ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601040031
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: OUTDOORS
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
Was it the slant of the sun or was it an escapee from someone's barnyard?
Ric Bryant was pondering those thoughts recently during a turkey hunt in Alleghany County.
He had spotted a flock of 11 turkeys, and one of them appeared to be white, a common color for domestic birds, but extremely rare in the wild.
``He was white, but the tip of his feathers had a little brown,'' said Bryant, who lives in Roanoke. ``I thought I was seeing things. If I hadn't been so far back up in the mountains, I would have been hesitant. I would have thought someone's tame one got out.''
In the subdued light of a hunting situation, sometimes shadows or the slant of the sun can play tricks, and at first Bryant didn't rule out that explanation. So he decided to select his target based on size, not color.
``I picked out an 18- or 19-pound gobbler, and this [white] one walked up beside it and I could tell it was real different. It was white, not black. I decided to shoot it.''
Bryant took the bird to Justice's Taxidermy Shop in Roanoke, where he said a careful examination revealed it was a wild turkey, not a Butterball.
AND THE WINNER IS ... : Jimmy Kolb has been named Angler of the Year in the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament. The Virginia Beach angler entered 12 different citation-size species of fish during the 1995 contest. He might have had more, but a mild heart attack in early November kept him off the water for the final weeks of the season.
Kolb's catches: a 72-pound cobia; 30-pound, 8-ounce dolphin; 6-pound, 12-ounce flounder, 9-pound, 2-ounce gray trout; 5-pound, 10-ounce sea bass; 1-pound spot; 13-pound, 9-ounce tautog; and 37-pound, 6-ounce wahoo. In addition, Kolb earned release awards for amberjack, black drum, blue marlin, cobia and red drum.
The tournament's 2,840 citations included two state records: a 22-pound, 11-ounce skipjack tuna and a 344-pound bluefin tuna. The bluefin shattered the previous record by more than 100 pounds.
HUNTING IN A PARK: Chances are if you've visited Smith Mountain Lake State Park or driven by it more than once you are aware it has a hefty population of deer.
The number of deer is so large that park officials have set a three-day season that begins today. The idea is to keep the herd in balance with its food supply.
Word of the primitive-weapons hunt, managed by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, attracted 166 applications from interested sportsmen. These were reduced to 17 finalists for each of the three days.
BASS SCHOOL: Here's a school where you can flip a wiggly rubber worm into the front row and not get kicked out of class.
It is called Bass Fishing Techniques '96, and will turn top B.A.S.S. pros into professors Jan.19-21 at the Roanoke Sheraton.
The classes are designed to fine-tune bass fishing skills and removed some of the luck factor. Participants will sit at the feet of BASS Masters Classic champions David Fritts, Ken Cook, George Cochran and Jack Hains. Willie Ridgeway, the inventor of the Carolina Floater, also will be an instructor and so will Randy Romig, a Classic runner-up.
There will be room for as many as 300 participants, but reservations have been slow, said JC Gordon, senior program director at Virginia Tech. The host for the fishing school is Tech, which also brought the program to the area in 1992 and 1993. Snow forced the cancellation of the program in 1994, and last year it skipped the area.
``We draw people from New Jersey, New York and, of course, a lot of them come from Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania,'' Gordon said.
The fee is $89. Register by calling 540-231-5182.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB