This Month
Snow and Ice – and Soon Green!
By the time April Fool’s Day arrives in the bottom third of Maine, temperatures have risen a little warmer than most winter days, but ice still covers ponds and lakes and snow stands deep on the north side of ridges under dense conifer canopies, where these darker places may look like more of winter. But within one to two weeks, spring slides into the state with those smells, sights and sounds that shout the new season is stirring, and snow melts fast everywhere.
In the top two-thirds of the state, April 1 looks like more of winter, and folks are still snowmobiling – a wonderful time of year for the sport. Longer hours of sunlight chase away below-freezing temperatures, so a day on the trail can feel almost balmy to winter-frosted souls.
That’s Maine in a nutshell. We not only have two different economic bases from north to south, but the weather also looks different. North Country denizens grow thicker skin to flourish in long, frigid winters.
In the South Country from April 1 until ice-out, open-water anglers flock to a few spots with open water – Grand Lake Stream, the Belgrade Lakes’ Spillway, Castle Island and Wings Mills Dam, the Kennebec from Wyman Dam down to Bingham at the Route 16 bridge, Songo Locks in the Sebago region and so forth. A hot-dog cart selling dogs and hot coffee could boom in these places.
At ice-out, trollers and casters at fishing hot spots catch the largest salmonids of the year. If folks don’t believe that, please peruse “The One that Didn’t Get Away” club on the ’net. The springtime version surely shows photos of more big ones than autumn lists.
A handful of hunters get out with flat-shooting rifles such as a .223 Remington, .22-250 Remington or similar choices and shoot woodchucks, once a popular sport before development ate up fields in the bottom third of Maine. Some woodchuck hunters choose their deer rifles for the sport to become accustomed to shooting and judging trajectory before the whitetail season.
Speaking of hunting, turkey enthusiasts scout now for the opening day at the end of April, deer hunters can see last fall’s deer sign (scrapes, rubs and tracks) as soon as snow melts, and bird-dog enthusiasts work their canines. Even bear hunters scout near month’s end.
Shooters get out on warm Saturdays to shoot, and the smoothbore crowd breaks clay targets, rifle shooters prefect the trigger squeeze and bow- and-arrow types work at polishing a consistent anchor point, crisp release and steady bow arm. Shooting now may get folks continuing practice sessions through the spring, summer and early fall.
Coyote hunters like to call, bait and decoy now, because after a lean winter, these canines are hungry and wandering – the latter for two reasons: 1) to find food and 2) to breed. Love is in the air for coyotes.
Smelt-dippers hit brooks pouring into lakes and ponds now. Folks love eating sautéed smelts, but this baitfish – live or frozen – is getting so expensive that folks who use these little fish for bait pass up meals of fried smelts in order to build up a bait stockpile.
After a winter of inactivity, exercising gets folks hopping – runners, walkers, hikers and bikers. These folks pick up the intensity right now, and drivers on major highways see these colorfully attired exercisers on road edges – doing their thing.
White-water canoeing booms this month as folks paddle swollen rivers and practice running rapids for trips on northern rivers later in the month.
Outdoors types are busy all right, but this month offers enough leisurely time for them to socialize a lot while doing their thing. Next month, fishing and turkey hunting add intensity to days afield!
Tips of the Month
Home-fry Recipe for Health Nuts
Folks often cook a main dish with health considerations in mind, and then, they often lose that benefit on side dishes containing lots of fat. Cheese or butter sauces over broccoli, cauliflower or peas pop to mind.
The home-fry recipe below ranks as a delightful exception because the fat ingredient is but two tablespoons of olive oil – that’s it, and it works! And what’s more basic for many outdoor main dishes than a side of home fries?
This simple dish goes by the name “Massachusetts-style homefries,” because a Navy man from the Bay State gave it to me, and it goes perfectly with morning eggs or with evening venison steak, sautéed brook trout or poached salmon steaks.
Indeed, Mass-style home fries have carbs but little fat and lots of vitamin B6, B3 and C as well as potassium, manganese and copper, plus phytochemicals (beta carotene and more) that rival broccoli.
The recipe begins with a cast-iron Dutch oven with a recessed cover. (Raw potatoes stick in a thin stainless-steel Dutch oven.) Add two tablespoons of olive oil to the bottom and spread it around to coat the iron evenly.
