October 2008 Almanac
This Month: It’s All Happening Now … How Can We Do It All?
Statistically, October ranks as one of Maine’s drier months with an average rain (or possibly snowfall) occurring in eight of its 31 days, and this period of relatively good weather offers cool but not frigid temperatures. Contrary to popular belief, November passes just as dry, but those cold rains in the 11th month make a lasting impression.
Against a backdrop of intense reds, yellows and oranges, outdoors folks find a bunch of options, including upland birding, waterfowling, bowhunting deer, bear hunting, small-game hunting, fall fishing, trapping, cooning with hounds, gray-squirrel shooting, chasing rabbits, wild-food gathering, capturing landscape and wildlife photos, camping, backpacking, canoe tripping, harvesting garden staples, the root veggies, or you name it.
Even retired folks don’t have enough time in the 31-day month to do it all, so we pick and choose our delights. Sometimes, we arrange cast-and-blast weekends — say grouse hunting in the morning, trout fishing in a northern river during the afternoon and vehicle camping at a secluded site. This option works when we try to crowd in as much as possible.
One scene appeals to everyone, a day afield followed by an early night in front of the woodstove, reading a good book with a faithful dog curled at our feet. An electric blanket feels sinful when it’s time to retire.
Most evenings this month remind us of a favorite quote from George Bird Evans’ The Upland Shooting Life: “Tonight life is as I would have it.” …Amen to that notion, Mr. Evans.
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Tips of the Month
Break Out the Fine Tippet, It’s BWO Time
Don’t put that fly rod away yet, folks. Blue-winged olives (BWOs) hatch through October and well into November, size 20 to 24 specimens, depending on the species. Most BWOs show from 2 to 4 p.m. but some pop to the surface from 10 a.m. to noon.
Seven-x fluorocarbon tippets, medium-flex, 3- to 5-weight rods and reels with smooth drags put the odds in the angler’s favor with big trout and salmon, and remember, the color of the dry-fly body makes all the difference.
Drag-free floats with Compara-duns, thorax style or classic dry flies often bring trout to the surface to sip a fly as if it were a natural, and such a take tells the fly rodders that they have fooled the trout completely.
Remember the bad-old days when folks just bird-hunted in October? In the 21st century, BWOs and hungry trout have changed Maine sporting habits, and many folks live for these hatches.
Blast ‘Em on the Ground
The absolute most effective way to shoot ruffed grouse begins with an abandoned apple orchard, choked off by alders and aspen to provide birds with cover around forage. The hunter slips into this food-rich area and sits quietly, waiting for grouse to come to the food. As anyone knows who has sat in abandoned orchards, this game bird often walks into the foraging area, where the sitting hunter can ground-pot it.
For folks steeped in bird-dog culture, this seems downright unsporting, but it really is no different than waiting quietly for deer in the same area and insures a clean kill without wounding the bird.
This tactic really puts these game birds on the table to enjoy with baked tomatoes stuffed with rice pilaf, crusty French bread, an appellation controlee Chablis, crystal wine glasses, China dishes and linen napkins.
Toilet Bowl What?
Here’s an intriguing tip for do-it-yourself types: Professional fly tier Ron McCusick of Corinna posted this tip on Mike Holt’s fly-fishing-only bulletin board last August. Instead of buying soft, sticky tying wax such as Overton’s Wonder Wax, McCusick advises folks, “…I just use a toilet-bowl wax ring, melt it in a double boiler and then pour the wax into tiny 1/2-ounce cups.” …Inexpensive, effective and fulfilling for those of us who want to do it our way.
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Where the Action Is
Shawmut Magic in 10th Month
After all the rain that has fallen this summer, the Shawmut stretch of the Kennebec River between Shawmut Dam and Interstate 95 should offer red-hot fly fishing. Hatches come off heavy and after a summer of neglect from anglers, fish should be plentiful. Please check DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 21, D-2.
In October, blue-winged olives, olive caddis emergers and cream mayflies in size 20 to 24 should produce action, but what fly hatches when depends on seasonal temperatures. For success, though, Shawmut veterans think small when fishing flies.
Access lies on both sides of the river:
1) The River Road parallels the east shore and folks can see the paths leading to the river, often blocked by parked vehicles.
2) On the west bank, head north on Route 201 from downtown Fairfield and drive until coming to an Irving Station on the left (west) side of the road. The next right (east) leads into Shawmut village. The first right leads to a cul-de-sac where anglers park, cross a railroad track and follow an ATV trail to the river. Or, folks can drive to Shawmut Dam on the north end of the village and follow the tote roads to the dam.
Shawmut hasn’t fished well in recent years, but it is bound to make a comeback.
