If you haven’t yet met U.S. Hunting Today’s Product Review Specialists, Richard “The Bee” Becraft, you can meet him here.

“The Bee” has just completed his review of the Maine Vue Optics 3x9x40 Riflescope. You can read his review at Indiana Hunting Today. We will also have the review posted at all U.S. Hunting Today websites as time permits.

Tom Remington

Steven and I have been trying for some time now to find the right person who we feel we could work with and has the experience and expertise to be U.S. Hunting Today’s Product Review Specialist. We think we have found such a person.

We would like to introduce you to Richard “The Bee” Becraft.

I’ve been hunting Indiana whitetails since about 1978. Shooting longer than that. I really just don’t remember a beginning to it. I mainly just hunt deer and turkey since I started having kids in 1984. One boy and a girl – born in 84 and 85.

I started working in the auto industry as a machinist and after 13 years served an apprenticeship as a Stationary Powerhouse Engineer. In 1995 I served another one in the Millwright trade. I spent the rest of my career dividing my time between maintenance and operations jobs in the power house as a welder, carpenter, millwright, machine repair as well as a couple years as a health and safety trainer.

I do enough gunsmithing and archery tuning to suit my own needs. I upgrade my skills as the needs require. I pay my tuition in mistakes on my own stuff and reaping the rewards is better than any classroom pat on the back when I get it to work. I have attended several colleges satisfying my apprenticeship requirements and my own desire to learn – from accounting and communications to tool engineering and thermal dynamics at colleges from Indiana to Wisconsin and back.

I hunt and fish all that circumstances will permit and live on property located adjacent to Hoosier National Forest.

Steven and I look forward to our future of working closely with “B”.

“B” has just completed his first product review on a Maine Vue Optics 3x9x40 Riflescope. I think you’ll find his work extensive, honest and provides the information necessary for the hunter in deciding whether or not to buy this product.

You can read his review at New Hampshire Hunting Today, Vermont Hunting Today, Indiana Hunting Today and Maine Hunting Today. We will be adding it to all U.S. Hunting Today’s hunting websites in the near future.

If you have a product you would like Richard to review you can contact us at U.S. Hunting Today

Tom Remington

New Hampshire Fish and Game is announcing that there are still over 1,600 Unit M Special Deer permits available. They are being sold on a first-come first-serve basis. A Unit M Special Deer permit allows a hunter to take an extra antlerless deer in that unit during the archery, muzzleloader or firearms season. Permits applications can be downloaded online or purchased over the counter at Fish and Game headquarters.

Bear season go underway on September 1, 2006. At the time of the latest report on September 19, 99 bear had been registered with Fish and Game. During the same period last year, 263 bear were taken.

Numbers are down significantly and officials attribute it to the abundance of natural foods for the animals.

Deer archery season began on September 15 and so far 523 deer have been harvested. This is close to the same time period as last year but down from years previous. Once again, the abundance of acorns, apples and beechnuts affecting deer movement and hunters will need to adjust tactics accordingly.

Game officials are releasing 13,500 pheasants for the opening of pheasant season on October 1. The season will run until December 31 and has a daily bag limit of 2 birds and a season total limit of 10.

Tom Remington

Rex Rammell, owner of the Chief Joseph elk ranch in eastern Idaho, was arrested Friday morning near his own ranch. According to a report by KIFI television, Rammell went to check on his catch pen, something he has set up to capture his domestic elk. He spotted Fish and Game personnel and watched as they shot four elk headed for his catch pen. He was arrested shortly after that when he sat down on the dead elk and refused to move. He posted bail later in the day.

*All posts on the topic*:

Governor Jim Risch Defends His Decision To Shoot Escaped Elk
Idaho Gubernatorial Candidates Have A Say About Elk Farming
Rammell For Governor, Ranch Sold, Elk Still Being Hunted
Wyoming Governor Freudenthal Says Interior Department Not Doing Enough About Escaped ElkIdaho’s Escaped Elk Now Getting National Attention
Idaho Elk Farmer Says All His Elk Accounted For
Idaho Governor Expands Hunt For Escaped Elk
More Elk Killed In Idaho – Some By Hunters
Idaho Elk Farmer Plans To Sue The State
Scientists Will Test Killed Idaho Elk For Disease And Genetic Make-up
A Helicopter, A Plane And 25 Agents Can’t Find 160 Domestic Elk
Escaped Idaho Elk Being Slaughtered. Wyoming Ordered To Kill Elk Also
Domestic Elk Crash The Gate – Escape!

Tom Remington

This moose was shot in Alaska on September 12, 2006, by Chuck Winters north of the Arctic Circle.

Winters poses with the bull moose. Winters said the moose weighed 1,500 pounds.
Photo courtesy of Shawn Stephan

The moose’s spread measure 66 inches and a green measurement might get him in the top 10 in Boone and Crockett.

Read the whole story here.

Tom Remington

Two unnamed hunters claim to have watched three grizzly bears, a female and two cubs, from about 80-yards away. They watched them through binoculars and a spotting scope. This alleged sighting took place near Independence Pass in the San Isabel National Forest.

Wildlife officials are skeptical but opted to post signed warning people in that area that there is a possibility.

