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2B Daily News ��� Saturday, December 22, 2012 Outdoor & living life Hunting offers time to reflect By LARRY OAKES Minneapolis Star Tribune (MCT) CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST, Minn. ��� They ought to call it thought hunting. You sit in a deer stand, hour after hour, silent and still. While you wait for a deer, your mind wanders the dense and beautiful forest of its own thoughts. In my decades of deer hunting, this is one thing I���ve come to value. Yes, I like the heart-pounding thrill of a nice buck approaching. I like the challenge of making a clean kill and respectable field-dress. I enjoy putting meat in the freezer and maybe a trophy on the wall. And I cherish the annual reunions that deer hunting gives my family. But I���ve noticed that the hunt���s long interludes of solitude are some of the best opportunities I get all year to think, without interruption or distraction. To take stock, reminisce and savor. To mull and decide. To mark the years and stages of my life. To worry, count blessings and hope. For almost 40 years, my dad, my brother and I have hunted the same patch of the Chippewa National Forest in the lake, sand and pine country of north-central Minnesota. Lately my grown son has joined us, learning to shoot his uncle���s old .30-30 and continuing a tradition that���s been in our family since before my paternal grandfather and his brother built a windowless log deer-hunting shack northwest of Duluth almost 100 years ago. Some of our best family memories are from our hunts. One year, dad shot a handsome eight-pointer right at sunset near his stand next to a giant Norway pine, a mile on foot paths from where we park. We���d heard wolves yowling earlier, so we thought we���d better walk back there together and do a nighttime drag. Dad broke trail as my brother, Greg, and I slid the animal over fresh snow and low windfalls, each of us straining on an antler. We turned off the flashlights and stood in the forest���s inky blackness. Hushed and awed beneath a canopy of achy-bright stars, we waited for Earth���s disk to complete its journey across the Sea of Tranquility or whatever vast, sterile plain lay between those chalky lunar hills. Basking in the luster of its restored light in the snowy forest, we passed a hip flask and drank a ���hunter���s toast��� to dad���s buck and to this rarest of moments, an old woodsman and his sons sharing a priceless, unforgettable experience. Such memories are all the sweeter when a hunter is given reason to reflect on the fragility of life. Last year, a couple weeks after I killed a broken-tine eight-pointer on the last day of the season, I was finishing a routine workout when a blood vessel in my head suddenly ruptured in a wave of searing pain. I was in the hospital 16 days with a tube inserted deep into my head. It was a major brain hemorrhage, but I escaped the disabilities���difficulty walking and talking���that many stroke victims suffer at least temporarily. The reason is a little bizarre. According to the neurosurgeon who studied the CAT scans and MRIs of my head, a malformation of blood vessels had starved a portion of my brain of oxygen and prevented it from developing properly, probably before I was born. Luckily, the fetal and infant brain is highly adaptable. The good parts simply assumed the prescribed functions of the part that didn���t develop���the part that remains to this day, in the words of the neurosurgeon, ���silent.��� And it was into that silence that the same malformed cluster of vessels bled when I was 51 ��� inundating, pressur- izing and starving the one and only portion of my brain where there are no vital functions being performed, no thoughts to kill. That bullet whizzed right past my head. That thought still takes my breath away. Then, this fall, dad���s 76-year-old body took its turn to scare everybody. Blood work from a routine physical showed abnormal results, and eventually specialists determined he has cancer of the blood and bone marrow. We feared that the chemo, if not the cancer, would make him really sick, make his hair fall out and all that. But it didn���t. Once again he helped put on the lutefisk dinner at church, and he���s kept telling corny jokes. And when November came, he and mom hosted the annual hunt as usual. Later in the deer season, his oncologist called with fantastic news: The latest tests showed the chemo is reducing evidence in his blood of the cancer, making remission seem more likely. Maybe we both should start playing the lottery. In terms of deer hanging from the pole outside dad���s garage, this season wasn���t one of our best. For days we had blustery weather that made it hard to hear and might have spooked a lot of deer. I might have had a nice-sized fork horn myself, but he spotted me before I could get my rifle off my lap, and then he ducked into some thick brush. He made a fool out of me, as many of his kind have done before. He left me shaking my head and smiling. So I didn���t get a deer, but as usual I got a lot of time to think. To remember and appreciate. To marvel and savor and worry and hope. To decide that you can fail to fill your tag and still be the luckiest damn deer hunter in the whole north woods. FISH AND GAME Protected marine area guide now online The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has released the Guide to the Northern California Marine Protected Areas. This full-color guide includes maps with identifiable landmarks, shoreline boundary images and existing regulations for marine protected areas (MPAs) along the northern California coast (CaliforniaOregon state line in Del Norte County to Point Arena in Mendocino County). Additional