Next, peel four, fairly large, raw potatoes and then cut into 1/2-inch chunks (must be small in order to cook to softness) and also peel and rough chop a half-onion. Put the potatoes into the Dutch oven and cover with chopped onion. Season with salt and pepper. Some folks like garlic powder and herbs such as dill or rosemary. I prefer dill, and lots of it.
Cover the Dutch oven tightly and place on a medium-low heat. As soon as the potatoes start sizzling, set a timer for 15 minutes. Steam cooks the potatoes so don’t peek and allow steam to escape from the pot.
After 15 minutes, remove the cover and eat a piece of potato. Almost inevitably, it’ll be soft, but if not, cover the Dutch oven again and cook five more minutes.
Once satisfied with the softness, remove the cover and flip the potato layer over with a spatula, which puts the onions on bottom to caramelize. The potatoes turned over to the top will be brown, so now, brown the rest for the next 15 minutes, occasionally flipping the potatoes so they don’t burn.
The result? An extremely flavorful potato dish that always impresses guests, who often comment, “…Just two tablespoons of oil!”
Maine Nymphs for Success
An excellent list of nymphs for Maine fly fishing for much of the season would include Beadhead Copper John in sizes 12 through 20, Beadhead Prince in sizes 10 through 16 and heavy on size 14s, Pheasant Tail in sizes 12 through 20, Hare’s Ear in sizes 12 through 20, Zug Bug in sizes 10 through 16, LaFontaine Sparkle Deep Pupa in green, tan, gold and gray bodies in size 12 through 18, Black and yellow Stoneflies in sizes 2 through 10 on 8x (no kidding) down to 4x long hooks and most importantly, a CDC Caddis Emerger with an olive body in sizes 18 through 24.
The later works from late spring through fall during prevalent olive-body caddis hatches and particularly – for some strange reason – for ultra-wary trout during BWO hatches, even though the CDC Caddis Emerger has no tails.
These choices get fly rodders through most situations except before heavy hatches that have nymphs that do not resemble any of the above. We all know these fly choices for home rivers, though, or at least we’re in the process of learning.
Where the Action Is
In northern Maine, April Fool’s Day looks like winter. Even in the South Country, snow clings to the backside of ridges under forest canopies, and ice socks in ponds and lakes.
Spring begins quickly on coastal islands, so now, bicyclists may start the upcoming biking season by traveling to Islesboro in Penobscot Bay. Little villages and rural roads on this island look like paintings in elementary reading books from the 1950s – picket fences lining roadside lawns, houses with shutters, white clapboard shingles and black, asphalt shingles on the roofs. (Check DeLorme Atlas, Map 14, C-5 and Map 15, B-1 for details.)
In 25 Bicycle Tours in Maine, by Howard Stone, this where-to author wrote, “Of the dozens of islands that dot the Maine coast, Islesboro is by far the finest for bicycling.”
Do we require a better invitation?
Stone claims that the 10-mile long Islesboro is somewhat flat for pedalers, and the hills are short-short, but at times wicked steep. April traffic on this island hasn’t picked up yet as it will by June. Visitors use a ferry to Islesboro from Lincolnville Beach just north of Camden.
White-water Canoeing
White-water canoeing attracts paddlers to spring flows in rivers and large streams. In Maine, the Sheepscot River from Coopers Mills (DeLorme Atlas, Map 13, C-3) to Puddle Dock in Alna (E-2), has become a go-to destination for white-water canoeists each spring – an excellent run for folks with intermediate skills. And, any rapids requiring a tad more canoe knowledge can be easily carried around.
From Route 17 in Coopers Mills to Kings Mills requires white-water canoeing experience, because the Sheepscot below the Route 17 bridge is rocky. Worse yet, the river upstream of the confluence with the West Branch is narrow enough for a huge tree to fall across the river.
From Kings Mills to Head Tide, the river widens and has Class II to III rapids for a 7-mile stretch, depending on water level. Head Tide to Puddle Dock requires experience but is an easier run.
Years ago in April, a boyhood friend, David Brann of Windsor, and I ran this stretch in high water and collected strings of ground nuts (a delicious tuber relished by Indians and early settlers) off the bank for a shoreside lunch. High water had washed away topsoil, exposing the free meal to two hungry canoeists harvesting the wild food, while sitting in a canoe seat.
Early April almost guarantees a flood of water, but late April might be rocky.