The two hunters, who claim to have experience with black bears and grizzly bears, say that after the bears left that area, they were unable to find any tracks or scat.

More on this at the GJ Sentinel.

Tom Remington

Poaching by its simplest definition is the taking of fish and game illegally. It also means to trespass in order to take fish and game. So technically speaking, one may be properly licensed to fish or hunt but if they trespass in order to do that, they have become a poacher. Would someone who did this be charged with poaching? More than likely not but they may be charged with illegal trespass.

As you can well determine, the use of the word poach is broad and all-inclusive. It also gives hunting and hunters a bad name and in some cases justifiably so. The vast majority of hunters are good, decent, honest and ethical hunters. The remainder fall into one of several categories of poachers. It is left up to one’s own interpretation as to what a poacher is and if caught, whether the punishment fits the crime.

This is a debate that has raged on for decades and nothing I am going to say in this column is going to change anyone’s perception either. What I do want to do is take one classification of someone who shoots game illegally out from under the term poacher. That is the someone who shoots game solely for the purpose of killing it.

As I pointed out before, there are all kinds of poachers. There’s sneaking another fish into the creel, dipping a few more smelts and hiding them in hopes of not getting caught, shooting another deer for your buddy to tag after you got one and the list can go on and on. These are the so-called gray areas of poaching but illegal nonetheless.

Then there’s the blatant means of poaching. We know of those who shoot game out of season. There’s organized groups that kill game and sell to trophy collectors. There’s even the illegal killing of bears for their gall bladders used in Eastern civilizations for medicinal purposes.

I read just the other day several articles that dealt with poaching. In one story, a game official was quoted as saying there are basically three kinds of poachers. Poacher number one is the guy who takes fish and game illegally because they just want the food or need the food. Let’s face it. Many times we as hunters, will “look the other way” if we knew of someone destitute and hungry enough they were doing some poaching to feed their families. This of course falls into the gray area.

The second kind of poacher is the one who does it for the trophy. In most cases, a trophy poacher would take only the trophy part – head, antlers, etc. – of the animal and leave the rest to rot. If I had to rate poachers using a scale from one to ten, ten being the worst, this kind of poaching would easily reach ten. A person who would poach game and then claim it as his trophy, is a sick individual. They might even qualify as one of those that animal rights groups often blather on about, that has to hide behind the barrel of a gun in order to be perceived as a tough guy.

The third kind of poacher is the idiot that would go out and kill fish and wildlife for the jollies he or she would get from doing it. The jollies often would come from either the great risk of avoiding getting caught or the thrill achieved by killing. Either way this is sick behavior. It is also refered to as poaching.

Authorities have come to the conclusion that they are dealing with this kind of killer when they come upon animals that have been shot and killed and just left untouched.

Under the broad definition of poaching, anyone would be correct in making the conclusion that this latter means of slaughter is poaching. What I want to see are law enforcement and media people putting an end to the use of the term poacher to describe this action.

I have no statistics to back up this claim but I am willing to wager that nearly everybody who hunts, would never do this. Therefore, it should be just as easy to remove this action from the definition of poaching.

This isn’t just because they give hunters a bad name. All poaching gives hunters a bad name. This I believe has more to do with how law enforcement would go about catching sick, demented individuals who kill this way.

When some hardened criminal murders someone with a firearm, do law enforcement go after hunters because they know hunters have guns? Not generally, so why would law enforcement go looking at hunters because some deranged person killed some animals for the thrill of it?

I realize this wish of mine isn’t going to happen but I do hope that law enforcement takes a better look at how they go about investigating crimes of animal killing for the sake of killing.

Tom Remington

Spotting a coyote is Pennsylvania isn’t something that is done on any regular basis and finding one infected with rabies is just about unheard of. In Heidelberg Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania, a rabid coyote attacked a family’s two dogs and turned on the people as well.

Craig and Jenny Luckenbill got quite a scare when they encountered the aggressive coyote. The story is quite amazing as well as terrifying. Here’s a quote from the article in the Reading Eagle.

“When the coyote tried to come at me, twice the dog got between me and the coyote to protect me and they got at it again,” Luckenbill said. “My wife was standing in the doorway screaming and I called the dog and we got back into the house.”

The coyote was close behind and was stopped at the front door by Luckenbill’s wife, who struggled to keep the door closed on the coyote’s neck.

“When it tried to come into the house, my other dog Annie got involved to protect my wife,” Luckenbill said.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission says the coyote tested positive for rabies. Fortunately both dogs have had their rabies shots but veterinarians administered a couple of booster shots to be safe.

The Pocono Record has an article that covers the rarity of finding rabies at all in Pennsylvania and also includes educational information about the disease, coyotes and how animals may act when infected.

Tom Remington

If everything goes as is being suggested by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission, next October there will be 5 elk permits made available to hunters. Details on how the awarding of elk permits will be done is still being worked out including costs.

The Chattanoogan has the details.

Tom Remington

A family pet, a 3-lb. chihuahua was tied up outside the house in Eagle River, Alaska for what the family says was for only a minute. Next thing they knew the dog, which seldom barked, began yapping. The dog had spotted a black bear passing through the yard, which isn’t uncommon, and began barking at it. The bear turned and came after the dog and…….read the rest.

Tom Remington