Central Mainers Face a Truth
Let’s face a truth. Central Maine’s upland-bird hunting has deteriorated to a dismal state because of exurban development, so serious bird hunters head north to places such as Jackman, Greenville, Patton, Presque Isle or you name the northern or eastern destination.
One sterling honey hole that reminds old timers of Central Maine in the golden upland years of the 1960s and early 1970s lies in Washington County near Princeton and Woodland. Any of the major highways and particularly secondary arteries pass seemingly endless bird covers that hold grouse and woodcock.
Check MAG, Map 36 and key on Routes 1, 9 and 191 and side roads such as Sprague Meadow Road, South Princeton Road, Cooper Road and The Nineteen Road, which all pass abandoned fields, old orchards or clear-cuts growing back with poplars, rubus and perhaps alders.
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News and Tidbits
“Fifty Fish,” You Say
The daily bag limit for American eel numbers 50 fish, pickerel 10 fish, whitefish three, shad two and striped bass one. The first three and shad have no length limit, but eels must be six inches and stripers between 20 and 26 inches or 40 inches or greater. The daily limit for smelts is two quarts and no length limit exists for this silver delicacy.
Browns Equal Salmon
For decades, browns in lakes and ponds had to be at least 12 inches long before anglers could keep them and landlocked salmon had to be at least 14 inches, but now, the length limit has changed to 14 inches for browns — an attempt to simplify the law so both species have the same length limit.
Raccoon Prices Up
Fur buyers are predicting that raccoon-pelt prices are going up this fall, which may put pressure on the Maine raccoon population. The season now runs from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, but the last time fur prices went up, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife eliminated October for hunting coons. Time will tell if DIF&W eventually shortens the raccoon season again — all dependent on fur trends.
Warm Tying Wax, All Right
The late Ai W. Ballou of Winthrop, the father of the marabou streamer and a contemporary of Carrie Stevens, once related a tidbit about Stevens that just may be lost to history.
Apparently, when this famous Rangeley Region tier tied flies, she kept her tying wax inside her brassiere by her cleavage to keep the wax soft and sticky so it would adhere to the thread. In those days, manufacturers didn’t make special waxes for tying, and often, folks used most any wax, which often stayed hard, particularly in cooler homes during the height of winter. Stevens obviously wanted her wax more tier friendly.
Talk about Big Landlocks
The extinct races of landlocked Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), according to Ted Willaims’ book Something Fishy, grew upwards to 50 pounds in Lakes Ontario, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, Champlain, Memphremagog and other waters in the St. Lawrence drainage. In fact, settlers named the Salmon River in Pulaski, New York after these salmon, not the West Coast hatchery pets that now inhabit this river.
Wild Atlantic Salmon, You Say
In the early 1970s where lower Northern Avenue crosses Bond Brook in Augusta, a school of Atlantic salmon below the bridge became a national news story as NBC and CBS news crews flocked to a pool beside a tenement building to film the fish — all tagged Penobscot salmon that had strayed up the Kennebec River and eventually into Bond Brook, a light news story to offset the horrors of the Vietnam War and this country’s first nagging 20th century energy crisis. This writer saw the tagged salmon with his own eyes.
For the next 20 years, fisheries biologists from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife performed necropsies on Atlantic salmon that anglers caught in the Kennebec below where the Edwards Dam in Augusta once stood and determined the vast majority of these fish were of Penobscot origin, not surprising after seeing the tagged fish in Bond Brook.
That’s not saying that the Kennebec has no wild salmon because obviously, Atlantics spawned in Bond Brook and Togus Stream further downstream, and again, this writer has seen these spawning fish with his own eyes.
It’s logical to assume some are wild; however, the majority of Kennebec salmon stray there from the Penobscot, as DIF&W biologists have proven with their research.
Minimum Draw Weight
Maine law stipulates that a bow must have a 35-pound pull minimum for deer hunting. This extremely low draw weight allows children and frail women an opportunity to hunt with a bow, but veteran bow hunters wonder if at least a 45-pound pull would be more appropriate for clean kills.
Minimum Black-Powder Caliber
A law for muzzle-loader hunters after deer makes it illegal to use anything under a .40-caliber bore. Part of the reason for this involves wound channels. According to conventional wisdom, any bore size smaller than a .40-caliber doesn’t leave a big enough wound channel with such a slow-moving projectile.
A .36-caliber bore is popular with serious squirrel hunters, though, and it’s legal for this small-game animal.
Eurasion Milfoil Arrives in Belgrade Lakes
Eurasion milfoil, a highly aggressive milfoil that can grow in relatively deep water, has finally made it to Central Maine. Because it’s not necessarily a shallow-water aquatic plant, it can utilize a much wider range of habitat. Department of Environmental Protection biologists have verified its presence in Salmon Lake in the Belgrade chain.
