Backcasts archive: Through Oct. 26, 2007
By Brett PaulyBlog calendar: Oct. 26 | Oct. 25 | Oct. 24 | Oct. 23 | Oct. 22
Successful N.D. crop-conservation endeavor has pheasant hunting to thank
What a field day for outdoor news in papers around the country today … or at least around the Puget Sound. Very uplifting stories on fishing and hunting grace pages A1 and A3 in the Seattle Times, and we're quite certain other newspapers picked them up. It's rare when the stars align and people get to read two positive pieces about our favorite recreations.
Out front today is a feature from the Wall Street Journal, no less, on the state of college fishing as a team sport. Backcasts has been aware of bass-fishing university teams competing for some time, but to see a teaser headline like "Hook, line and thinkers" getting such prominent ink does a sportsman's heart good.
But the really encouraging piece was on the Times' Close Up page, which on this day of rotating subject matter concentrated on the environment.
The Newhouse News Service special written by Bob Marshall of the Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans profiles a conservation effort that has pheasant hunting to thank for its success.
First know that southwestern North Dakota is like a mecca for ringneck pursuers, with game and conditions that might be better than ever, according to the article, which describes on one recent hunt how 12 monster roosters lay on the tailgate of the pickup, how a northerly breeze flushed more birds and how others walked across a road less than a football field's length away.
Welcome to Regent, N.D., where a consortium of 40 farmers and landowners are managing pheasant hunting on some 60,000 acres of marginal cropland as a way, Newhouse News Service reports, to protect and restore their property and pump some money into their dying town.
It's seemingly a perfect scenario: everything is locally owned and operated, from the guides that are required to the B&Bs that house the shooters. Profits of the reasonably prized hunts are shared among the participating farms based on the number of birds taken from each. The manager of the group – called the Cannonball Company – expects an economic impact of more than $1.5 million this year.
Please read the entire piece and let us know if you think it's as remarkable a conservation endeavor as we do.
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Editor's note: This is the 11th installment of My Back Pages, which recalls previous columns penned by the author. And with devastating fires still raging in San Diego, we thought perhaps we'd throw a little water on the subject with a fishing feature from this fair city.
My Back Pages: Long-range industry had modest beginnings
Accommodating enterprise started without showers or refrigeration
SAN DIEGO — "Let's make history."
The words were uttered in October 1936 by Jesse Geltman, one of 12 passengers aboard the 65-foot Sportfisher II as it departed San Diego on what is considered the first organized long-range trip.
And they did, according to San Diego angling historian Ed Ries, author of "Tales of the Golden Years of California Ocean Fishing: 1900-1950."
The vessel returned to port after a two-week voyage to Mexico's Cabo San Lucas with 23 sailfish and 54 marlin in the ice hold, Ries said, citing newspaper accounts of the day and a biography of the boat's owner and operator, San Diego entrepreneur Frank Kiessig.
The buzz from the journey was riveting and unique.
Angler Mike Wartinik boated five marlin on his first outing in one of the four 16-foot skiffs carried by the Sportfisher II and was unable to raise his right arm during the remainder of the trip.
A hooked marlin rammed his skiff, leaving three inches of its bill embedded in the hull.
"It caused a sensation among the angling circles," Ries said.
And so was born the long-range tradition.
The next year, he built the Sportfisher III to sleep 36 passengers instead of 18; it had a cruising range of 3,000 miles round-trip instead of 2,000.
"He had a monopoly on long-range trips early on," Ries said.
Kiessig died in 1938 and his son Otto took over until World War II put a halt to such endeavors.
Otto Kiessig started the business again after the war and built the Sportfisher IV, V and VI before selling out to another operator, who in turn sold out to Lee Palm, famed for his Red Rooster long-range boats and the charter operation that still bears his name.
The long-range trade took off in early 1950s with Palm and Bill Poole — who broke into the business with his original Polaris — at the helm, Riessaid.
Poole made his first long-range trip in 1951 — seven days to Guadalupe Island with 13 passengers who paid $175 apiece.
"It was really tough," Poole said. "There was no refrigeration; it was all ice. No showers, either. We turned on a small deck hose and passengers washed with saltwater."
Poole, who later began operating a booming outfit under his flagship Excel, is largely credited with pushing long-range fishing to its present state.
Ships provide luxurious accommodations, gourmetlike meals and the ability to travel 23 days and fetch yellowfin tuna to 400 pounds to the tune of more than $4,000 a ticket.
"It's been tremendous leaps and bounds," said the San Diego businessman.
With the proximity to Mexico's agreeable climate and tremendous big-game fish, Ries said, "There is nothing like this in the world. We have the only live-bait, long-range sport-fishing fleet in the world."
This article originally appeared Sept. 17, 1998, in the Los Angeles Daily News.
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What party animals came first, inebriated elephants or wasted tailgaters?
Remember those wild things from the pregame party at (fill in the football stadium) last weekend?
Well it seems they've got company in the form of another family in our kingdom – pachyderms; we're just not sure from which the term party animals was derived, inebriated elephants or wasted tailgaters.
It turns out six Asiatic wild elephants, a species particularly fond of rice beer, recently stumbled onto a pot of fermented gold while scrounging for food in a village in India's remote northeast, the Associated Press reports from Gauhati, India.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all fun and games for these gigantic, wrinkled rebel rousers. They went on a rampage, overturned a utility pole carrying power lines and were electrocuted in Chandan Nukat, a village nearly 150 miles west of Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya state, said Sunil Kumar, a state wildlife official.
