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Outdoors

Yellowstone ready to reopen

The Associated Press MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, Wyo. — Yellowstone National Park is reopening its flood-damaged north loop at noon on Saturday, in time for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, park officials said earlier this week. The announcement means most of the park will be open again after June 13 flooding closed America’s first national park and forced 10,000 visitors to leave as water, rocks and mud washed out roads and bridges. “We’re pleased to reopen the north loop of Yellowstone to the visiting public less than three weeks after this major flood event,” said ...

Summer offers challenges for hunters

By Shirley Grenoble For the Mirror Summer seemed to come on full force quickly this year. In the latter part of spring gobbler season, foliage was so lush it was hard to pick a spot that would afford a good look at an approaching gobbler. Summer means all sorts of fun and activities, but for outdoorsmen and women, it also presents various types of nuisances and dangers. First on the list, I suppose, is bears. The day before the gobbler season ended, my hunting buddy, Joanie Haidle, told me of the black bear that suddenly appeared less than 10 yards away from her in the woods. ...

Godfather of bass fishing leaves quite a legacy

By Walt Young sports@altoonamirror.com Ray Scott, often referred to as the “godfather of modern bass fishing, passed away in his sleep on May 8. He was 88. Scott was a masterful promoter who in 1967 had the vision of “building the sport of bass fishing to its rightful place in the first rank of American sports.” That vision came true to a greater extent than even Scott himself probably dared to dream of at the time. He was born on August 24, 1933, in Montgomery, Alabama, where he grew up during the Great Depression in a one-bedroom house with his parents, a brother and ...

Firefly researchers have tough time doing their work

By Mary Ann Thomas The Associated Press Growing up around Seattle, Ainsley Seago said she never saw a firefly until she visited Hershey as a teenager. These days, she watches in amusement as her 10-year-old son, Maxwell, enjoys catching lightning bugs and releasing them. “How can you not catch them?” said Seago, associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. “They are magical and look like supernatural glowing creatures that fly.” What looks like a wonderland of tiny, flashing lights are really mating signals for lightning bugs. ...

Hunting, trapping new year scheduled to begin July 1

Pa. Game Commission Pennsylvania's 2022-23 hunting and trapping licenses are currently on sale. Buying one is key to getting in on some exciting action. The new license year begins July 1. It is once again big on opportunities, featuring a record number of bull elk tags, as well as seven weeks of archery deer hunting, a firearms deer season that includes the weekend after Thanksgiving, the chance to hunt trophy black bears, more stocked pheasants than anywhere in the Northeast and more. License prices, meanwhile, remain unchanged, with one notable exception. This year, for the ...

New Blair Waterways Conservation Officer getting acclimated

Editor’s note: Frank Mehalko was hired as the new Blair County Waterways Conservation Officer last November after the position had become open. Mehalko recently participated in a question-and-answer session with Altoona Mirror sports writer John Hartsock and discussed his experiences in his first year of stocking fish and enforcing laws in the 2022 trout season, which began statewide this past April 2. With the state’s bass fishing season opening today, Mehalko will begin to concentrate his efforts into enforcing the laws and ensuring safety for fishermen who are out on boats and ...