Non-resident Discrimination Widespread
Maine natives and out-of-staters alike have complained for years that Maine discriminates against non-resident hunters by not allowing them to hunt the opening Saturday of the statewide regular firearms deer season or gives out too few moose permits to non-residents, but such prejudicial laws are rather widespread on this continent.
For example, during the early 1990s, American deer hunters in New Brunswick were a little astounded to discover that non-residents couldn’t moose hunt in that province. That moose option was only open to NB residents.
That same year, a hunting license for elk and deer in Montana cost a non-resident $450, but it didn’t allow them to hunt mountain goats. Only residents could hunt for this coveted game animal.
If room allowed, examples could go on and on, proving that Maine’s two instances of maltreating non-residents are business as usual in other states and provinces. We’re not alone, which doesn’t make it right or wrong — just common.
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Bird of the Month
‘Ruffed What’ Means ‘Ruffed What’?
Circa the early 1970s, calling a Maine partridge or pa’tridge a “ruffed grouse” sounded overrefined, but these days, it’s beginning to sound effete to call Bonasa Umbellus “partridge” — a form of reverse snobbism as if someone needs to prove he or she is one of the good old boys.
Where does “ruffed” come from?
Some folks mix “ruffed” up with “rufous” and think the former refers to the reddish-color phase of some grouse, but in truth, ruffed came from the erect feathers around a grouse’s neck when it’s agitated or excited, which resembled a ruffed collar, a popular Old World clothing fashion in the 1600s when settlers first arrived. In short, it was a perfect name for a bird that sports a ruffed collar a la an English nobleman wearing the latest clothing of the time.
Ruffed grouse share a symbiotic relationship with two northern trees — trembling (Populus tremuloides) and large-toothed (P. grandidentata) aspens. The association between this bird and these two species becomes obvious when looking at range maps of the three across the North American continent. Where the two aspen grow — so does this grouse. Where the two trees don’t grow — grouse are scarce to nonexistent.
This game bird depends on aspen buds for winter forage, and one of the allures begins with the limbs, particularly from the two species named above. The branches remain sturdy out to the very ends so this 1- to 1 1/3-pound bird can feed from a stable perch.
Anyone who has spent time in aspen-birch-willow forests has seen the problem grouse have while feeding in birch and willow. They flap wildly to maintain balance as their perch bounces up and down. While doing this, birds expend energy and attract avian predators. It’s amazing how aspen gives grouse a much sturdier place to forage quietly.
A grouse body measures 17 inches in length and the wingspan stretches 22 inches. We’re talking a big bird that needs lots of aspen buds through the winter. The rest of the year, the catholic tastes of this bird include hundreds of species of buds, grains, seeds, worts, fruits, drupes, berries — an endless list of choices. This bird easily feeds itself in spring through fall.
Only the winter causes grouse foraging problems, and an astute observer in an aspen grove can sometimes see how heavily grouse feed on buds. In lean years, certain aspen may have few buds left by March.
One commonly held belief about ruffed grouse concerns rain in June. As the old saw goes, lots of rain kills off broods, but according to wildlife biologists, if winter feed has enough nutrition, then chicks can survive foul June weather at their weakest point shortly after hatching. If winter food from unfertile habitat has poor nutrition, the hen produces weak chicks that cannot withstand exposure. The legendary Midwest grouse researcher, Gordon Gullion, first noticed this phenomenon.
Ruffed Grouse lay 12 to 13 eggs on average in a shallow ground nest, often against a stump or tree trunk. So many eggs are an indication that morality runs high with this species. Another ground nester in northern forests, the ubiquitous woodcock, produces but four eggs on average.
In Maine, casual observers often mix up ruffed grouse with hen pheasant, but the latter has a long, pointy tail where grouse have a fan-shaped one — easy to see at a glance.
One thought is certain about ruffed grouse. Their explosive flush captures everything wild and wonderful about a New England upland. …Long live the king of game birds. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
What’s the Gender of That Tree?
When feeding, ruffed grouse prefer flower buds from one gender of aspen tree. Do you know whether they key upon the male or female poplar?
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Book Corner
Book May Shock Readers …But Not as Intended
Some readers will love Inside the Wild by L.W. Oakley, a Canadian writer who penned this book about his thoughts, philosophies, friends and whatnot, using his Ontario hunting camp as a setting or at least as a social center for the stories.
Yes, some readers will love Inside the Wild all right, but this reviewer doesn’t count himself as one of them, although that’s not saying I disliked the book. It was entertaining enough with anecdotes that would stop me reading to think. What more can a reader ask from any book?
Inside the Wild also quotes writers like Hemingway, London, Dostoevsky and Burns to start a few chapters, and the touch worked well. Oakley also includes short italicized vignettes between chapters a la Hemingway’s short-story collection In Our Time.
And if these two features don’t tickle the literati among us enough, the back cover compares Oakley to William Faulkner and mentions “The Bear” specifically, a long short story that first appeared as a chapter in Go Down, Moses, published in 1942.
That’s not to say Inside the Wild emanates a touch of highbrow literariness. It doesn’t, although Oakley seems educated enough and possesses plenty of thoughts worthy of the printed page.
One point about Inside the Wild bothered me, though. Oakley included opinions stated as fact, but the thoughts were easily arguable. Examples fill the book, and we’ve heard many of them before — say justifications for hunting. You know. When it comes to the reasons to defend hunting, it turns into a version of a Mountain Dew commercial. …Been there…done that….
For instance, in a chapter about taxidermy, Oakley wrote, “A gamehead [sic] is not kept and displayed for social prestige like a trophy wife.”
We all have an acquaintance or two who have game heads displayed as “social prestige,” and by the way, some of these pilgrims also have trophy wives. Most readers who read that quote about game heads know someone to use as a refutation of the remark.
The back cover promises that Oakley will give us a hard-edged view of hunting, and to prove it, the author begins on the first page of Chapter One. His italicized anecdote to set the tone of “hard-edged” sort of shocked me — but in a different way than I believe the author intended.
One of the hunters in the author’s circle, Eddie, was a fine fellow when sober, but when he drank too much, he acted “crazy,” the author’s word. Eddie would sometimes claim he was going to kill them all before committing suicide.
…The shocking part for me?
The hunters I hang around with would have disarmed Eddie the first moment he uttered the threat and sent him packing home without his deer rifle. None of them would have lain around sleeping each night at camp, waiting for the mass execution.
Inside the Wild, a 176-page paperback, costs $19.95. (Ken Allen)
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Innocent Bystander
The Maine Sportsman Influences Readers
The Maine Sportsman has made a definitive impact on the Pine Tree State in the last 35 years, and a point involving one of this publication’s style choices illustrates the concept in coal-black spades.
First, though, it’s important to understand what we mean by “style” — which refers to a spelling or usage choices unique to the publication:
1) For example, The American Heritage or Webster’s dictionaries choose to spell “hot spot” as a compound word, but The Maine Sportsman has opted for it to be a single word — “hotspot.”
2) Or, in “central Maine” or “southern Maine,” “central” or “southern” should be lower case, but here, we make it upper case — “Central Maine” or “Southern Maine.”
One of our weird style choices — weird because we’re the only publication that this writer knows of in the entire world to do so — involves the names of fishing flies. Unless the fly is a proper noun named after a person or geographic spot such as “Hendrickson,” “Hornberg,” “Cahill” or “Henryville,” we make it lower case.
We spell the word “red quill” instead of “Red Quill” or a more complex example, “quill Gordon” instead of “Quill Gordon.”
Here’s where we get to the part about The Maine Sportsman’s influence on Maine. On this state’s fly-fishing bulletin boards such as Fly Fishing in Maine, Fly Fishing Only’s board, Kennebec River Outfitter’s board, or on more generic bulletin boards such as New England Outdoor Voice, posters almost inevitably spell fly names lower case, even though publications such as Fly Fisherman, American Angler, Field & Stream and all the other titles opt for upper case words for all flies. The Maine Sportsman’s unique style has influenced the bulk of the posters. (Ken Allen)
Next Month: ‘Got Ya’ Deer Yet?’ ‘You Know I Don’t!’
November in Maine means deer hunting and more deer hunting, and as we all know, it is important to shoot a deer for bragging rights for the following year.
If folks don’t believe that, consider this:
How many times have you heard someone ask a friend or acquaintance if he shot a deer yet, and you know full well that the asker knows the answer to that question is no. He just wants to see the unsuccessful hunter squirm — and squirm the fellow does.
What fulfills the soul more than sitting down to — say a venison stew made with meat from a Maine deer harvested fair and square and potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions and dill weed raised in the backyard garden? Does it get better than that?
Future meals include cornbread and Texas chili with venison-burger, steak Diane with Brussels sprouts and Swedish potatoes, linguine with venison in a red-wine and dill sauce and a side of brandied carrots or venison Oscar with rice pilaf. That’s what deer hunting is all about.
And it’s happening this month at your house if you play the game right.
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Answer to “Do You Know?”
Grouse Like Male Buds Just Fine
Ruffed grouse like flower buds from mature male aspen because they contain much higher amounts of proteins, fats and minerals. Researchers have noticed grouse key on male trees disproportionately, proving their theory.
When woodcutters harvest most of the male aspen in the areas, male grouse even abandon drumming logs and migrate to a different area with mature male aspen, according to wildlife biologists who study this game bird.