News and Tidbits
Moose Troubles in Southern Range Habitat
In northwestern Minnesota during the 1980s, the moose population held at 4,000, but that figure has dropped to about 100. In northeastern Minnesota, moose have declined by half since 2006 – 4,300 from a little over 8,800. The decline was so steep in 2012 – a 35-percent drop – that the state and local Chippewa tribes closed their moose hunt. These people rely on the world’s largest deer for food.
Researchers in New Hampshire and Montana, two other states along the southern extreme of moose range, have also noticed moose numbers declining. Mortality rates in Minnesota rebounded slightly this year, but moose continue to die at twice the normal rate to sustain a population.
Winter cold destroys pests that prey on moose – pests such as ticks and meningeal worm – but Seth Moore, a wildlife biologist in Grand Portage, Minnesota thinks that recent warmer, shorter winters and hotter, longer summers have resulted in a twofold problem:
1. Changing climate stresses moose out, compromising their immune systems.
2. Warmer temperatures have allowed white-tailed deer populations to increase, and these whitetails carry brain worm – fatal to moose.
Still, “I’m not necessarily convinced that brain worm is the silver bullet that’s killing all of the moose,” Dr. Moore said. “There are a number of different issues.”
However, Maine moose on the southern edge of their habitat are not experiencing precipitous declines, a region where deer have dwindled to one to two animals per square mile, creating less of a brain-worm problem for Moose. Perhaps Dr. Moore found the silver bullet without realizing it.
Heat Lose through Head
Throughout our lives, outdoors folks read and hear statistics about how much body heat humans lose through their heads, and figures vary from 20 percent (my favorite stat) to 80 percent.
However, heat-lose studies reveal a truth that sounds ever so logical. Our body’s total exposed surface area loses pretty much the same amount of heat, unless we’re naked. The head represents about 10 percent of our body’s surface area, so if the head lost 75 percent to 80 percent of the body’s heat of a naked person, that would figure out to a loss of 40 times more heat per square inch from the head than from other places on the body – unlikely. Tests of college students showed that they lost the same amount of heat in any exposed area.
In short, humans indeed lose a high percentage of heat through the head, if we’re outdoors in the cold and dressed in warm clothes, boots and gloves but no hat. The heat lose through the head in such a scenario would be similar to heat lost through the legs if someone were wearing shorts.
The lesson? Wear a warm hat, and in cool to frigid temperatures, avoid going outdoors in shorts and sleeveless shirts.
Canadian Gun Laws Serious!
In the last three years, border officials at Canadian entry points have confiscated 1,400 firearms, most of them personal guns belonging to U.S. citizens, according to a Los Angeles Times article.
The lead to the story included an anecdote about Louis DiNatale, a retired military man, who was driving his wife’s vehicle and didn’t intend to drive into Ontario from New York last September. His destination was a weekend retreat for him and his wife in Vermont, but a GPS malfunction caused him to take a wrong turn.
When DiNatale saw Canadian custom agents, he stopped, explained his dilemma and requested permission to turn around, but they questioned him and asked about any firearms in the car. He had forgotten putting the handgun into the car’s console several days before, allegedly an honest error.
The agents found it, arrested him and placed him for four days in jail until he could post bail. As of this writing, he awaits trial.
DIF&W Moose Research Program
On Feb. 1 in The Forks, research crews from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) finished capturing and collaring moose in northern Somerset County for a 5-year research program. Over a span of 3-1/2 days, DIF&W placed radio collars on 30 adult females and 30 moose calves. These wildlife biologists will monitor their actions and life cycle, researching the causes of death and the reproductive capabilities of the females.
“All collars are working, and we are now tracking each of the 60 moose,” said Lee Kantar, a DIF&W moose biologist. The collars are GPS-enabled and transmit location data twice a day, allowing the department to track movement remotely by computer.
“Now the research begins, as we follow these moose cows and calves, and examine their movements and their lifespan,” said Kantar.
If a collared moose dies, a mortality signal is sent, and a team of biologists will trek in to the dead moose and determine cause of death.
Maine’s moose population is “healthy and strong,” according to Kantar, but other states are experiencing population declines.
Woodies Survived 1938 Hurricane’s Blow
Until three-quarters of a century ago, wood ducks nested almost exclusively in old, hollow, hardwood trees along riverine habitat, but the great hurricane of 1938 devastated Maine and New England and in the process, knocked many of these nesting sites over. This raised havoc with wood-duck populations. Without standing, hollow trunks, this species lost its breeding sites. Populations plummeted.
…Enter an ambitious nesting-box program, and wood ducks have made a huge comeback in this state and the rest of New England. For decades, volunteers have built wood duck nesting boxes, and have raised thousands of ducks. Now, this species is common in the Pine Tree State.
DDT Damages Two Jewels
In the mid-20th century, people spread an agricultural insecticide widely in New England to destroy gypsy moths and other perceived insect threats. The organochloride went by the long name dichlorodiphenyltrichlorothane (DDT), and it destroyed bald-eagle and peregrin-falcon populations in Maine, nearly wiping them out.
Government officials banned DDT in this country during 1972, and eventually, thanks to that legislation and the Endangered Species Act in 1973, eagles and peregrines successfully started the long road back.
Where folks widely sprayed DDT in Maine, the toxin also destroyed landlocked-salmon populations, a result which in 1972 and 1973 encouraged the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to stock Sebago Lake with lake trout (togue) to replace the seriously dwindling salmon fishery. This misguided decision created a biological intrusion on this lake’s native landlock population as togue out-competed salmon for landlocked rainbow smelt.
(Many folks in the 21st century have forgotten that Paul Mullen won the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his discovery of DDT.)
Maine’s Extinct and Extirpated Species
Not all is rosy with wildlife in New England, though, including in Maine. Passenger pigeons, great auks, Labrador ducks and sea mink have become extinct, and humans have extirpated gray wolves, walrus, woodland caribou, wolverines and elk.
The State Museum by the Capital Building in Augusta has a stuffed sea mink in an ocean-scene display, which saddens folks who know the fate of this species. Whenever they pass this display with water gently lapping onto rocks, they face a truth.
No one will ever see this species alive in the wild again. They became extinct circa 1894, after outdoorsmen hunted and trapped them for their fur, according to Wikipedia. Maine’s rocky coast provided excellent habitat for them, but compared to inland or straight ocean habitats, this species had a very finite habitat easily exploited by developers wanting to sell waterfront property.
This species averaged about 25 inches in length, and one record specimen was 32-1/2 inches long. That’s a lot of mink!
Crossroads of Weather Patterns
As most Maine middle-school children can tell us, our state lies halfway between the equator and North Pole and on the eastern edge of a huge continent next to a big ocean stretching to the Old World.
This geography generates major air current from different directions that bring warm, hot or frigid temperatures into Maine. Our weather has huge ranges that often change by the day – or even hour.
Most of us remember the intense cold this past winter, thanks to arctic air gushing in from the northwest for much of the winter. We all suffered and burned our share of fuels to stay warm.
Air currents from the northeast give us cool, foggy air, while breezes from the southwest or Gulf Stream warm us up. Those southwest winds in July and August make Maine feel like the South with 90-degree-plus weather and oppressive humidity.
Big Storms!
Sometimes in Maine, air currents push a low-pressure spot eastward toward this state. If that one collides with a low pressure sailing up the Eastern Seaboard, the result is lots of rain or snow, because the two lows become a bigger low. When this occurs, meteorologists apologize about excessive inclement weather and often unseasonably cool temperatures.
Forests Slowly Rejuvenated
By 1850, woodcutters had cleared three-quarters of all the land in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont. By 1875, humans had cut much of the forests in Waldo County, Maine to make fields for agriculture. Since then, we’ve regained forests in New England, particularly northern New England, and particularly in Maine. Over 90 percent of this state’s land has forests. …One success story in the modern age – unless you are a developer.
Bird of the Month
Eastern Phoebe Says ‘Phoebe’
Eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), a member of the flycatcher family, earned part of that name from its call – a well-enunciated “phoe-bee.” In my humble opinion, though, black-capped chickadees make a better fee–bee sound, but who’s keeping track?
Phoebes also make a loud chip and according to Sibley, also emit “…a series of rough-whistled phrases translated as seeeriddip and seebrr.”
This sparrow-sized, grayish bird measures seven inches in length, has a 10-1/2-inch wingspan and weighs nearly 3/4-ounce. The species has a somewhat long, thinner bill that leans toward slate colored, and its feet and legs are dark gray, too. Phoebes have faint to no wing bars and no eye ring, not obvious from a long distance.
