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Outdoors

Fall foliage happening later this year

By Walt Young For the Mirror One undeniable truth I’ve learned during a lifetime of work and recreation in the outdoors is that the natural world does not adhere to the same rigid calendar we humans use to track the course of a year. Nature operates by its own calendar. Even though so many natural events occur routinely every year, attempting to assign a specific day to some annual occurrences will almost always be wrong one way or the other. Just ask any fly-fisherman who tries to predict when a certain species of mayfly will hatch on his favorite trout stream. Despite the ...

Visitors flocking to Teton

The Associated Press MOOSE, Wyo. — Just nine months into 2021, Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park already has had its busiest year on record. The park joins nearby Yellowstone in setting visitation records this year. Grand Teton had almost 3.5 million recreation visits between January and September. The official count of 3,493,937 topped 2018’s full-year record by 2,786, park officials said in a statement earlier this week. The increased tourism has meant more traffic. Trail use is up 29% from 2019 and 49% from 2016. Visitors are seeing the park at different times of the ...

Debate going on over forest hawk

By Jason Nark The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA — On Jacks Mountain, where the trees showed hints of gold and orange, raptors took flight on an autumn afternoon, hitching a free ride on warm updrafts all along the ridge. Mike Dupuy, a master in the sport of falconry, can see them, even miles away, from his front lawn. He knows them by their calls, their color, even the shape of their tail. Often it’s a fierce Cooper’s hawk on the prowl or the ubiquitous red-tailed hawk, a sturdy SUV-like member of the raptor family. But the rare, gunmetal gray hawk with the reddish eyes ...

Things you need to know about bears

Would you sit in a tree stand 15 feet off the ground to attempt to bag a Pennsylvania black bear with a bow and arrow? Starting Saturday, that is the opportunity given to properly licensed hunters. For a number of reasons, I no longer hunt bears. I’ve bagged four of the creatures and that’s enough for me. But mostly, since I must do most of my hunting alone, I no longer have the strength to drag a bear out of the woods. Pennsylvania black bears are plenty busy this time of year. Their cubs are nearly as big as their mother and they are learning from her how to forage for acorns ...

Operation Game Thief protects wildlife

HARRISBURG — Poachers are thieves and the Pennsylvania Game Commission wants help in catching them. The PGC’s Operation Game Thief program protects wild birds and wild mammals by encouraging those with information related to wildlife crimes to report it as soon as possible. Wildlife crimes affect everyone and reporting illegal wildlife activity helps to protect wildlife for current and future generations. To confidentially report information, the PGC asks you to call the Operation Game Thief’s toll-free hotline — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year — at ...

Arizona trail cam ban raises questions

On June 11, the five-person Arizona Game and Fish Commission voted unanimously to ban the use of trail cameras. This regulation is clearly focused on hunters as it specifically prohibits the use of trail cameras “for the purpose of taking or aiding in the take of wildlife, or locating wildlife for the purpose of taking or aiding in the take of wildlife,” while the use of trail cameras for research, general photography, cattle operations or any other reason other than the taking of wildlife would still be legal. The ban is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2022. I first learned ...