Published: November 18, 2006 11:52 pm      

JOE OGNIBENE: Expect more of the same this deer season

Deer season opened Saturday and early indications show the opening day take to be on par with the past few years. Traditionally the bulk of the deer taken on any given year are taken during the first two days of the season, the period when most hunters are out. In the past when the opener was on a Monday this meant most hunters headed home Tuesday night. With our now Saturday opener, the hunt period could extend an additional two days. As a result of more hunters being out, more deer could be taken.

This means come Tuesday night for all intent and purposes, the season is over for most. There will be brief flurries of activities on the weekends and Thanksgiving Day, but the bulk of the crowd will have put the guns away until next season. That’s when the fields are mostly empty of deer hunters and a much smaller number of hunters will continue trying to score. Hunting when the pressure on the deer herd is off and fewer hunters around to keep deer moving can be a long and lonely experience. If the weather continues as it has been for most of this fall, wet and rainy, it will be dreary as well. It could also be very rewarding. Not every deer will have been taken and some of the best racks of the season could still be cautiously wandering around. Older and wiser deer head for deep cover when the shooting starts and generally stay hidden until things quiet down. Once the many hunters have left the field and back road traffic returns to normal deer feel it’s okay to once again venture out. The hunter who settles in a tree stand and decides to wait regardless of weather and time could strike it rich. If you know of a well-used path deer have utilized in the past chances are they will continue to use it. It will take time and patience, but the deer of your dreams might come by making the wait worthwhile.

Recently there was a report that ocean fishing would cease to exist in not too many years. The question many have is whether this is possible or not. To this writer’s way of thinking it certainly is possible and also very probable. All one has to do is think of the Grand Banks in the Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland and the immense cod fishing industry that was there at one time. Now cod fishing in the Grand Banks has been all but halted in the hope that the codfish can make a come back to some semblance of what it once was. It was thought at one time we would never run out of codfish. The catch was estimated in the millions of tons of fish taken during the halcyon years. Now a fishing boat can’t make expenses on the fish taken from the Banks.

When one thinks of the thousands of miles of nets placed in our oceans by the nations of the world all competing for a rapidly depleting resource every day, it’s a wonder there are any fish left at all. Some Asian nations keep every fish their nets capture including sharks because they stupidly think the fins, the only part they keep, act as an aphrodisiac. Swordfish and tuna are in jeopardy due to mercury poisoning and they too are becoming few and far between. To see the troubles the fish are in one only has to look at the restrictions on eating any specie of fish taken in New York waters. No one thinks of wiping out a species until it’s gone. A case in point would be the Passenger pigeon. This is a bird that once blackened the sky when a flock passed. The demand for its lustrous feathers for women’s hats was so great that in a few short years the bird was shot into extinction. The feathers were the only part of the bird that was harvested. What a waste. Right around home we have an example of shoving a species into extinction with the wiping out of the Blue Pike. There are still some of us who can remember fishing the sand bar in front of Fort Niagara for blues and coming home with more than we needed. They were without a doubt the tastiest fish we ever caught. They were the main attraction on many local restaurant menus on Fridays. Over fishing by United States and Canadian commercial interests, along with liberal sport fishing regulations helped push the blues towards an untimely end, but pollution can be called the main culprit. It’s a wonder that any fish still swims n the Niagara River or Lake Ontario when you consider both countries used the river as an open sewer for many years.

We decimated the Lake Trout fishery by allowing Lamprey eels into Lake Ontario and are now trying through stocking programs to being this grand fish back. Through carelessness on the part of our officials Zebra mussels, spiny water fleas, round Goby and a host of other imported threats are wreaking havoc within our waters. Now we face another awesome and horrifying threat with the steady advance of the Asian carp. The imported scourge escaped from a farm pond in Alabama and spread through the Mississippi River and its drainage system until it now threatens our Great Lakes. Many biologists predict when the Asian carp finally invades our lakes sport and commercial fishing, as we know it now will cease to exist.

Could our ocean and fresh water fishing become a thing of the past some day? In all probability the answer is yes because it is too late to do anything about it.

Joe Ognibene is a local sportsman who has covered the outdoor scene since 1957.