Category: Wildlife

Goldfinch

SCIF Launches Grizzly Bear Conflict Mitigation Work With Bear Spray Giveaway Event

Safari Club International Foundation (SCIF) over the weekend participated in its first bear spray giveaway event with the Wyoming Game & Fish Department (WGFD), publicly launching the organization’s new work on grizzly bear conflict mitigation.

Thanks to a recent grant award from the Wyoming Wildlife Foundation’s Memorial Bear Fund, SCIF donated 100 cans of bear spray to the WGFD for distribution out of Dubois, WY for the local area’s shed hunting season opener on May 15 at the Thunderhead Campground up the East Fork of the Wind River in the Absaroka Mountains.

This year, as a pilot project WGFD permitted 25 shed hunters with 3 guests each onto the Spence & Moriarity Wildlife Management Unit to better manage the influx of humans into grizzly country and any potential impacts to wildlife. The area has been at high risk of conflict, especially as both bears and humans become more active on the landscape during the spring. While luckily there were no incidents this year, a man was mauled last year on this same unit on the opening day of shed season.

“This event is a continued effort by the WGFD to reduce human-bear conflicts in occupied grizzly bear habitat,” said WGFD Bear Wise Coordinator Dusty Lasseter. “It’s important that anyone recreating in bear country is prepared for a bear encounter and can protect themselves in the rare case of an aggressive encounter.” Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Firminator: Best Cultipacker Makes Food Plots Healthier

It starts with the soil. Ensuring your soil has the proper chemical composition is critical to food plot success, but it doesn’t stop there. The physical condition of the soil is just as important. This is why components like the Firminator’s built-in cultipacker are so essential in allowing you to get the job done right, and more efficiently.

Before you can plan your food plot, you need to prepare the site by turning the soil. Shortening the top link on the Firminator’s main pitch adjustment leans the implement more heavily onto its disk assembly for a deeper cut into sod and stubborn soil. Switching to a mid-range setting gives varying degrees of disk depth, while simultaneously allowing the built-in cultipacker to maintain good ground contact. This helps break apart clods while leveling and firming the soil.

One of the most important, yet often overlooked steps in maximizing the productivity of your food plots is compacting, or “firming,” the soil. This improves seed-to-soil contact, which dramatically improves germination rates and plant growth. This also saves you time, money and effort that would otherwise be wasted on poorer growing crops. Proper firmination means better germination. Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Every Yard Counts!

Enjoy the birds that visit your yard, and watch for a new arrivals as they migrate north, and perhaps you will see a new species. Watch the low underbrush for a Mourning Warbler (above) if you are in the East – a MacGillivray’s Warbler if you’re in the West (photo by Paul Konrad).

For migrating birds, as well as nesting birds, every yard counts – every tree and scrub and flower garden counts – and the food in every feeder counts, every type of feeder food counts in a feeding station, and every bird bath or other water feature counts! Everything we do individually makes a difference, and all the things each of us does for birds combines with the efforts of other birders so it all adds up to provide millions of backyard habitats, office habitats, schoolyard habitats, churchyards, city parks, and more. Think of each one as an island, then think about how they interconnect to form tracts of habitat, and towns of habitat, and it all means so much to migrating and nesting birds – starting with your yard, and expanding across the country, the continent, and the hemisphere!

It’s that time of the year when all you have done for birds in your property really pays off in the form of the variety and number of birds that come to your yard. That includes new birds and rare birds that only stop by once or twice a year, or every couple years – but especially resident birds and nesting birds. Your yard is most important for birds that will stay for May, June, and July to nest nearby and visit daily; then bring their fledglings to your yard to benefit from all you provide.

That’s all very important! Providing for vulnerable migrants and nesting birds is highly commendable, so be sure to give yourself credit as you enjoy the birds you have attracted as a benefactor. Take time to enjoy the birds, watch for them, appreciate them when they appear, drink in their beauty and their nature, appreciate what you’ve done, take a few photos, and appreciate you are richer for the birds that surround you. These weeks of May could be the best of the year to appreciate the fruits of your landscaping, your choice of feeders, the variety of foods you provide along with the fresh water so necessary for birds – the best of backyard birding is providing a total package for birds.

Share your backyard birding experiences and photos at editorstbw2@gmail.com

Wildlife

Fire danger is high around Michigan; be careful with campfires, debris burning and other activities

Fire danger is high around the state; be careful with campfires, debris burning and other activities

Whether you plan to get in some early-season camping, hit the trail on an ORV or clean up dead wood around your property, keep in mind that fire danger is high in many parts of Michigan this weekend.

