In this week's episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host provides some additional updates on the trail camera issues, as Ohio has chimed in stating they will remain out of this debate and not entertain regulating these devices, for now. Utah and Arizona both have made moves to ban use of trail cameras during the hunting season, due to fair chase violation concerns. Ohio has opted for letting hunter's decide, which is the good way to go.
Coyote are starting their annual breeding season, and NYSDEC has issued guidance regarding how to be "coyote smart" and avoid conflicts during the breeding when coyote become more aggressive and bold while searching for a mate.
The fun and games don't begin and end with the hunting season for DEC wildlife, as they are currently conducting banding efforts of mallard hens for a breeding telemetry study to help discover what is driving their numbers down. Fisher surveys are also underway, and data collection from winter turkey survey work is also ongoing.
The first free fishing weekend is now in the books, and ice fishing is in high gear, although the weather does start to change to give glimpses of the spring to come. Anglers have about a week left in the 2022 Chautauqua Lake Ice Derby, which ends on Feb 27 at high noon. A big blizzard came through on Feb 19, Saturday which created some dicey conditions for fishing, and the Mayville Ice Festival. I swear they can't catch a break - first a light ice year, and a castle made of snow, then covid covid covid, and now they have great ice, great conditions, came back to life, only to get a blizzard on the big day of the event.
We are all waiting on decisions from a couple regulatory proposals from DEC, both the Big Panfish regs and the streamlining and simplifying efforts including changing opening and closing to hard dates vs. a specific Saturday. DEC fisheries manager Steve Hurst states comments are being evaluated, and over 400 comments were received on the latest round of proposals, a record for any proposals since the 2005 VHS baitfish rules, which included many public meetings where comments were collected in person. In fact, fisheries has been very active in survey work, and now has collected enough valid email addresses to get some seriously detailed and fairly accurate insight from this work, reducing margin of error to 0.75%! Great job fisheries unit! Keep it up!!
Your host also reports the 2nd record catch in as many months into 2022, a 12 lb 8 oz speckled trout from North Carolina.
And that Lake Sturgeon season set to run Feb 5-9, 2022 on Black Lake in Michigan, was open for a grand total of 36 minutes. The season quota of 6 sturgeon harvested was reached in record time!
Meanwhile in news across the land, it appears the western end of Lake Erie has been seeing increased earthquake activity, thought to be aftershocks from a 4.0 tumbler in 2019.
And although covid covid covid is pretty much now endemic, and has been for a while, Blue States cling to covid rules like Linus clings to his blanket, and in NY Dept of Health is proposing new powers for quarantine rules when "dangerous" illnesses emerge, with a list to be decided by God only knows who, holding whatever definition of dangerous they make up. This will be more than covid covid covid, and is reminiscent of the VHS rules, which created a rule that your baitfish need health papers to transport overland, and the disease list was more than just VHS, but all are hatchery-related pathogens. How interesting, they will implement rules that will never come down because the define more than what is leading them to make the proposals in the first place. See how this tyranny works?
And opposition continues to grow against offshore wind in the Great Lakes, as well as in the oceans. NY needs new leadership!
