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Outdoors

Endangered Species Act turning 50

Fifty years ago, on December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed The Endangered Species Act into law. The full title of the ESA was “an Act to provide for the conservation of endangered and threatened species of fish, wildlife, and plants, and for other purposes.” The Supreme Court of the United States once called it “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species enacted by any nation.” Appeals for meaningful legislation to protect and conserve wildlife began to garner support in the early years of the twentieth century after the severe ...

Fly tying events are scheduled

With deer season over for another year, I now find myself transitioning into “Oh, how I wish winter was over” mode. Yes, I’m aware that winter doesn’t officially arrive until Dec. 21 this year, but that doesn’t help much. That fact only magnifies my weariness for a winter that hasn’t really started yet. And we haven’t had any real winter weather yet other than a few cold days. So while I will be logging my share of couch time in the coming weeks, catching up on some reading and watching what looks like a lot of lackluster college bowl game matchups on TV, it would be ...

National hunting by the numbers

With the firearms deer season wrapping up this weekend, many thousands of Pennsylvania hunters will have bagged one or more deer starting from archery season in late September and the special firearms and muzzleloader seasons in mid-October until now. And for those hunters still desiring to fill a deer tag, they will have the opportunity to do so during the late archery and flintlock seasons that begin the day after Christmas and continue for three weeks into mid-January. We won’t know how well deer hunters did overall until the Pennsylvania Game Commission releases its official deer ...

Busy month capped by 3 Sunday hunting days

The last half of November is a busy intersection of popular hunting seasons in Pennsylvania occurring one after the other in a three-week span. They are, of course, the fall archery deer season, which ended on Friday, followed by the four-day bear season, which begins Saturday and ends on Tuesday. Then it’s a break for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday before the first day of the firearms deer season on Saturday, Nov. 25. During this perfect storm of big-game hunting opportunities, three consecutive Sundays are also in play: Nov. 12 during the final week of archery season to give ...

Watch for deer while driving

If you have done much driving around the rural areas of our region in recent weeks, you have likely noticed the increased presence of road-killed deer along the highways. Insurance industry statistics indicate that Pennsylvania is usually one of the top states for deer-vehicle collisions each year, so a dead deer on the roadside is a common sight any time of year. The top month for deer-vehicle collisions, however, is November for several reasons. Overall deer numbers are the highest of the year now as this spring’s fawn crop are approaching six months old and a significant part of ...

For anyone who has driven around our area during the past week, you couldn’t help but notice that the foliage was reaching its colorful peak and included almost all of the colors in unison. While weather-related factors, such as rainfall, sunlight and temperature, can have some effect on the intensity and duration of fall foliage colors, photoperiod is the primary determining factor of when leaves make their fall transition. Photoperiod is the scientific term for the relative length of daylight and darkness for each day throughout the year. The shorter days of autumn start the ...