“Even though the landscape is green, our forests and grasses are very dry,” said Paul Rogers, fire prevention specialist with the Forest Resources Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “A fire can escape and move quickly due to the dry air and dry fuels.” Fuels includes things such as dry grass, brush and downed tree branches.

If you build a campfire or a bonfire, enjoy the dancing flames but never leave the fire unattended, even for a moment. Make sure you always have water on hand while the fire is burning. Douse your fire with water, stir the ashes and douse with water again before going to bed or leaving the site. Read more

Wildlife

Federal Ammunition Supports Boone and Crockett Club Poach & Pay Research

MISSOULA, Mont. – The Boone and Crockett Club announced today that Federal Ammunition will be supporting the Club’s Poach & Pay project as a Trailblazer in Conservation. The three-year sponsorship agreement will provide consistent support for this critical research and policy project and generally support the Club’s overall conservation mission. For over 130 years, the Boone and Crockett Club has led the way on hunting ethics and the Poach & Pay project continues this tradition in an effort to raise the stakes against wildlife crime. Trailblazer in Conservation is the highest, mission-focused partnership level available with the Club and many of the sponsors are directing their support toward this flagship anti-poaching effort.

“Federal and our other ammunition brands of CCI, Remington, and Hevi-SHOT greatly value the Boone and Crockett Club’s extensive history of fighting for conservation and hunter rights, and their latest leadership in initiating the Poach & Pay project continues this tradition,” commented Federal’s Conservation Manager, Jon Zinnel. “We believe this commitment to finding the real cost of wildlife crimes and helping develop policies that will deter future crimes are essential to clearly show the difference between law-abiding hunters and poachers.”

The Boone and Crockett Club’s Poach & Pay research will assess the barriers to prosecuting poachers, evaluate the detection rate and conservation impacts of wildlife crime, describe the motivational factors and potential deterrents that influence poachers, and provide solutions to improve prosecution and conviction rates, as well as a defensible framework for poaching penalties. In addition, the Poach & Pay outreach campaign will arm U.S. sportsmen and women with real poaching data that clearly separates poaching from hunting. Federal’s culture of innovation has guided their company since it was founded in 1922. The company has long supported conservation efforts both through the excise taxes it pays on the sale of ammunition through the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration program, as well as through philanthropic support of conservation and advocacy organizations working to continue the future of hunting, shooting, and wildlife management. Read more

Poachers, Wildlife

SCI Opposes U.K. Proposal as Threat to Wildlife Conservation

This week the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced their Animal Welfare Action Plan containing new proposals that threaten how, when, and where Britons can legally hunt. Among other potential harms, implementation of these proposals will detrimentally impact the conservation programs of countries effectively conserving the world’s largest populations of some species such as elephants, lions, and rhinos.

Safari Club International (SCI) strongly opposes these proposals in the Action Plan, which are unsupported by scientific evidence and will harm wildlife conservation efforts in and outside of the U.K.: Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Wild Sheep Foundation Spring Raffle is Live

Bozeman, Montana- The Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF) has launched its Sheep Week® Spring Raffle to benefit wild sheep conservation.

“We’re blessed,” said Gray N. Thornton, president, and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation. “I don’t know of a more engaged and giving group than sheep hunters and those who are simply fascinated by these iconic species and want to see them thrive. The proof is in the numbers. This spring we’re offering a fun way for anyone to participate in our purpose of, Putting and Keeping Wild Sheep on the Mountain®.”

In FY 2019-20 alone, WSF raised and directed over $6.2 million to its mission programs, which include;

  • Habitat restoration, transplants, separation strategies from domestic sheep, and management plans and research
  • State, provincial, tribal, and territorial agency funding
  • Education and advocacy
  • Industry support
  • International conservation

Thornton said, “Everyone likes sheep hunts, so we’re raffling off a Dall’s and a desert, plus two other highly sought after hunting adventures, and several other great items. We’re also offering a special mountain game Rifle Raffle featuring a Weatherby Backcountry Ti in the new 6.5 WBY RPM and a complete Best of The West Mountain Hunter Series System, chambered in 6.5 PRC.”

The WSF online raffles are available at these links:

www.wildsheepraffle.org

www.wildsheepgunraffle.org

Wildlife

The Science of Fawn Survival: Leave them Alone

So, you found an abandoned fawn and you’re wondering what to do with it. You may have even rescued it, and now that you brought it home you are wondering who to call. Is there anyone who will take it to raise? What does it eat? Can you house-train it? I know you mean well and want to help the fawn, so follow the best advice from science: leave the fawn where you found it. If you already removed it from the woods, take it back immediately to its hiding spot, or place it in good forested cover as close as you can get to the place you found it.

Let’s look at the science that explains why the fawn is well adapted to survive just fine without your intervention.