The six troublemakers were part of a group of 40 long trunks that invaded the village and discovered plastic and tin drums of rice beer that is traditionally brewed in huts by tribal communities. The tragedy could have been worse.
"There would have been more casualties had the villagers not chased them away," said Dipu Mark, a local conservationist.
And apparently the scene is part of a vicious cycle of overindulgence among the great beasts. Four wild elephants died in similar circumstances in India's northeast three years ago, according to the AP.
The region accounts for the world's largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants, with the states of Assam and Meghalaya alone estimated to have 7,000 of them.
"It's great to have such a huge number of elephants, but the increasing man-elephant conflict following the shrinkage in their habitat due to the growing human population is giving us nightmares," said Pradyut Bordoloi, former Assam Forest and Environment Minister.
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Tony England restaurant goes wild, serves up squirrel wraps
Now this is what we like to see: Squirrel as gourmet food.
Yes, in posh, old England, Peking duck-style squirrel wraps are being served at a very tony restaurant.
Not only that, diners at The Famous Wild Boar Hotel at Crook, near Windermere, in Cumbria, are able to sample squirrel pancakes free of charge, London's Daily Mail reports.
It's like that old, county joke:
What's better than squirrel pancakes?
Free squirrel pancakes!
The swanky meals apparently are the end result of a conservation effort. Grey squirrels are fairly overrunning the hotel's 72-acre woodland grounds, at the expense of the less common red squirrel, according to the newspaper.
More than 4,500 grey squirrels have been on the property killed this year and rather than just dump them, a plan was hatched to serve the nutty pests to guests at the hotel.
"Our diners seemed to enjoy the squirrel pancakes, and I thought they tasted rather nice, a bit like rabbit," said hotel general manager Andy Lemm. (And we always thought squirrel tasted more like chicken. Go figure.)
Gotta say, from the looks of the platter head chef Marc Sanders is holding in the photo on the story Web page, those canapés look quite tasty. And what a bargain!
The article goes on to suggest some officials believe the red squirrel will soon become extinct if the non-native gray squirrel population continues to increase unchecked and that establishing a market for gray squirrel meat might be one solution to the issue.
Best entry from the article's message board, from Tom in New York, N.Y.:
"Here in N.Y., gray squirrel pancake is better known as roadkill."
Wildlife corridor over L.A. freeway? Now that is wild
L.A. has much more to worry about recently (read: red, hot and burning) than a controversial proposal for a $455,000 wildlife corridor over the amazingly busy 405 freeway, but we can still make a couple of observations.
The plan calls for a special path to be created on the Skirball Center Drive bridge so that wild animals from deer and bobcats to coyotes and opossums can safely cross the interstate at Sepulveda Pass.
Even some staunch supporters of green causes are ridiculing the idea, the Los Angeles Times reports. We can certainly understand that, given the region's epic traffic snarls and the lack of government revenue for fed-up commuters. There has to be something better to spend transportation funding on, right?
According to the newspaper, the cost could skyrocket to $1.4 million if proponents can persuade city officials to make the wildlife corridor even longer.
But, hey, maybe this is the best of all the recent strange outdoor ideas in Los Angeles?
It definitely sounds more plausible that the one that's floating around to create a wildlife refuge along a concrete flood-control channel that passes for the Los Angeles River.
And how about the popularity of the City of Angel's Toxic Tour, which offers bus excursions to everything from slaughterhouses to an oil refinery to an elementary school where a factory's chlorine gas once sickened dozens of people.
Heck, maybe someone came up with the notion of a wildlife corridor over the four-oh-five after getting off the bus in "Asthma Town."
And if Angelenos aren't in favor of a pathway for Bambi and Thumper, maybe they could start pushing squirrel pancakes on Rodeo Drive with the animals that don't survive the interstate.
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Those wallets sure have a big bite; crocs on the loose in Thailand
Now here's a scary deal:
You survive Thailand's terrible floods only to discover a new threat lurking – 20-foot-long crocodiles that escaped in the high water.
That's the story in the northeastern portion of the country, where marksmen were cruising rivers in search of 11 crocs that slithered away from a farm, the Associated Press reports from Bangkok.
Thirty-four of the flesh-eating reptiles escaped the commercial farm in Nakorn Ratchasima province last week, but the rest have been shot and killed, said Suwira Phonkoh, an official in the province's special task force to help flood victims.
Many people in the province have been evacuated due to the flooding. Authorities warned the remaining residents about the crocodiles, which were being raised for their meat and skins.
Some of the would-be wallets, boots and handbags are as long as 20 feet, and authorities said capturing them was increasingly difficult. Experts from a Bangkok zoo have been asked to help in the search.
"The area is huge, and the big crocodiles are more skillful and they can dive longer than small ones," Suwira said.
Our advice of the day comes from "Apocalypse Now." It was tigers then, and crocs now, but the message is equally clear:
Stay on the boat! Stay on the boat!
About the author: Brett Pauly spent nearly six years editing and publishing ESPNOutdoors.com before moving on to produce the ESPN.com Sports Travel site. He is a national award-winning writer and editor with 14 years of experience in the newspaper trade, including stints at the Los Angeles Daily News and Seattle Times. The Evergreen State is where he now makes his home. Click here to email him.
