Because it’s that time of year, here’s an interesting little outdoor Halloween tale for y’all. Guy Sagi, two-time captain of the Pima County (Ariz.) Four Wheel Drive search and rescue organization, and a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, swears the tale, which happened about 12 years ago, is the straight goods.
“True story, and just as real as the chills it still sends down my spine,” he says.
“While I was a volunteer for the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, we received a call to look for a lost hiker at a specific spot on Finger Rock Trail, a popular area just north of Tucson. The hiker had very little experience, no food, water, or warm clothing, and he was fortunate that my search team found him early the next morning.
“He was confused, dazed, angry at the friends that had left him behind, and standing unharmed at the base of some of the area’s steepest, roughest terrain. He was nowhere near the trail he had wandered away from the day before.
“He explained his older brother had found him the night before, just as it was getting really cold, and had led him down the treacherous cliffs in the dark, without a flashlight, and complaining the whole way about younger brothers who borrow clothes without asking.
“At dawn his brother ‘disappeared to get help.’
“We got the phone call and arrived shortly thereafter, and as we collected an extremely detailed description of his brother to forward to other rescue teams still in the field, he said, ‘I don’t know why he came back. He’s been dead for five years, you know.’”
Sagi says no story in all his years of reporting on the outdoors is as compelling as this one, perhaps because he still believes there was no way the hiker could have negotiated that vertical terrain, on a moonless night.
Waterfowl: The first storm system of the season brought improved duck hunting to the Skagit delta, according to Skagit Wildlife Area manager John Garrett, and the first aerial survey of the year showed just about the same number of ducks in Northwest Washington as last year at this time. A total of 30,189 mallards were counted, along with 33,400 pintail, 22,300 widgeon, and 6,400 green-winged teal.
The largest concentration of ducks, about 20,000, was counted on Padilla Bay, just off the barley fields of the Fish and Wildlife Department’s Wells Wildlife Area.
An estimated 6,500 snow geese were counted, in three locations: northeast Port Susan tide flats (5,000); West Pass, Skagit Bay tide marsh (500); and Fir Island Reserve (1,000).
There are major changes in the wind, by the way, for waterfowlers in the Stanwood area. The Nature Conservancy has purchased the old Grenvoelde property west and north of the mouth of the Stillaguamish River, and has announced it will not be open to hunting this year. Whether it ever will is apparently still open to negotiation, according to Rone Brewer, chairman of the Northwest Chapter, Washington Waterfowl Association.
The closed property extends up to a half-mile out into Port Susan and includes all the tide flats west of the Lervick/Twin City Foods properties, and essentially all the tide flats south of the state’s Leque Island/Smith Farm access area.
“If you hunt south of the mouth of the Stillaguamish River, you should be OK,” Brewer says, “but anything due west of the mouth is likely to be Conservancy property. Anything that used to be posted no trespassing off the mouth of the river is now no hunting, also.”
The Smith Farm access could disappear over the next few years, Brewer says, as a result of “restoration” by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps has completed a feasibility study, involving diking off the south 60 acres of Leque Island (the Smith Farm), and allowing tidal inundation.
Brewer encourages waterfowl and pheasant hunters to call Bob Everitt at the state Fish and Wildlife Department’s Mill Creek office, 425-775-1311, asking him to oppose the project. Or, if opposition won’t work, to promote a land purchase somewhere in the vicinity to replace the Smith Farm’s functions as a pheasant release site and waterfowl management area.
Brewer can be reached at 360-629-4213, or wducks@snohomish.net.
Elk: The general rifle elk season opens on the east side of the Cascades this weekend and Sam Ingram warns hunters that Tuesday’s storm dumped a bunch of snow above about 3,500 feet on the east slope of the mountains.
“That’s good as far as forcing elk movement,” Ingram says, “but anyone who left tents or other equipment over here in advance better know it’s going to take some getting to.”
Ingram was calling from Storm King Mountain, between White and Chinook passes, and said there was a foot of snow on the mountain and several lost hunters reported in the area. The “any bull” permit season has been open since Monday.
Ingram said hunting has been pretty good, including an 8×9 bull reported from the Tieton River area.
Crab: Recreational crabbing has reopened in Marine areas 7, 8-1, 12, a small portion of 9 which had been closed, and the Saratoga Passage portion of local area 8-2. State shellfish biologists finished October in-season surveys of catch record card holders, and concluded that sport harvest quotas had not been taken in most areas of Puget Sound. The only part of Puget Sound to remain closed is the Everett/Mukilteo portion of 8-2, roughly south of Camano Head.
Eastern Washington steelhead: Great fishing is under way on a record run of Snake River hatchery summer steelhead, where both bank and boat anglers are scoring at a clip of a fish for every two to six hours on the water. That’s pretty good steelheading.
Late fall and winter are prime times for these beautiful fish, and if you’re heading toward the east side for some hunting, or maybe a Cougar game, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to throw a rod in the family bus. Hot spots include the mouth of the Grande Ronde, the confluence of the Snake and the Clearwater on the Idaho border, and the mouth of the Tucannon.
Joe Foster, Fish and Wildlife Department fish biologist at the Ephrata office, says the possibility of a steelhead opening this winter on the upper Columbia and/or its tributaries is still bound up in the long process of clearing it with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Foster says he expects to hear from NMFS within the next week, but feels it isn’t likely the paperwork can be done to open a season much before December or the first of next year.
He predicts about 16,000 surplus, hatchery, marked summer-runs to be available, if the season flies, and the opening would be for the Methow, Similkameen and Okanogan rivers, and the Columbia from the power line crossing of the Hanford Reach, upstream to Chief Joseph Dam. The Wenatchee and Entiat would remain closed.
Deer: Results are in from check stations and general Wildlife Department observations on the rifle deer season around the state, as follows:
Locally, very, very light pressure was noted in the Snoqualmie unit and the usual hunting areas in Snohomish County.
Coastal Washington hunting was generally fair to slow. At the Vail Tree Farm, 1,519 hunters checked 82 bucks and 42 does through the Skookumchuck station, about average for that area. At the Dayton station in Mason County, 222 had nine bucks and one doe, while 64 had two bucks at the Pysht Tree Farm in Clallam County. At the Wynoochee station, 110 hunters had 16 bucks and six does, and at the Satsop station, it was 102 with nine bucks.
Southwest Washington: Klickitat County success increased by 30 percent over last year, particularly in units 382 and 588. A total of 2,368 hunters were tallied at six stations in the southwest, with 85 deer, and the best checks were at Chehalis and Coal Creek. Last year, it was 1,853 with 51.
Eastern Washington: Hunters in whitetail country had about a 15 percent success rate this year, according to official checks in the northeast part of the state, and youth, senior, and disabled hunters scored particularly well in special hunts.
Youth also did very well in the special hunts in Okanogan and Douglas counties, where biologist Jim Tabor of Moses Lake estimated more than half the deer harvested during the rifle season were taken by young hunters. They took advantage of the new opportunity for any whitetail in Okanogan East, Wannacut, and Sinlahekin units, and for any whitetail or mulie in Wannacut, Alta, Big Bend, Foster Creek, and Moses Coulee units. The Chewack check station in Okanogan County tallied 69 deer on the opener, compared with 29 last year.
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