However, the tail bobbing does distinguish this bird for ID purposes for really far-away sightings. That darker gray tail jacks up and down as if a pod-auger-day farmer is operating an old-fashioned water-pump handle in a drought.
Phoebes and similar-looking peewees (the latter has eye rings and two light wing bars) sit in a mountain ash on the edge of my lawn, too far away to see picky points, but the phoebe’s tail pronounces which is which.
One of my most memorable encounters with a phoebe, one of so many, occurred on an unseasonably warm but lowery day in early April. A phoebe was hopping around on the ground beneath a clump of stately paper birches near my office window. On the further side of the birches about six yards from the phoebe, a male woodcock probed for earthworms with its 2 1/2-inch, prehensile bill – the latter bird really an odd sighting on my lawn – a game bird within 10 yards of my garage door.
These birds offered two certain signs of spring, and within an hour, I told that story about the two “signs of spring” to my intrepid companion, Jolie, and to two amateur naturalists.
As the family name “flycatcher” indicates, phoebes are bug eaters and particularly like flying insects. When early-spring cold eliminates invertebrates from the menu for a few days, phoebes may forage on last fall’s leftover berries, but they target bugs when possible.
And woodcock need soft earth to poke their bill into the ground to find earthworms, and they perform mating-ritual displays at dusk when temperatures drop. The ideal is for the thermometer not to fall too much.
My phoebe and woodcock on the lawn that April needed a little warmth to bring them here and hold them, but that year for the next seven to 10 days, one huge snowstorm covered the state and two minor ones struck, while an arctic cold front slid down from Canada. …So much for nature signs. (Ken Allen)
Do You Know?
Season Limits on Furbearers
Do you know if any furbearer species in Maine have a season bag limit?
Book Corner
Wild Plants of Maine – A Useful Guide
Tom Seymour, a The Maine Sportsman columnist for over 30 years, has written 12 books for a variety of publishers, and one of them, Wild Plants of Maine – A Useful Guide (Just Write Books, Topsham, Maine), has an apt title, because it indeed is “a useful guide” for Maine’s wild, edible plants.
Colorful photos fill this 164-page softcover edition, mostly of wild plants to help readers with IDs, and the text for each one offers 1) useful points for identification, 2) short, entertaining anecdotes with crisp, clear imagery, 3) solid information on uses, and 4) occasionally even folklore behind some plants.
One perfect example of Seymour’s style begins on the bottom of page 64, when Seymour highlights pineapple weed (Matricaria matricarioides), a low-growing plant that is found beside dirt driveways and lawn edges. It has a distinct pineapple smell – hence the name.
Seymour writes, “This low-growing annual is probably best known for what it isn’t than for what it is.”
Indeed, many folks mistake pineapple weed for chamomile, and coincidentally, I did – after a school teacher (who taught wild plants in junior high) showed me this plant years ago, identified it as chamomile and gave met a cup of tea, made from the plant.
I never gave the identification a second thought for the next 25 years. Then, one afternoon, Seymour and I were standing in his driveway, and I mentioned the chamomile on the edge of his driveway. In a humble, soft-spoken way, he pointed out my error.
At one point in my life, I spent lots of time gathering wild plants for food and teas, and this plant was one of them. I’d drink my pineapple-flavored tea and tell others it was wild chamomile. This book can save folks from this embarrassment.
Wild Plants of Maine contains descriptions of 72 Maine plants with colored photos and Latin names. (Readers often wonder why writers include Latin names as if they are showing off scientific knowledge, but the Latin describes the specific plant species exactly.) The “Table of Contents” lists the plants with page numbers, making it easy to look up plants in the book.
When first perusing this book, I immediately looked in the back for an index, and of course, knowing Seymour, I figured one would be there. In the modern world, more and more published books have no index – baffling to me. It is such a wonderful aid for readers.
This book cost $24.95 and could be the one text for wild-plant gathering – a book that will become dog-eared and soiled from constant use in the field. (Ken Allen)
Innocent Bystander
We Need Freelance Writers Here
We welcome the work of freelance writers at The Maine Sportsman, and to break in with us, please begin by sending us queries, not the finished article. Established, professional writers seldom write an article, until they have sold the idea to an editor at a magazine or newspaper.
We buy quality articles here. To sell to us, writers must closely scrutinize several issues of The Maine Sportsman before sending the query. …More on writing a winning query later in this section.
