2011    ATLANTIC SALMON

Efforts to bring back the Atlantic salmon to Lake Ontario as a wild, self-sustaining species have been encouraged by the discovery of 3 adults more than 70 km upstream from lake Ontario in the Credit River. It seems the fish may have been stocked as juveniles in 2008/09 and would have passed one to three years in the lake before migrating upstream to spawn. To reach these locations (where they were released) some fish had to pass 4-6 barriers “living up to their name the leaper.” (OFAH release)

Monitoring crews record length, weight and remove a small piece of fin tissue before releasing the captured fish. Scientists then can determine an individual fish’s hatchery parents, year of birth, strain and age at stocking.

It is still illegal to fish for this once abundant species in Lake Ontario streams although they are apparently fair game in the big lake as evidenced by the Mississauga mayor’s gift to Toronto Mayor Ford after catching one this past summer as publicized on the CBC.

POT BEARS

In an earlier column I wrote about bears in B.C. (British Columbia not Bird’s Creek) that were guarding a pot plantation and had become very accustomed to people. According to CBC news, conservation officers have had to shoot 17 of the bruins in the Christina Lake area this summer, suspected to be from the marijuana grow-op first discovered in 2010. That’s three times the usual number to be euthanized. The bears showed no fear of people, caused property damage – in short became severely habituated, said Insp. Aaron Canuel. The bears hung around begging for food. In one case a bear rocked a fifth wheel camper attempting to get into a fridge on its patio scaring the lady inside “half to death” said Grace McGregor.

Closer to home people feeding bears has become an issue as well. In conversation with the Mayor of Kenora he told me they had such a problem there. And more locally, although there has been much press concerning feeding deer and elk, there are apparently those who also feed bears and I don’t mean bear hunters.

ELK STORIES

During the course of the recent elk hunt I managed to interview a lot of successful elk hunters – in large part thanks to the tag team efforts of Lois Poff and The Resident Wife (TRW) who had the Herculean task of keeping me on task. In the next few weeks I will be telling those stories in this column.

I missed the first two elk – both bulls – to visit the voluntary check station at the Bancroft Fish & Game Protective Association’s club. By the time Lois reached TRW who finally reached me via cell I managed to return for bull number three taken by Chris Enwood, Ben Gibson, Al Glover and Greg MacLellan. They stayed at Peter Ruys de Perez Cedar Ridge Camp – formerly known as Natureland and initially YMCA Camp Wangoma. They sang the praises of Peter and his facility and wouldn’t hesitate to return they were treated so well.

This foursome has a combined history of 104 years experience hunting with Enwood being the newbie at 4 years. Ben Gibson, with 35 years of hunting under his belt, is also a Hunter Safety Education Instructor. In this case Al Glover was both the seal holder and shooter downing a fine 5×6 in Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) 61 on the opening day (September 19, 2011) at 8:50 a.m. He used a .300 Winchester Magnum and a 180 grain bullet. The Northern Outdoor Studies’ (NOS) students helped the MNR technicians and Glover’s bull weighed in at 501 pounds – field dressed. I leave it to the reader to do “the bilingual thing” and convert to metric if you so desire. Scouting is THE major tip that they offered adding that it would have been nice to know that they had the elk tag earlier so they could have scouted more earnestly.

CWD

MNR technicians were on hand each day to collect a brain stem and two lymph nodes for Chronic Wasting Disease testing. They also measured the length of rack, beam diameter, back fat and the back leg length all of which apparently tell about the animal’s prior health. Of course this hunt was only for adult bulls and cows. During the deer season they will be looking for adult deer. “CWD can occur in fawns but it is more common in adults,” a technician told me.

AND FINALLY… What next?

PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – is about to launch a porn site in the name of animal rights. According to reporter Ray Sanchez PETA has been accused of exploiting women for animal rights as in the case of a PETA billboard showing an obese woman with the message: “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber. Go Vegetarian.”

PHOTO – left to right – Chris Enwood, Ben Gibson, Al Glover, Greg MacLellan.