Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993 TAG: 9311300356
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``He also lives in his Volkswagen,'' said Street.
\ WORST NUISANCE: You were more likely to spot Elvis than you were a squirrel during the early squirrel hunting season. Then when the deer season opened squirrels suddenly showed up by the hundreds to harass sportsmen who had traded their .22s for .30-06s. Big squirrels. Huge squirrels. Noisy squirrels. Sleek squirrels. Aggressive squirrels. Squirrels intent on sharing your tree stand. Squirrels that coveted your PayDay candy bar. Bully squirrels. Deer-spooking squirrels. Hell-raising squirrels.
BEST EFFORT: Mike Shifflett of Glasgow who killed a 17-point buck during the muzzleloader season that is expected to rank high in this year's Virginia Big Game Contest.
``I work like hell all summer, and come October I am gone for the rest of the hunting season. I hunt every day. All the money in the world and the best equipment in the world to hunt deer isn't worth a darn. What counts is time. Time and a place to hunt big deer.''
SAVE YOUR AMMO AWARD: Goes to Ramond and Ricky Smith of Floyd County who came home with two trophy bucks, an eight-pointer and a nine-pointer, without firing their guns. The two animals had been fighting in a creek where they locked antlers and apparently drowned.
HORNS OF DILEMMA AWARD: Jim Bowman had a kindly Bedford County landowner invite him to hunt, but told him he only could kill does. Bowman killed one, but after that the female deer got smart.
``While waiting for that mother of all does to walk by my tree stand, it seemed that all I could see was antlered bucks, one of them a fairly nice eight-pointer,'' said Bowman, who is a game biologist with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. ``It occurred to me that I was deer hunting in reverse.''
BEST QUESTION FOR THE OUTDOOR EDITOR: ``I've noticed that there are a whole lot more fishing guides in this region than deer hunting guides. Any reason?''
ANSWER: So far no one ever has mistaken a fishing guide for a fish.
\ BEST GADGET: A 52-inch, camouflage-colored umbrella with a special mounting bracket that attaches to the tree trunk above your deer stand.
WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT GADGET: A portable, hand-held game finder that helps you locate wounded or downed game through infrared heat detection. Guaranteed to detect a deer at 250 feet. Cost: $199.99.
WHAT ALDO LEOPOLD SAID ABOUT GADGETS: ``To sum up, wildlife once fed us and shaped our culture. It still yields us pleasure for leisure hours, but we try to reap that pleasure by modern machinery and thus destroy part of its value.''
STRANGESTHEADDRESS: The antlered deer Kathryn Arritt shot for a buck in Roanoke County that turned out to be a doe.
BIG BUCKS: Hunters contribute $14 billion a year to the nation's economy, according to the research of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. That amounts to $40 million a day, which pumps more into the economy each year than corporate giants such as Coca-Cola, RJA Nabisco, Anheuser -Bush and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
The foundation didn't say, but that probably amounts to $1,362.48 for each pound of venison brought to the table.
SMALL BUCKS: It appears that the Hunters for the Hungry program will produce about 75,000 pounds of venison for the needy. That's great. Better than last year. But it could have been 125,000. By the second week of the season processors were having to turn hunters away who had a deer to donate because of the lack of the folding kind of bucks necessary to operate the program.
BEST SHOT: Hunter in Bedford County who shot the head off a turkey with his black-powder gun at 70 yards.
WORST SHOT: Hunter who shot at three deer, including two six-point bucks, without getting any of them. (By the way, he was the same hunter who earlier shot the head off the turkey at 70 yards.)
I DIDN`T KNOW THE GUN WAS LOADED AWARD: Goes to the scores of hunters who have been arrested in the Shenandoah Valley for having loaded guns in or on their vehicle while on national forest property. A new law this season says no loaded guns in vehicles on national forest or Department of Game and Inland Fisheries property - even during the hunting season.
GRIN AND BEAR IT AWARD: Most hunters are aware that state game wardens will set deer decoys along roadways to nab road hunters. But a couple of hunters in Giles County discovered that enforcement officers also are using bear decoys.
``They knew they had been had,'' said Game Warden Lt. Steve Vinson of the hunters who stopped their vehicle to take a shot at the fake bear.
SECOND BEST QUESTION FOR THE OUTDOOR EDITOR: ``I had an unusual deer hunting trip where I killed a trophy buck. I want to write my story for a hunting magazine. Is there anything I can write that I can be certain will be accepted by a magazine?''
ANSWER: Yes. A check for a year's subscription.
by CNB