Reading articles in this publication tells potential writers this:
• Our regional writers produce articles with specific where-to in Maine and nearly saturate that need, so we seldom buy where-to pieces.
• Our subject columnists often write how-to specific to Maine and prove good models for beginning writers to emulate.
• Both regional and subject writers do where-to and specific how-to. The regional folks send writers to specific places with how-to help for those regions. The how-to people may mention regions but concentrate on how-to specific to a particular destination.
• “Special Sections” are how-to except for some of the snowmobile and ATV pieces, which are often where-to – such as snowmobiling in the East Podunk region.
• We seldom buy why-to (“mood”) pieces. Writers must have superb skills to write mood articles. If folks don’t have writing experience or aren’t covering a topic imbedded in their soul, forget it.
In the March and April issues, Bobby Reynolds offered us a why-to article that – please excuse the cliché – blew me away, so we immediately accepted it.
One important point for writing here is this:
The Maine Sportsman offers a wonderful place for beginning and experienced writers to work, because article sales here may lead to bigger and better options for our writers later – such as selling to higher-paying markets. So, besides writing at a fun place, folks can learn enough to have a shot at national markets.
Many of our writers have become editors and sold books, newspaper columns, chain newspaper columns, magazine articles, magazine columns and internet blogs.
Jim Babb, a “Central Maine” columnist for us in the 1970s, works as an editor at prestigious Gray’s Sporting Journal, Tom Seymour has written 12 books, and other writers here have sold books – not self-published.
I have written an outdoor column (“Allen Afield”) for Maine’s largest newspaper chain for 26 years, which partially evolved from my cooking column that ran in The Maine Sportsman from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. That column generated a cookbook (the book publisher approached me) that later, a managing editor at the Kennebec Journal loved, so he hired me as a columnist. I’ve also edited for several book publishers and for years routinely sold to national magazines.
The absolute best way to sell an article that shows professionalism begins with sending a 1-page, single-spaced, 3-paragraph query – not a complete article.
In the query, 1) The first paragraph should be the first paragraph of the article – riveting enough for anyone to want to see the rest, 2) the second paragraph is a brief summary of the article and 3) the third the writer’s qualifications. If the potential writer has no writing experience, key on practical experience.
If you have a dream of being a writer, then I’d like to see a 3-paragraph query. As the cliché goes, this may be the first day of the rest of your life. (Ken Allen)
Next Month
Mayfly Month Ensures
Exciting Fly-Fishing Days
May is mayfly month in the South Country, as blue quills, red quills, Hendricksons and March browns hatch on warm afternoons. Many of us from central and southern Maine learned our fly-fishing skills as little tykes at this very time of year, casting on rivers, streams and brooks.
In the North Country, folks in the know are dunking worms into 39- to 44-degree waters, a time when catching two or three brook trout a day seems like a big deal and turns into a lifetime memory.
An odd phenomenon occurs in May from Kittery to Fort Kent. As winter pushes spring out, we look at greening in fields, foliage making timid appearances and all the other little viridescent explosions, and we may think, “Wow, all this green looks marvelous!”
I remember this feeling in my 20s, when photography first impressed me. I’d shoot photo after photo and in those days, wait one to two weeks for the developed film. By the time it came, the green in the outdoors around me had increased 10-fold, and the photos would look drab. That’s Maine. Early green excites us after a long winter, but the reality in the photos shows us that we don’t see full green until late May. By May 31, Maine is as green as it ever gets, and that shade continues through June.
Turkey hunting rules this month, but oddly, a majority of Mainers ignore these big birds. That small segment of the population who does hunt turkeys lives for it, though.
Birders are going crazy now as all the songbirds return, particularly the colorful warblers. They’re singing and breeding and just making life exciting at birdfeeders and in the woods. Birdwatching is the nation’s fastest growing spectator sport, and why not? It’s inexpensive and exciting and offers camaraderie.
Bicycling, running, walking and hiking pick up big time, but for the slower sports, black flies can aggravate the participants, reminding me of a windless evening five years ago. In mid-May, I was pedaling my road bicycle up a hill from Belgrade Lakes village, while these hungry hordes savagely chewed me. The steepness of hill had me traveling about the speed of a runner. …Pity the poor walkers and hikers who go even slower.
Answer to “Do You Know?”
Maine’s Season Limit on Two Furbearers
Maine has a season limit on two furbearers. A trapper cannot catch or possess more than 25 marten and 10 fisher per season.