It’s Likely Not Abandoned At All

Every spring, people who stumble across fawns expect to see a watchful mother nearby, and when they don’t, they immediately assume the fawn is “abandoned.” This is understandable, but remember that the needs and survival behaviors of newborn deer are completely different than those of newborn humans.

Until a fawn is old enough to be fully mobile and able to outrun danger, the doe spends most of each day separate from the fawn to avoid attracting predators by her own presence and scent. Research at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia found that in the first three to four weeks after a fawn’s birth, does visited fawns primarily around sunrise and sunset, and visits were only long enough to nurse. Read more

Wildlife

NWTF Applauds Introduction of America the Beautiful Initiative

EDGEFIELD, S.C.—The National Wild Turkey Federation praises the Biden Administration’s recent announcement of a collaborative plan to expand conservation across the nation with a target of conserving a third of all lands and waters by 2030.

In a report released by the administration, the Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful Initiative will be a “locally led campaign to conserve and restore the lands and waters upon which we all depend, and that bind us together as Americans.”

The report identifies multiple priority areas that the NWTF provided early feedback on, including:

  • Expanding collaborative conservation of fish and wildlife habitats and corridors.
  • Increasing access for outdoor recreation.
  • Incentivizing and rewarding the voluntary conservation efforts of sportsmen and women, ranchers, farmers and forest owners.
  • Creating jobs by investing in restoration and resilience projects and initiatives. Read more
Fishing, Hunting, Wildlife

Wandering Dog Lost and Found

By Glen Wunderlich

Charter Member Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA)

Last week I came upon a wandering little dog, as I rode my ATV along a well-traveled trail on my Shiawassee County property.  At first glance it resembled the appearance of a neighbor’s dog, and since it was so close to his property, I motored past it under the assumption that it was heading home.  However, something seemed wrong.

I watched over my shoulder to make sure the animal wasn’t following me, as I lowered my speed.  It would take a few steps in one direction and then a few more in another direction.  This aimless wandering wasn’t normal, I thought, so I made a U-turn and idled next to it for a closer look.  At this moment, I figured it was deaf or very near so, because it didn’t pay any attention to my running motor, which was now only a few feet away.  Then, I noticed the malfunction:  It was obviously blind from the apparent milky colored eyes afflicted by cataracts.  I knew I had to do something.

Stepping off the 4-wheeler, I made a quick grab with both hands under the belly and felt wetness.  Either, the confused animal had gone into the adjoining creek willingly or otherwise and had me thinking it was possibly thirsty or just unwittingly fell in.  Regardless, it was going home with me.

The old dog never resisted, as I set it in a carry box in front of the handle bars.  When I began to motor on, it became frightened and attempted to jump out.  With one finger hooked around its tiny collar, it was easily restrained and seemed to settle down as I picked up speed along the side of the road.

Although it had a collar, no identification was attached.  I recalled that one of my neighbors, Marcella, had been involved in various physical searches for lost dogs through some internet sites.  My wife got the ball rolling and it wasn’t long before Marcella and her husband arrived to help – and, I was sure glad to see them.

Cell phones were used for photos, which were promptly uploaded to a Facebook site under the title of lost dogs of Shiawassee County.  In the meantime, the women took over care of the animal by giving it a bath in warm water, which it didn’t appreciate one bit.  Marcella even cleaned the ear canals, which seemed to need attention.  And, then the calls started to come in.

Some would send pictures of their own lost dogs, hoping we’d have the answer to their prayers.  One after another, hope was shot down.

I remembered my pal, Joe, leaves some dry dog food at my place for his dog when it visits, so I grabbed a handful and put it in a bowl in front of the dog.  It walked through it and scattered the feed on the floor.  Hmmm.  Into the house for some meat – any meat.  Nothing.  So, I took a small can of cat food and dumped the entire contents in another bowl.  (Yes, I know cat food is not good for dogs; neither is starving.)  It gobbled it up in a few bites and drank some clean water.  Now, we all felt better.

We had already begun to talk of temporarily caring for the critter, when someone from East Lansing had seen the online photos and contacted us.  Apparently, they were relatives of the owner, Chris, who lives about a mile down the road.  Everyone was excited to learn he was on the way for his pet!

In minutes, he arrived and was reunited with his ol’ pal and explained what had happened.  The day before, the animal apparently had gone through an open door unnoticed.  A frantic search was to no avail.  I can only imagine his thoughts.

The moral of the story is to make sure that proper identification is attached to dogs that have a propensity to wander.  A computer chip is also a common means to ID lost dogs – given the owners have had the foresight to have one implanted for a nominal fee.

With the mystery solved, the little pooch gave his owner a few licks on his cheek and they were on their way home at long last.

General, Wildlife
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