A BOLT IN THE HEAD Carrot the white-tailed buck, so named by wildlife photographer Lee-Anne Carver, has visited her home in Kenora and befriended the family’s Golden Retriever since being orphaned three years ago. In December of 2020 Carver’s husband discovered that the deer had a black carbon-fibre arrow with bright green fletching sticking through […]
THE BUTTERFLY MAN by Barney Moorhouse In the late 1990s I attended an Outdoor Writers Conference in Waterloo, Ontario. I had signed up for a photographic excursion to see some of the more interesting sites and hoped to pick up some tips to improve my craft. I was summoned by an announcement to meet one […]
WHY? by Ralph Bice (July 1973) I will likely get told off a few times for writing this article, and perhaps I should wait until I simmer down a bit, but I have been reading some pamphlets, etc., the last couple of weeks, and I feel I should get this off my chest. Last week […]
SUMMER ADVANCES (1973) Not nice to realize that in another three weeks it will be almost August. It will be some time before we notice the days getting shorter, but if July and August go as quickly as May and June, summer will not be here long. While ago I mentioned a loon’s nest in […]
The Flies are Not Too Bad (1973) I was on a guiding trip last week. Seldom now is there a party in the woods that is using guides, where forty years ago nearly all parties were in charge of guides. Being in the woods then meant using canoes, and people could not fish and paddle […]
LOONS DECREASE Researchers are saying that the loons’ reproductive success has declined since the 1960s and that decrease correlates directly with the quality of water in the Great Lakes. “Loons are really good indicators of the health of the aquatic ecosystem,” said Kristin Bianchini, a researcher at Birds Canada and Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. […]
PROJECT FEEDER WATCH T’is that time of year once again when you can enjoy watching the birds at your feeders while remaining in the warmth of your home; perhaps with a cup of hot cocoa? By joining Project Feeder Watch you can assist the folks at Birds Canada and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology […]
HATS FOR HIDES Here we go again. Sounds like a song. In 1974 the then Ministry of Natural Resources began the Hats For Hides initiative that encouraged hunters to donate harvested hides for use by indigenous craft folk. In exchange for the hides hunters received hunter orange hats and crests. It helped keep hides out […]
LET THEM EAT DIRT Recent research from the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station (AWRS) tells us that Painted and Snapping turtle hatchlings were found eating, intentionally it would appear, a lot of their nesting substrate, including sand and vermiculite. Geophagy – the consumption of hard objects with no caloric value – is widespread in the animal […]
MANDATORY HUNTER REPORTING Introduced in 2019 mandatory hunter reporting is employed by the MNRF to assist in managing Ontario’s wildlife. The data helps to monitor wildlife populations, to set tag quotas and determine the availability of additional tags, adjust seasons, bag limits and develop management policies. Any hunter who bought or was issued a tag […]
