the five-month-old city ordinance violated New Jersey's equal treatment principle, since gun dealers and buyers in Jersey City would be treated differently than elsewhere in the state.
What do you think? Is one gun a month a reasonable quota within an urban area? Or should there be no quota anywhere?