information about northern California MPAs, answers to frequently asked questions, general rules that apply to all MPAs and links to DFG web pages are also included in the guide. Northern California MPAs will go into effect Wednesday, Dec. 19. The California Fish and Game Commission adopted regulations in June. This regional network includes 19 MPAs, one State Marine Recreational Management Area and seven special closures, covering approximately 137 square miles of state waters and 13 percent of the region. The guide is available for online viewing and printing at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ mlpa/guidebooks.asp. For more information on California���s MPA network, including the northern California coast, please visit www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa. California Outdoors Q&A Drifting for Waterfowl Question: Is it legal to drift down or anchor a boat in a river to hunt for waterfowl? The river is in the ���Balance of the State��� zone and is surrounded by unincorporated privately owned farmland, with the occasional house or barn visible from the water. I know you cannot discharge a firearm within 150 yards of a dwelling or near a public road, and I know that all motors must be out of the water. Would drifting be considered forward motion? (Anonymous) Answer: Drifting is not considered ���under power.��� What you describe would be legal as long as you access the river from a legal access point, and once you���re hunting, your motion is not due to momentum provided by the motor before it was turned off. You must also take into account the retrieval of the birds you take. Should you Carrie take a bird that lands on private property that you do not have the authority to access, you run the risk of a hunting trespass for retrieval, or waste of game if you do not retrieve it. Also, you need to remember not to discharge a firearm within 150 yards of an occupied dwelling, and these may be difficult to see from the river. Finally, there may be other state or local ordinances and regulations (such as no shooting zones) or other restrictions that may prevent you from hunting the section of water you want to hunt. Returning female Dungeness crabs Question: I was surprised to discover the current regulations do not say female Dungeness crabs must be thrown back. Has there been a change in the long standing regulation that required this? Is it now legal to keep the female Dungeness crab, providing all other stipulations are met (size, season, limit, zone)? (Kurt H.) Answer: Yes! Sport fisherman may keep the female Dungeness crab ��� commercial fishermen must throw them back. Since the females are often much smaller and less meaty than the males and lack the large claws, many fishermen toss them back so they can reproduce more young for future generations. The larger females that meet the minimum size requirements also carry the most eggs and produce the most offspring, so it���s beneficial for the population to let the females go. However, there is no law that compels you to do so. How to legally display mountain lions? Question: I read where Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed into law a bill allowing the mounting and display of these animals in California. Does that mean that mountain lions taken in other states can be brought into California for mounting and display? (Peter B., Los Angeles) Answer: No, it is still illegal to import mountain lions. Fish and Game Code section 4800, which was enacted via an initiative measure in 1990, provides that mountain lions are specially protected mammals that cannot be taken or possessed except under limited circumstances related to public safety or protection of property. SB 769, which amended the law in 2011, now allows for the possession of a mountain lion carcass, but only if all of the following requirements are met: 1) The lion was legally taken in California; 2) The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has specifically authorized the possession for the purposes of SB 769; and 3) The carcass is prepared for display, exhibition, or storage, for a bona fide scientific or educational purpose, at a non-profit museum or government-owned facility generally open to the public or at an educational institution, including a public or private postsecondary institution. Only mountain lions taken for depredation or public safety reasons in accordance with the Fish and Game Code will fall within the SB 769 exception allowing possession of displayed mountain lions. Yo-yo fishing Question: I know jug fishing, yo-yo fishing and the use of trotlines with 20+ hooks per line are the norm in the South. I am interested in yo-yo fishing in California for catfish and possibly trying a two-jug trotline with 10 to 12 hooks on the line to catch catfish. My question is: In California, are private (non-commercial) fishermen limited to just one line with three hooks max? In reading the regs, it seems that an extra pole endorsement is just that, for an extra pole, not an extra line. (Mark H., San Bruno) In regard to yo-yo fishing and trotline fishing, here is an article from 2007Outdoor Life: http://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/fishing/2007/09/tackle-free-fishing Answer: You must closely attend your lines at all times and you are limited to two lines with a maximum of three hooks on each line with a two-pole stamp. Otherwise, you must use a single line with three hooks maximum when fishing bait, or three lures per line which could each have three hooks. It is illegal to allow lines to simply fish themselves while attached to a float. For a similar previous question and answer, please go to: http://californiaoutdoors.wordpress.com/2008/11/. Wilson