Now that's a bear

Where's Fort Smith?

Congratulations to Poteau for being named one of Outdoor Life’s Top 200 Towns for Sportsmen.

Poteau was ranked No. 145. That’s one spot ahead of Stuttgart, the duck hunting capital of the world. Poteau was one of only two Oklahoma cities to make the list and the closest town to Fort Smith.

According to OutdoorLife.com, the towns were chosen because they “offer affordable housing, low unemployment rates and the potential to earn a decent living, all within a short drive of first-rate hunting and fishing.”

And that begs the question — Why wasn’t Fort Smith in the top 200?

We sit smack dab on the Arkansas River, have several lakes, Frog Bayou and Lee Creek a short distance away and have the headquarters of PRADCO, yet Fort Smith isn’t known as a fishing town.

We’ve got Fort Chaffee and the Ozark and Ouachita National Forests, yet Fort Smith isn’t known as a hunting town.

Managing and improving our natural resources should be a higher priority for Fort Smithians. We’ve squandered them for too long.

Of course, that won't matter to city leaders. Not when they can rubber stamp yet another subdivision of McMansions to be built on Chaffee property. (Even during the economic crisis, they keep building spec homes out there. It just takes longer now, which ironically probably means they're built better than the slap-dash ones from two years ago.) And not when they start pushing for Pine Mountain Dam to be built on Lee Creek, one of the few free-flowing streams left in Crawford County.

Put this on your calendar

Plan accordingly ...

Season dates for the 2009-2010 deer hunting season:

Archery – All zones: Oct. 1 to Feb. 28.

Modern Gun - Zones 1, 1A, 2, 3, 6, 6A, 7, 8, 8A, 10 and 11: Nov. 14-Dec. 6.

Muzzleloader - Zones 1, 1A, 2, 3, 4A, 5A, 6, 6A, 7, 8, 8A, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15: Oct. 17-25 and Dec. 19-21.

The statewide Christmas holiday modern gun deer hunt is Dec. 26-28 with two special youth modern gun deer hunts.

Success!

I ran up to the cabin on Saturday. After only seeing a doe on Saturday afternoon, and nothing on Sunday morning, I decided to go to my stand by the pond earlier than normal.

About 30 minutes after I got there, I heard something running through the leaves. "Another damn squirrel" was my first thought. Then I saw a deer.

"Geez, another doe" ran through my head as I slumped back into the seat.

Then I saw the second deer. A buck.

Immediately, the heart rate jumped. He ran behind a small clump of trees, which let me raise the rifle with him seeing it. He slowly walked from my left to right. Once he cleared the last tree in the clump, I squeezed the trigger.

He ran about 15 yards and fell over.





My brother says I should have let him go. I guess he doesn't want any summer sausage, breakfast sausage or chili meat.

The importance of hunting

Great article in this week's Sports Illustrated about the importance of hunting in keeping the natural balance ...

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1148866/index.htm

Deer 1, Me 0

After a day and a half hunting, the deer won this round.

I thought I'd show y'all what I stared at for several hours this weekend. Here's my deer feeder. On Saturday, I had five does under it. No bucks.



In the distance there is the "big pond" as we call it at the cabin. I jumped about 40 wood ducks off it last weekend. On Saturday, they were back. We've never seen ducks on this pond. Never. I'm considering taking a shotgun up there once duck season begins. Who needs to hit a rice field in Walnut Ridge when you can shoot ducks off a pond in the heart of the Ozarks?



And I took this photo simply because I know Jen loves this hat.