http://www.meridianstar.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:35:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003513.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003513.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:31:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003130.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003130.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003031.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_310003031.html Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:31:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_303001350.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_303001350.html A massive eleven point buck approached Tooney Hill’s stand site warily and stopped for just a second as something just didn’t look right. Taking one more step, the buck froze for an instant as he presented the perfect shot. With a simple click of a camera shutter, Hill’s season changed, even before it had begun. From the moment the trophy buck came into Hill’s sights via his game camera, the expert bowhunter thought of little else except harvesting the monster buck with his bow. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_303001649.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_303001649.html The big stir that a hunter causes while preparing for an upcoming deer season is rooted in the fact that getting ready is much of the fun. Here are some things to consider that might apply to the days ahead in your pursuit of the esteemed whitetail deer. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:33:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002559.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002559.html If you are a woman, 14 and older and you would like to learn more about the outdoor life style from the pioneer of women hunters, you are in luck. Brenda Valentine, “First Lady of Hunting,” will be at Roosevelt State Park near Morton beginning next Friday, October 30, for a session of the wildly popular Women in the Outdoors events. This is a three day event with expert instructors, including Brenda, that women with even a remote interest in the outdoors simply must attend. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:24:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002131.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002131.html Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002012.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296002012.html Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:19:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296001643.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_296001643.html A pair of mallard drakes and a hen swooped down right in front of my duck blind and I quickly centered my crosshairs on the lead duck and squeezed off several shots connecting with a duck each time. As I fired several more shots with my Canon Digital Rebel camera the ducks quickly darted toward the next blind. This time the drakes lucky reprieve didn’t last for long as guns blazed and a pair of ducks splashed into the water and our hunt had begun with a bang! Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:18:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289001854.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289001854.html Living at Bellamy, Alabama and being a forester, hunting was a way of life in earlier times when few ladies hunted. The Lockard Hunting Club held a ladies day hunt and the ladies came basically to eat. My wife, Ann, went with me on a deer drive. She slipped down a creek bank for about 10 yards and got mud all over her clothes. This was upsetting but she went on. We dove hunted at Mr. Joe Ward’s farm. He loaned Ann his 12 gauge shotgun and placed her on his personal stand. When the first dove came over we all told her to shoot. Well, the gun kicked her down onto a cow pad. That ended her dove hunting. As the children got older we took them hunting. Ann would not take a gun but she always went along. I remember taking them to the Naheola Swamp one time. She shot a squirrel dead center and declared that she was a good shot. Once we sat beside a large white oak tree eating a picnic lunch. A giant eight-point buck came by and I shot four or five times with my 30/40 Krag rifle. I missed. Ann said I should have let her shoot it and she would have killed it. The only thing we got that day was one squirrel and a lot of redbugs. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:09:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289000948.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289000948.html Tess Jolly peered intently through her scope, centered the crosshairs on a magnificent whitetail buck and squeezed the trigger until the rifle roared. In a split second the buck of her lifetime collapsed in a heap with a precision shot. The beautiful buck sported nine points and gross scored 153 and was the buck of her lifetime. My how times have changed! Born in Kansas to Ned and Ernestine Randle, young Jolly moved with her family to Ocala, Florida around the age of six. The rural Florida landscape fit Jolly to a T and she thrived in the outdoors. “I’ve been chasing bugs and picking up toads as far back as I can remember,” said Jolly. “After we moved to Ocala Dad joined a deer club and started deer hunting. Women were welcomed at the camp on Thanksgiving and Christmas days only.” Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:08:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289000919.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_289000919.html It is time for my loosely adhered to biennial or triennial tribute to teachers, specifically today those who taught me how to write sometimes coherent prose without my even knowing what they were doing and often not caring I envy teachers. They influence us when we can best be influenced; when we are young. We are usually too young to realize what valuable lessons we are absorbing from these who, for little pay and less recognition, shape and equip us for facing the world. My gratitude is directed toward every discipline, but especially toward teachers of the sciences and, for today’s topic, the English language. Though I had no clue at the time, what my Jr. High and High School English teachers were trying their best to teach me as I resisted daily, would become a passion of mine in early middle age and last for life. Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:27:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002748.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002748.html We decided to go to Colorado for the Muzzle-Loading Elk season because that’s the time of the start of the rut and would likely provide the best opportunity to hear the ear-piercing sounds of the bugling bull elk. It would mean we must get closer for a high percentage shot since no scopes are allowed and the effective range of the muzzle loader is much less than that of a rifle. But we wanted the experience of getting within 100 yards of this majestic animal, referred to by the Arapahoe Indians as “ghost creature” for his ability to inhabit an area continually while rarely being seen. We wanted to observe his mannerisms and maneuver in his habitat without disturbing him. Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:25:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002601.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002601.html With the opening day of bow season now behind us hunters like Brad Bounds are fired up and already in full hunting mode. Last fall Bounds made his first trip to the Nebraska farmlands in search of a trophy buck and was rewarded with the buck of a lifetime. Though Bounds had bow hunted briefly many years ago, he only recently took the up the sport in earnest and he has been very successful. A couple years ago Bounds purchased a Mathews Drenalin bow and began his bowhunting adventure. The first year he harvested his first deer with a bow and missed an eight pointer. Undeterred, the avid bowhunter kept practicing and set his sights on a Pope and Young buck. With visions of a Pope and Young in his dreams Bounds, and fellow hunter Lamar Arrington, made the trip to Nebraska in search of that elusive trophy. Bounds was going to bow hunt while Arrington scouted and waited for opening day of gun season. Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:23:00 +0000 http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002337.html http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_282002337.html During my elk hunt last month in one of the most remote areas of Colorado, its northwest corner, I got yet another taste of what day to day living out there is like. I have hunted there many times since an early mule deer hunt on Douglas Mountain some 30 years ago. So I am not surprised when a bear mistakes something of yours for its own and a mountain lion sighting is interesting but not unusual for my friends Wanda Walker and her daughter Dawn Nottingham who live there.